A Strange Day vs. The Hanging Garden

Started by nausearockpig, April 04, 2007, 08:21:11

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Aarna

Pornography is generally one of my favourites among The Cure discography and THG is by far one of my favourite songs but I can't choose between these two. I've always been listening to the album in whole and one just asks for another to continue so...I've never really perceived that album as being made up out of so-and-so songs but as a whole. Can't listen to one song without listening to the next one.
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scatcat

Great discussion here... I'm a HUGE Hanging Garden supporter.. it reminds me of The Cure I fell in love with..   :smth049 

:rocker

I just haven't got into A strange Day ..that much.. but I'll give it another spin..  :smth020
Seventeen seconds
A measure of life

Carnage Visor

Strange Day seems to never fully pick up and come into its own, so I choose "HANGING GARDEN", which is my go-to song when I want to showcase the band as being "Gothic" to my friends.

Plus, I like the tribal drums...it's like the song is a fierce creature biting and tearing in a playful way at your eardrums, the bassline holds the song together and sedates the creature, while Robert's voice sounds ferocious as well. I love how he sounds in this one, so angry, so adamant, yet so distant from the listener. It's a very nice landscape.

That's my random analogy of that song...

"STRANGE DAY" is like what happens after the creature that is "HANGING GARDEN" gets sedated and is sitting alone in it's cage and watching as little children come by and laugh at it...a very defeated-sounding song, almost desperate. It makes me think of a bad drug trip that ends up in a loss, maybe someone OD'd and now you're depressed, but still a bit hazed and dazed and confused...a great song, but not quite as catchy and approachable as GARDEN.


That's my view, hope you have a good HOLIDAY!!!

japanesebaby

@CV: always so interesting to read other people's expressions, and how different they can be from your own.
i admit that i used to think a bit similarly about 'a strange day', that it really doesn't pick up as a song... i was almost wondering if there was something missing there (oh what blashemy...!)...
and it took a pretty long time for the song to grow on me, but once it did, it's one of the best songs on the album, i think.
a great underdog! it sneaks upon you....

i have never considered 'a strange day' to be a desperate song. for me it's probably the only song on 'pornography' that is full of light - secret kind of light. it's like the only song on 'pornography' that isn't drowning in these druggy hallucinations - maybe it's drugheaded too but i mean it's not drowning... it's floating, it's like good memories from long ago, strange light shining through...  it's like being in one of these strange dreams you sometimes see where you suddenly somehow know you're sleeping and just having a dream and where everything is crystal clear, detailed, even overly so. like traveling back in time to a place that doesn't exist anymore.

so to me, if there is desolation in it then it's not of a desperate kind. maybe "everything is gone forever" soon but everything is not full of pain, like so many other songs. it's like a peaceful interpretation of the words "it doesn't matter if we all die" - it doesn't matter, so there's no need to suffer for it. just let it happen...
for instance, i find the contrast with 'cold' that follows a really huge one. 'cold' is when all that desperation really hits you again.  whereas on 'a strange day' we had blissfully forgotten about it for a while... even if it was just a dream.

among all the cure lyrics i can think of now, i do find the words
Sudden hush across the water
And we're here again

among those cyre lyrics that are most full of hope, to me...

Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine

scatcat

Quote from: Carnage Visor on December 21, 2007, 01:01:18
Strange Day seems to never fully pick up and come into its own, so I choose "HANGING GARDEN", which is my go-to song when I want to showcase the band as being "Gothic" to my friends.

Plus, I like the tribal drums...it's like the song is a fierce creature biting and tearing in a playful way at your eardrums, the bassline holds the song together and sedates the creature, while Robert's voice sounds ferocious as well. I love how he sounds in this one, so angry, so adamant, yet so distant from the listener. It's a very nice landscape.


I completely get this CV... I have tried to listen to A Strange day.. really..  :smth090 and find nothing that moves me like The Hanging Garden.. as you mentioned.. the tribal drums... your description of the song is so what it means to me as well.
I think I prefer The Figurehead still to A Strange Day ( again the drums..)
Seventeen seconds
A measure of life

mint car

definite A Strange Day, it's fantastic song, he come under my Top 3 most favourite songs  :) Is there great guitar solo  :smth035 wau and perfect bass riff
[i]...sleep sweet child the moon will change your mind...[/i]

closedown

just considering what a single is normally supposed to do (radio airplay + stuff) I definetely would have gone with A Strange Day as the single of the album, but due to Robert's attitude at the time I am not surprised it wasn't... A Strange Day is maybe the only song of the album that could at the time have gained them airplay.

robiola

Quote from: Aarna on June 17, 2007, 13:58:45
I can't choose between these two. I've always been listening to the album in whole and one just asks for another to continue so...I've never really perceived that album as being made up out of so-and-so songs but as a whole.

Couldn't have said it better. One song feels like a fragment of a whole, and I really couldn't say whether I prefer my arm or my leg, you know?

(My God, you avatar....!! Did you make it?)

MeltingMan

Quote from: nausearockpig on April 14, 2007, 08:30:59
try this: in wmp or winamp or whatever player you want, queue up all the tracks which appear on Standing On A Beach but replace The Hanging Garden with A Strange Day and have a listen.
does it flow, does it sound better, does it suck?

I believe that in the context of Pornography, The Hanging Garden flows perfectly. it sits in the right place [tracklisting wise] and is generally "right". But in a singles compilation context, I don't know....
I can only assume,that THE HANGING GARDEN was intended as a "canape" for the WHOLE album.
A STRANGE DAY does not fit between CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES and LETS GO TO BED,well...
Understandable,when THG was selected as a single.
En cette nation [Russie] qui n'a pas eu de théoriciens et de démagogues,
les pires ferments de destruction ont apparu. (J. Péladan)

cheyler

I liked Hanging Garden before I liked Strange Day so then would have said HG but now would say SD, forgive me for dropping the articles.  Strange Day is truly a disturbing song, I don't normally get all wrapped up in songs but this one makes me think.  Don't know whether it's a universal cataclysm, a global catastrophe or a garden-variety (!) nuclear war.  There's a great home-made video on youtube, great visuals, very fitting and occasionally even more disturbing than the lyrics.  There's a little of a genuine dark substance in this song, as if the author went on a journey somewhere and came back with lightning in a bottle and somehow worked it into the words and tune.  To me it's the most disturbing song of the lot yet most enjoyable, every live version is a new experience.  Although the newest live versions have been slowed down too much for my taste (which does not figure in to anyone's decisions!).  Cool topic.  There's an interesting interpretation of the 'sudden hush across the water' lyric as being positive; I always thought that the 'whatever' is going on was now sweeping across the water to engulf the narrator and the other characters.  Oh well, six of one...