The television hangs from the ceiling

I've never understood people who dislike music, movies, television shows or any other art form because it's "sad." I understand not being in the mood for, say, Schindler's List or Elliott Smith's "Needle In The Hay", but dismissing them out of hand for being depressing? I don't get it.

Alina Simone - My Sadness Is Luminous.

There's no denying the sadness in Alina Simone's new record, Everyone Is Crying Out To Me, Beware. The album consists of songs by Yanka Dyagileva, a Russian poet and singer who mixed punk and folk. She died under mysterious circumstances in 1991, though many presume she committed suicide.

I wrote about Simone last year, when she released her record Placelessness. I really like that album, and at the time, I compared Simone favorably to Chan Marshall and PJ Harvey. On Beware, despite doing covers, she's completely doing her own thing. I can't think of many other artists who sound like this.

The lyrics to "My Sadness Is Luminous" are straightforward and beautiful: "And the television hangs from the ceiling/and how fucking rotten I feel, nobody knows." Alina told me over e-mail this week that this was the first song Dyagileva wrote, and that she wrote it during a boring college lecture. This, I think, is sadness we can all relate to. (It also explains the TV hanging from the ceiling.) "I think that fact helps add a bit of levity to the morose lyrics," says Simone, "and I took it into consideration for my happier-sounding version."

Everyone Is Crying Out To Me, Beware comes out a week from tomorrow; you can pre-order it from Amazon.