Teme mi corazón de ir adelante/ viendo estar su dolor puesto en celada

Electrelane's Mia Clarke

Creaking, the wooden decks awakens you back to the salty air of the sea. You fumble and stand up on the deck, taking a moment to reorient yourself to the sway of the ship.

Still and moonless, yet an ominously growing sense of awareness of what to break starts to creep into the edges of your senses.You lean forward, squinting into the distance.

It's a moonless night, and the clouds look like as they should be. But something catches your eye, and you strain to stare into the darkness of the skies.

And it is exactly in this darkness that you find that something is different. Like as if they carried too much within that threatened to burst any moment. Like as if so much searing intensity can never be contained within something so insubstantial as mere wisps of clouds.

A flare from a single flash illuminates the skies, and that is the only warning you get. The breeze starts to rush, a low hoarse howl that burns right through you. Before you know it, the heavens let loose with a crash and you run for the helm of the ship.

A slight patter as the sheer raindrops hit the ship, growing into a deafening envelopment that stuns your still sleepy mind. Grabbing the wheel, you pull against the wind, slowing knowing it is futile in the face of the roaring storm, but a sense of self preservation and wonderment, yes wonderment at the hypnotic intensity of the rousing storm, drives you to hang on with gritted teeth..




Electrelane's magnificent ' Oh Sombra!' feels exactly like this. An alternatingly rousing and eerie wall of brazen sonic energy that takes no chances. Founded in Brighton, England's Electrelane formed in 1998, eventually comprising guitarist Mia Clarke, bassist Rachel Dalley, drummer Emma Gaze ( oh what a name!), and keyboardist/guitarist Verity Susman. An all girl band that manages a rare marriage of raucous sophistication to a fiery primal energy.

They are amazingly adventurous, and willing to try anything that fancies them. " Oh Sombra!" is sung entirely in Spanish. In actual fact it is a complete sonnet by 16th century Catalan poet Juan Boscán Almogáver. The song is in essence, not a love song but a song about *love*. And the way they have chosen to lay the tune in all its searing honest glory just leaves me agape.

No matter how many times I listen to this song, I inevitably feel the same rush. A rush that presses me down to my seat. A rush that raises the hairs on the back of my neck. A rush that I just cant say no to.

Some may find this song nothing more than a wall of sound, with nothing that appeals even remotely to them for Electrelane eschews so many usual conventions of a song. But to me, somewhere in that eerie intensity is an elegant honesty which is so rare to find, and utterly, completely breathtaking.

Electrelane - Oh Sombra! ( Live)


Como aquel que en soñar gusto recibe,
su gusto procediendo de locura,
así el imaginar con su figuravanamente su gozo en mí concibe.


Otro bien en mí, triste, no se escribe,
si no es aquel que en mi pensar procura;
de cuanto ha sido hecho en mi ventura
lo sólo imaginado es lo que vive.


Teme mi corazón de ir adelante,
viendo estar su dolor puesto en celada;
y así revuelve atrás en un instante


a contemplar su gloria ya pasada.
¡Oh sombra de remedio inconstante,
ser en mí lo mejor lo que no es nada!


Like one receiving pleasure from a dream,
his pleasure thus proceeding from delusion,
so does imagination with illusions conceive in vain its happiness in me.


No other good's inscribed on my sad heart,
except what in my thoughts I might procure;
of all the good I ever have endured,
what lives is only the imagined part.


My heart is frightened to proceed ahead,
seeing that its pain in ambush lies;
and so after a moment it turns back


to contemplate those glories that have fled.
Oh, shadow of relief, that fickle flies,
to make what's best in me be what I lack!