There are different kinds of city nights.
There are the sweltering midsummer ones, when everyone keeps their windows open, giving the impression that you’re attending an enormous sleepover.
There are the electric Saturday ones, that begin with the excitement of music leaking out of passing cars, and end with dissipating slurred conversations on the way home.
Then there are the standard mid-week ones, special in their own, everyday kind of way.
If you’re not buying that last one, you should go out and wander your neighbourhood on a Tuesday evening. You’d be surprised by the secret life it might be hiding on a weeknight. You’d be surprised by which restaurants are busy, which streets go to bed early, which apartment windows are lit up with the fluorescent glow of a movie night.
The great thing about “City Nights” by musician/design renaissance man Little Glass Men is that it provides fitting accompaniment for just about any kind of city night. Like any first-rate instrumental, it has an open-ended versatility that can fit many ears for many occasions.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. The keyboard, oscillating from left to right like a distant police siren.
2. The crack of the snare drum, like something overturned by a racoon in the middle of the night.
3. At 2.38, the acoustic guitar ushers in the song’s concluding thought, and the sun starts to rise again.
Recommended listening activity:
Ignoring your curfew.