My Top 1000 Songs #845: From Time To Time

[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.]

By 1994's Carnival Of Light, Ride had moved from the noisy shoegaze of their earlier work to a more melodic, psychedelia-tinged Britpop that was unafraid to freely borrow from the Stone Roses. It's not a record I play much these days, but "From Time To Time" is a dense, magical track I still find personally meaningful. Sonically, there's a garage band vibe going on, with a nostalgic, gentle keyboard lead-in joined by a catchy guitar riff; but things shift into one of their prettier, more melodic pieces once the lyrics kick in, heightened with a trippy groove. Kind of a great middle-ground between their energetic early stuff and a quieter, more tuneful aesthetic. 

It's also one of those numbers with oddly specific personal associations; I picked the record up around the tail end of my time living in San Francisco, not long before buying a house out in the 'burbs, and it's always retained a melancholy, transitional feel for me.

Folky, acoustic take from 2015: