Songs for a Neophyte: 2015.33

Into the Past (Reboot)
Nero

Vacuous
And where, friend, are you hiding?
Jumping off the cliff in a field?
A fuller sound;
A thinner voice
And again, you press yourself upon me
Without end
Until ending
without signifying yourself

Lyrics
Nineteen times. Nineteen times, she proclaims she'll follow (you).
You know, this song doesn't say anything. The lyrics are groaned and hissed in a forced, edgy way. I don't like it because it communicates something exact about the singer, something difficult to specify and verbalize. There's a certain sort of person who sings with the creaking onset, pressurized lift, breathy consonant style of this woman, and I've met more I don't like than those I like. They're small women, not physically, but experientially, relationally, psychically. It's a style more easily put on than forgotten. I was trying to help choose a person who would sing a very important song at summer camp, and I heard four accomplished vocalists with beautiful voices, and three of them had such extreme affectations (so unrestrained, so aggressive, so unlikeable) that I abandoned them with alacrity.
It's the sort of affectation that this song reminds me of, perhaps, that I hate also in the lyrics. I understand from Genius that it's something to do with the Great Gatsby, but the connection to the green light of Gatsby is so tenuous and assumed that I'll leave it exactly where I found it. Taken at face value, it's nothing if not a gallery of a hundred photos of a boy holding a girl's hand from behind while she walks away from him into an impressive travel destination. It's the sort of slavish devotion to style that destroys all substance. It's the sort of transparent attention-seeking that turns me off entirely.
I guess I don't like this song very much. Maybe it just hit me at the wrong time.

Stephen
If nothing else, you're definitely right about the sounds behind the lyrics. It's a massive-feeling song, sometimes hollow, others full, but all-told enormous at nearly every moment.

You said it was a makeout song. I don't know if I would make out to it. I honestly can't remember making out to music? I think the art of choosing music for physical intimacy is an art I have no possible connection to. I guarantee I would get it wrong.
I'm honestly trying to think about it, and I don't even know the possible pitfalls of picking music for a makeout. I guess music one or more parties doesn't like--that's the simplest. What happens if the music runs out? What happens if an ad plays on Pandora in the middle (this seems to me an egregious sin). Should you pick fast music? Slow music? Very slow saxophone music? I would assume it would be better if it matched the intensity of your romance, but I'm not paying a DJ to play my bedroom live.

I've been forgetting my one-word review. I suppose it's superfluous.