Lyzette's Song of the Day #4: "Beautiful Blue Sky" by Ought
I don’t think I’ll ever make a feature-length film proper (besides the way-too-long subscriber specials on my YouTube channel, at least), but there is one particular scene, detached from any movie currently-existing film, that I've been spinning around in my head for a while. I feel like I must have ripped this exact scene from some Leos Carax movie way back when, but it’s essentially just a single-take moment of a man, lonely, scruffy, and kinda dirty, singing at a semi-filled karaoke bar. At first, he is quiet and insecure, but as the energy of the song ramps up, so does his own confidence. He gets louder and louder - where he was initially mumbling and incomprehensible, by the end his vocals turn to loud cries. He jumps up and down to the tempo of the music, his clothing becoming all that more disheveled from all his sweaty movement. No one is really paying attention to this spectacle, but it doesn’t matter because man is feeling himself. For once in his life, he’s feeling alright.
The song at the center of this scene I’ve made up in my head is “Beautiful Blue Sky” by Ought, the Canadian band’s finest moment, as well as one of the greatest post-punk songs of the modern day. I think a big factor to the power of this song is also a big reason why it would so well in this hypothetical scene at the top - it’s all about the catharsis, baby. Like many great songs, this song starts from a minimal, central launchpad, carefully building upon itself until it reaches a fantastic climax. In this song, the launchpad comes in the form of that plucky bassline that instantly eases into a state of cyclical surreality. Slowly more instruments introduce themselves into this space, but always standing at an arms length from each other. They are all playing the same song, at the same tempo, yet the emotion has yet to fully solidify
This is when vocalist Tim Darcy comes into frame. And it’s funny that I mention Leos Carax earlier, as I have inadvertently head-canoned Darcy as Denis Lavant incarnate, with his slurring, all-spoken delivery (reminiscent of The Fall’s Mark E. Smith) carrying with it a casual, almost sloppy grittiness. As such, it is him who guides this song along its forward path. As we start small, with a few slight mentions of sunlight filling the frame, slowly some other objects start to appear. “War plane… condo…. new development”. The nature that surrounds us are now being replaced by markers of human progress. Governments, skyscrapers, corporations, gentrification. Things are happening, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.
Which then leads into the real meat of the song, which is… surprisingly euphoric? At this point, all instruments have peaked in intensity and Darcy is as loud and spirited as ever as he repeats ad nauseum a variety of cordial, casual phrases often shuffled around small communities. “How’s the family”, “Fancy seeing you here”, “Beautiful weather today”, “How’s the church? How’s the job?”. It’s a bit on-the-nose with the farce it plays on the typical small talk of these neighborhoods, but like I said before, very euphoric. It might just be the mindless repetition of such that triggers that natural instinct for us to react by chanting alone. And that’s… kind of the point? Corporate ladders, social statuses… all of that fall by the wayside to simply indulging in our animal impulses and dance along to that which makes us fulfilled, at least for the moment.
And it all culminates to that titular line: “It’s all that we have / Just that, and the big, beautiful sky”. A reversion to that which we all started with - the natural world, which has remained just as big and blue and endless as before humans built this world for themselves. It’s a song that builds upon itself, brick-by-brick, indulges in the cacophonous display of these fancy pretenses, and then draws everything back to reveal that which matters the most: inner peace and comfort. It’s a song about seeking out the true humanity of things and the genuine happiness within oneself, in the face of a society that grows larger and more imperceptible by the day. Letting go of the stresses that one faces in this impossible society and just… feel alright. Feel alright, feel alright, feel alright, feel alright…
As silly at it sounds, it really does give me joy to bring back this imaginary scene in my head as I listen to this song. This unnamed character, for a couple minutes, simply indulging in the overwhelming bliss of being alive, using this song as a catalyst for this joy… until the last point just before the meditative outro, where all instruments, except for the drums, completely drop out. He utters, “And I am no longer afraid to die, ‘cause that is all that I have left”, followed by the subsequent sigh of relief - “Yes!”. And it is after that point the film can finally cut away from this scene and progress onward.
Listen to “Big Beautiful Sky” here.