Parade

Parade is among the more dynamically active pieces in Bedhead's catalog, which is to say it moves from very quiet to moderately loud, the guitars eventually thickening into a dense, ringing wall before pulling back. The structure has a processional quality that matches the title — not celebratory, but patient and forward-moving, something observed from a sidewalk rather than participated in. The rhythm has a slight drag to it, a deliberate behind-the-beat quality that gives the whole song a sense of weight. Lyrically it deals with spectatorship and distance — watching events in one's own life from a remove, the strange passivity that can overtake a person. Kadane's voice carries more emotional urgency here than on some of the band's quieter pieces, though "urgency" is relative — it's still measured, still restrained, but with a tension beneath it. The guitars in the song's fuller sections create an almost devotional density, more My Bloody Valentine than the band's usual restraint, though the impulse is thought rather than sensation. This is a song for standing at the edge of something you can't enter, for the particular loneliness of watching other people's lives proceed with apparent purpose.