Listening to Civil Twilight's 'Human' put me in the mood for further piano balladry, which I've stretched out into a very tasty compilation CD for the car, full of (mostly morose) piano/voice songs (with a little extra accompaniment here and there). Songs with this arrangement have always been hugely appealing to me - not sure why, just something about a well-played piano being a suitable setting for 4 minutes of maudlin beauty. Good examples? How about Number Crunch by Mike Viola, My Blue Manhattan by Ryan Adams, Only In The Movies by David Mead, NY by Frida Hyvonen, Flint (For The Unemployed And Underpaid) by Sufjan Stevens and Untitled by Tom McRae.
And there's also Hide Behind The Sun by Natalie Imbruglia. Around the time of her first album in '97, a string of singles gave way to a set of cracking b-sides, of which I *think* this was one (I question that statement as I can't remember owning it on CD, but it's sat very nicely for many a year in my Natalie Imbruglia B-sides folder in iTunes). Anyway, this is a real beauty, stark and
haunting:
"Tonight... everything but me /
Taken out to sea /
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