My Top 1000 Songs #767: Lose My Breath

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Despite it's appearance here, "Lose My Breath" is NOT one of my favorite songs. I actually find it kinda hard to listen to. But it's also a song that has long haunted my dreams. As I wrote in the very first line of my book:

"My dreams have soundtracks."

And My Bloody Valentine's "Lose My Breath" has made countless late-night appearances over the years, its warbly, disjointed, both scary and beautiful aesthetic something that matches the unnervingly familiar weirdness of dreams.

The band's 1988 record Isn't Anything, as also noted in the book, could be a difficult listen. The underwater sound, like a cassette left on the dashboard in the sun, felt just a little off-kilter, at times almost nausea-inducing (in a good way, like getting off a rollercoaster, but the queasiness was there), and "Lose My Breath" in particular has a visceral uncertainty to it. Yet when the dark, creepy verses resolve into Bilinda Butcher's gorgeous oooh-ooh-oohs, it's a feeling of blissful relief, just like waking from a disconcerting dream.

Live '89:

Deerhoof cover: