There is no escape.

Sweet surrender? Fuck no. I want to soar. Let's play a wicked game to the Blue Spanish Sky? No thank you.

Since the days of Plato, we were all encouraged to leave the cave. We were not meant to live as empty-vessel troglodytes. We were built to spread to the four corners of the universe on the wings of the wind.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5903676&forum_id=2#50134402)

Which one takes you somewhere?

Which one gives release?

Which one is nothing but a marinade of melancholic misery?

All of this proves my point.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5903676&forum_id=2#50134423)

So if you feel thrown off by the above, take a look at Natalie Merchant in "Carnival." That track is dripping with cynicism, observation, and urban isolation. But listen to how she delivers it: the polyrhythms push forward, and her vocals climb, swell, and burst into a raw, muscular catharsis. She takes an eerie, hypnotic observation of human vanity and turns it into an active, breathing exorcism. She demands an exit from the spectacle.

Now contrast that with the brooding, static drone of something like the Cowboy Junkies or ambient, opiate downtempo. Tracks like that don't want an exit; they are built for the descent. They lock you into a rhythmic coma—a suffocating, narcotic loop that marinates in the paranoia and decay without ever granting the listener a moment of vocal ascension.

One is an act of defiance through rhythm and vocal power; the other is a slow surrender to the swamp. You can sing your way out of a carnival, but brooding downtempo just wants to lock the door. It is, in a word, the abyss.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5903676&forum_id=2#50134441)