The Song
Title: Pale Soft Light
Artist: OWEL
Album: dear me
Year: 2016
The Story
I walk to the coffee shop and I’m listening to OWEL because, well, I love OWEL, for one, and for another, sprinkled into the deep green of late September leaves are oranges and yellows and reds and, look, there’s one coming down now in little looping twirls, soft and steady, just a little farther, and yes, there it is on the cool concrete, damp from the light rain that fell the day before yesterday, only the sun hasn’t shown its face since then, so nothing is quite dry. I love every moment of it.
OWEL are our finest purveyors of seasonally atmospheric post-rock,1 and dear me is their sonic love letter to autumn. It’s October now, and those opening stick clicks in “Pale Soft Light” are branches and leaves cracking underfoot, the song’s thunderous outro deserves the scarf you’re relearning how to tie, and repeated light imagery, combined with Jay Sakong’s tender vocal performance,2 is the invitingly warm lamplight leaking out from windows and doors into a night that is creeping earlier and earlier with each passing day.
Part of the reason that I love fall so dearly is all the wonderful music that has become intrinsically tied into the season for me. dear me is one of those defining entries and “Pale Soft Light” is one of that album’s most emblematic songs. What else is there to say?
I give “Pale Soft Light” five out of five stars.
Their self-titled debut (2013), with its washed-out album art and multiple songs featuring the word “snow” in the title is a winter record through and through. I’ve written before, on multiple occasions, about how their junior full-length, 2019’s Paris, is a bright spring morning of a record. And I think you could make a case that 2022’s relatively dry and muted The Salt Water Well is a summer record. 2017’s single “All I’ll Ever Know” certainly is.
Sakong’s vocal melodies and rhythms end up, in a rather magical way, concealing the exact content of the song’s lyrics. But it doesn’t take a particularly deep reading to notice that Sakong’s narrator is hiding from the seasonal chill by exploring an extremely intimate bit of warmth.
This is a beautiful song, thank you for writing about it so that I know it exists.