One song possesses the sense and savour of this seemingly unseasonable period for many of us. When 'Beth Gibbons' performs it with Rustin Man, sure it's got words:
"And many rains turn to rivers
Winter's here
And there ain't nothing gonna change
The winds are blowing telling me all I hear
Oh it's a funny time of year
There'll be no blossom on the trees
Turning now I see no reason
The voice of love so out of season..."
The lonely lyrics may be an odd kind of love song for 'A Funny Time of Year'. There's so much more in the music it makes for a strange sort of magic.
While an anonymous writer of a "she sounds like" I mentioned this week did no favour to his victim, he did me one by citing the Bristol singer currently working on the third Portishead album. For synchronicity, a silly comparison at least reminded me of the record of the month. When Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man, or Paul Webb, made 'Out of Season' in 2002, they cut a CD worthy of its name.
Having already said a little of how a northern February can play tricks on our moods and subtly affect our daily relationships, distorting our usual outlooks in ways where it turns out others feel the same, I won't return over that ground but move on across it to a poetic album that expresses uncommon emotions suited to the most disjointed stretches of our lives.
There will be blossom on the leaves come the spring.
People who "see no reason" in things you say to them and might appear to be telling you of their own mirror -- the way that sometimes happens during the kind of talk nobody wanted in the first place -- will make sense to you again and you to them.
When it occurs, such a failure of communication, not with everyone you know but those with whom you would least want or expect it, you become miffed and so do they and it gets worse because neither of you understands, right?
Well, rather than pursue it to nowhere, you could try an album like this and it's likely to make you feel much better.
Part of that melancholy magic is worked by time.
We know what time is every day and take it for granted. Sometimes we feel it crawl, sometimes rushing by too fast for us. When it does, we tell ourselves that's got more to do with the circumstances than time itself, which ticks past on clocks as measurably as ever so they don't suddenly start having squabbles about it.
When this album was released, there was trouble. Somebody -- but I can't find the name -- wrote about this too well to use my own words:
"Hailed by some as work of genius and by others as a pretentious statement, Beth Gibbons's first album is definitely causing a bit of a stir," begins a very fine review at 'The Milk Factory. Later it says:
"Very often using elements of nature and passing time as metaphors to emphasise the down-to-earth atmosphere of the music, the duo elaborate rarely on the simple, acoustic arrangements, only once reaching for dramatic effect, on the stunning Funny Time Of Year. Starting with just an acoustic guitar to support Beth's fragile voice, the track slowly builds up to a magnificent coda. Perhaps the closest to the ambience of Portishead, and at the same time the furthest away, Funny Time Of Year presents this album with its most poignant moment.
"Reminiscent of the poetry of a Nike Drake, Out Of Season is totally unique, and most definitely out of time. A very strong piece of work, this album will be remembered as a milestone in Gibbons' career."
That person's saved me so much breath, but left me in peril, on the strength not simply of a song that undoubtedly is a "stunning" near seven minutes of music on a record of power and indeed poignancy down even below the frosted soil, of making a pretentious statement myself.
Music, I'd already meditated as usual before sitting down to get into this and find what others made of the album, is the one art-form that can do virtually anything with time.
Once musicians know this, taking the understanding intuitively into their beings and expressing it in performance, they can do more than make you smile or cry. They can do all manner of things to you. They can make the hair stand up on your head and stop you wanting to breathe.
In her way, Heather Nova did that for me last month when I fell in love with 'I Miss My Sky' on 'Redbird', listening to the song's depths and flights over and over. Its grounded avaitor subtitle is almost like a spoiler to a movie, but one you don't mind too much!
Many, many years ago, the folk band Fairport Convention gave a stage performance of a a song called 'Sloth' I've never heard matched on an album, but am still very glad to have on Full House'. That's an odd love song too, like 'A Funny Time of Year'. It's ominous yet heart-wrenchingly beautiful in capturing the feel:
"Just a roll, just a roll...
Just a roll on the drum
And the war has begun..."
The tension in concert was of the kind where you could hear a pin drop while the band worked from their hush to a stupendous coda the way a classical symphony writer might. And there was an extremely long hush before the applause, again as I've more often heard in a concert hall for a conductor and orchestra.
Time is there, all right.
That's the secret. It matters neither what kind of music it is nor with what you might want compare it, to each their own tastes and memories. A "coda" is one word for concluding a piece of music, prolonging it, playing with it and finishing it; to do that you need time, and to take time, you need measure, a beat. In these three songs, there's something special about that beat, a steadiness like a clock or a metronome and what the musicians do with it.
I don't understand that secret, never shall:
"Winter's here
And there ain't nothing gonna change
The winds are blowing telling me all I hear
Oh it's a funny time of year."
Logic tells you that's senseless, seasons change.
 The music tells you different. What you feel tells you different. Above all, what you fear tells you different. You're afraid of being caught there, that something's so awry you're trapped in a time "out of time" where it's dark and cold, won't end. And nobody can reach you.
You need company, you need a hand. When I wrote about February -- or whatever your personal "February" might be -- in The Orchard, another term came to mind, which I didn't use then: "the two-o'clock-in-the-morning-at-midday month." I mean the black thoughts of that insomniac hour somehow lingering even in sunlight.
Songs like these go in a "time" iMix called 'Transitions', which is quite a mix. It's rare that I find one to add to that playlist for some extraordinarily telling qualities. I'd rather, as a rule, write about musicians and their music, just letting what they do with things like time sing for itself.
"The thing that I'm into is the philosophy of the music. I love the surprise of things, the accidents ... just the sound of a word, to try to express them in the best way, so that the emotion is totally revealed"
(Beth Gibbons, 'Out of Season', whence the picture too).
Another term for synchronicity might be the "right accidents".
Scientists have a hard time trying to tell you what time is. So do mystics. I used to blog a lot about the physics and metaphysics of time. Not any more, I write about music.
This isn't a pretentious record. A "work of genius"? It's wonderful music, reflective and full of imagery in which you'll find your own echoes.
When you're temporarily out of sorts, it's magic.
It's disturbingly and most reassuringly 'Out of Season', an album you may need to hand any time.
1:13:38 AM link 
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