An hour into a plane ride from Salt Lake City to New York last night, this song, “Walk a Thin Line” from Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, stopped me cold. I ended up listening to the song on repeat for an hour and a half straight, loving it more each time. It has this great lurching rhythm, a burdened gait, layers of falsettos, this whole mess of elements that congeal despite themselves. As my friend Kendel pointed out planes make us more prone to emotion — maybe that’s what it took for this song to hit the way that it did. But even here with my feet on the ground I can’t think of anything better.
Funny to say, but Tusk is well under rated imho. It is hard to get a fresh ear on it what with all the thrashing each track has had over the years, but yeah, worth it.
Also, agree strongly about the plane/emotion thing. I also noted in my transpacific days that since they can’t play movies with action, or sex, they tend to the little nichie emotional headtrip fdup-what-is-this-movies. And plain bad ones. In those days teh choice was limited to dull or overwrought. Still my worst movie on a plane was The Mexican, which managed to be both.
