“Sorry I Can’t Stay” – La Faute
Echoey piano argeggios lead us into Peggy Messing’s up-close, whispery vocals and how can you not be captivated? The melodies are lovely, the mood bittersweet, reinforced by the repeated titular phrase in the chorus. As a series of words, “Sorry I can’t stay” is both strikingly conversational and evocatively ambivalent, the former accentuating the latter. When we talk we are rarely as conclusive as songwriters might often portray us to be.
The arpeggios, in constant motion, contribute to the song’s watery insistence, which in turn presents in conflict with lyrics that seem to reinforce the main phrase’s equivocation. Perhaps the most plaintive lyrical moment comes with this hushed request, in the delayed second verse: “I know what you always say/ But can you say it again?”
At 1:26 a semi-discordant synthesizer offers a slow-motion solo, laying bare the song’s hidden waltz rhythm, after which it haunts the soundscape with distant, roomy sounds; these become somewhat more audible and outer-space-y around 2:15. The synthesizer touches stand in for how, in general, Messing does so much with not a lot of different elements. She seems to like offering up moments that contribute so subtly they don’t necessarily even register, such as the vocal harmonies which delicately adorn the chorus. I can’t help but relate this to the incisive way she identifies, on social media, as “an undersharer and overthinker.” (Side note: there are more of us out here than people may realize.)
Messing, originally from Winnipeg, does musical business as La Faute (“the mistake”). A visual artist, multi-instrumentalist, and singer-songwriter, she released her debut album Blue Girl Nice Day towards the end of May. Check it out via Bandcamp and buy it if you like it, which is very possible. You might in particular want to check out her cover of Paul Simon’s indelible “The Only Living Boy in New York,” which closes the album.
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