Bells Ring

A minor gem in the Mazzy Star catalog, "Bells Ring" builds its atmosphere from a repeated guitar figure that functions almost as mantra — circular, patient, arriving where it started. The bells of the title are acoustic rather than electronic, carrying folk and country resonances that locate the song in American roots music before Sandoval's voice opens it into something more liminal. Her delivery here has an unusually direct quality, the detachment slightly lifted to reveal something closer to tenderness. The production maintains the band's characteristic analog warmth while pushing the rhythm slightly — this is one of the few Mazzy Star recordings where the tempo suggests motion rather than suspension. Emotionally the song occupies the terrain of new feeling, tentative connection, the bells perhaps signaling beginning rather than ending. It would not be out of place as morning music, or as a song for the first hour after rain when everything smells clean. Within the shoegazing and dream pop landscape of the early nineties, Mazzy Star were always outliers — too country for the British contingent, too druggy for the Americana scene — and "Bells Ring" captures that productive in-between perfectly.