During the research years of my fellowship in Boston, my lab mates and I would often listen to the late, great alternative rock station, WFNX.

One day, they played a song that elicited a response akin to the one described in my blog post of 14 June, “Who was that?!”  But unlike that earlier experience, this time, the DJ identified the band: October Project.  The song, Bury My Lovely, was the first cut on their eponymous first album, released in 1993.

The hook in this instance was the voice of the lead vocalist, Mary Fahl.  It has an almost other-worldly quality: dusky, haunted, ethereal…I’d never heard anything like it.  I love the piano, and the lushness of the strings.  The song’s tempo and harmonies, for some reason, bring to mind a madrigal.

The group’s sound is hard to classify.  It’s been described as folk-pop, folk-rock, New Age, goth pop (?!?)….none of which feel right.  A 1995 article in the Christian Science Monitor notes that their “music has an enigmatic quality….the emotions expressed are not direct. It’s like an “emotional hologram,” where the listener enters into the musical landscape…”  This, for me, is a good a description as any.

Cover the mirror, hide in your dreams
Forget what they told you, forget what it means
A picture worth a thousand lies, the memory and the mirror
Nothing but what came before, nothing but a closing door

A picture worth a thousand lies
A thousand words, a thousand eyes

Bury my lovely, hide in your room
Bury my lovely, forget me soon
Forget me, forget me now, forget me not

Cover the madness, cover the fear
No one will ever know you were here
A figure in the hallway light returning like a ghost
Something that was left behind, something in a child’s mind

A picture worth a thousand lies
A thousand words, a thousand eyes

Bury my lovely, hide in your room
Bury my lovely, forget me soon
Forget me, forget me now, forget me not

Bury my lovely, bury the lies
Bury me under a thousand goodbyes

A shadow from another time is waiting in the night
Something happened long ago, something that will not let go

Bury my lovely, hide in your room
Bury my lovely, forget me soon
Forget me, forget me now, forget me not

Random thought: A few years ago, I burned a CD of various songs for the man I loved, and included one by October Project.  Several months later, he broke my heart.  I lost him, but I still have the music.  And will, always.  That’s one of music’s gifts: it remains.