“Stay With Me” is an ingenious, infective and effective anthem to love.

Taken from Spiritualized’s third album “Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space” (1997), this song relies mostly on sound textures and layers to pull off its striking expressive power.

The result is one of comfortable numbness, with soothing sounds delightfully lingering on at a low tempo, a scheme the band often comes back to – and understandably so, considering their prowess at it.

When Jason Pierce’s voice gently comes in a few seconds into the song, its timbre perfectly fits with the atmosphere that had been set until then. The lead singer alternates between confidences and calls of a childlike naïveté – although less a plea than a celebration of the present and a wish for it to persist –, thereby confirming that we’re in for a love song of sorts. We’re wallowing in a plain yet snug state, an idea reinforced by the short length of the hook.

“I love the way you smile”, lulls the singer, and just as a smiling mouth turns up at the corners, a bent guitar note gets played, also going up and ending on a playful tone.

As the song unwinds, we sink deeper and deeper into depths of stuporous bliss, with each new stage marked by the appearance of a new artefact in the scenery. Leisurely waves of dreamlike happiness make their way through our body and mind, matching the pace of the music. The deep breaths and relaxed voice of the singer directly forward to our consciousness; we take a few moments off our lives.

A few minutes pass and a jarring note signals a step forward into the song. Soon after, a layer of relatively high-pitched strings enters, presumably representing the addressee of the message, the beloved. Her feminity is also alluded to by a harpsichord meandering about in the background. It’s worth noting that we only experience her aura and not her voice, her person; perhaps because she remains a stranger from the point of view of the singer — or maybe is it from ours. Even so, for us, simply judging by the harmony she lends to the track, she is always present and dazzling, bringing light to his life. The sudden ascending motion of the strings as she “smiles” speaks volumes about the impact she has on the singer.

Against all odds, it’s not long before a distorted guitar joins in and responds. We can then instead think of these instruments as a separate entity, or, rather, as the voices of the two lovers in unison. Jason’s vocals sound indeed androgynous, just like the way he addresses the listener, “babe”. The link between the two beings is at once tenuous and essential: had it not been there., nothing would have happened, nothing would have been created.

The descending melody in the background, yet another element in that endless, lifelike loop of happiness, subtly morphs into what could be a music box or pull toy, possibly hinting at the ultimate fruit of their love.

Finally, another layer comes rolling in to crystallize the synergy between the singer and his sweet one. At the very end of their journey, their voices blend together and fade away, soaring up into celestial shores, becoming Spiritualized.

To sum up, “Stay With Me” is a blissful ode to love; a narrative masterpiece that gives us the chance to experience lives by proxy, through that beautiful medium that is music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYzCreXMKzI

If you like love songs, you might also like “Think Of Me” by Tomorrow’s World.