Samples and Found Sounds: If You Were Here

Poe: If You Were Here

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Imagine, if you will, having your beloved father pass away and having dreams of him telling you "you're forgetting my voice" which makes you go searching for old answering machine tapes that might have that voice on it. But instead, what you find are long lost recordings of letters he had written to you when you were very young. A voice from the grave.

That is what happened as Poe, aka Annie Danielewski, was embarking on writing her sophomore album. This album, "Haunted" is littered with recordings of her father and of her own voice on answer machines and these (quite literally) "found" sounds make an album which promised to be something emotional and rich into something heart-wrenching and breath-taking. This same occurrence was shared by her brother, author Mark Danielewski who was also inspired and wrote his novel "House of Leaves". Poe's "Haunted" also works as a sort of soundtrack to her brother's novel.

The song I chose is the album's closer, which, like the moral of the story, finds redemption and release for the character of the story and album and for Poe herself as she says her final farewell to her father as an adult and a child, and he answers her via his tapes from the grave.