Bed

When I was younger, I didn’t really go in much for emo (with a few exceptions that will remain nameless…for now), so I had to find my self-pitying music elsewhere. One of the many bands that hit the spot for me was Talk Talk.

While Mark Hollis and company aren’t explicitly “music for depressives”, they sure sound like it. While I was in this phase of listening during college where I was sampling anything I could get my hands on that made mention of Talk Talk, I ran into a band called Bed.

Benoît Burello is the main guy behind the group and he channeled Talk Talk’s late-period albums more expertly that I’ve yet heard anywhere else on the band’s debut album, The Newton Plum. The record, like all good post-rock, floats by as if in a dream, with unresolved song-ending chords and plenty of atmosphere to go around. My favorite track is probably “An Itch.” It begins tentatively, each instrument (bass clarinet, cello, harmonium, vibraphone all feature) trying out notes in search of something to give the song form. It finally coalesces after two minutes around a simple three note piano line and then leisurely stakes its claim in your consciousness before fading away mere minutes after it began.

Even so, describing a track on The Newton Plum is a bit of a losing proposition—in the same way that trying to piece together the elements of a dream into a cohesive narrative only help to make it hazier. Try the album around the time that you’re going to or coming out of sleep, though. Who knows: it just might help.