Etcetera #39: Horror, Berries, Jangle

My “territory” covers about 500 hectares (1,235 acres). And I soon start finding my way around. There are the paths followed by the animals, which I know by heart, and then a few special tricks that I develop with experience. Olfactory points of reference are essential, particularly at night. The oaks give off a scent of old wooden beams. If I approach a pond, my nostrils catch the scent of rushes and mud. My eyes get used to the darkness.

One fine morning a roe deer, the one that I would come to call by the French name Daguet, crosses my path and comes to a standstill a few steps away from me. Very slowly, I crouch down. I am fascinated by his big, shiny black eyes. We stare at one another for a few minutes, which seem to last for hours. He turns away and plunges into the undergrowth.

As far as music-writing cliches go, jangle has the advantage of being onomatopoetic. It has the pleasing ring of the self-evident. Jangly sounds sound like—well, ‘jangle’. The sound your keys make when you’re fishing them out of your pocket, of little bells shaking, coins poured out on a countertop. Small metallic things in motion. It makes some sense that this has become the chosen word for the bright sounds that can make the rest of the song disappear when you hear them. George Harrison’s Rickenbacker jangles: the sharp but somehow tender attack of the pick on the strings, followed by an adenoidal explosion of high treble. The opening guitar part in the La’s’ ‘There She Goes’ jangles: the initial taut plink, and then the swell of open strings that keep ringing as the riff winds around itself. (Despite the received wisdom that it’s about heroin, I wonder if the song’s refrain—‘And I just can’t contain/This feeling that remains’—isn’t really about that riff; its giddy, coiling insistence.) You know it when you hear it.