The Durutti Column - Trust The Art Not The Artist

A few months ago I really wanted to share this incredible song with you and found, to little surprise, that it was streaming exactly nowhere on the internet.  So I got my copy on youtube because everyone deserves to experience this distilled observation of profound humane love.

Buried near the end of The Durutti Column‘s third odds & singles collection, Sporadic Three, Trust The Art Not The Artist is an uncommonly straightforward expression of Vini Reilly’s spirituality filigreed with a crystalline spiderweb of a guitar solo.  The final pair of lyrics sets a lump in my throat as the solo takes off in delicate flight to end the song in a skyward gaze:

There is no god I can believe in
I just believe in ourselves
And all the goodness in people
That’s the only real wealth

The sentiment is not a particularly deep or unique because bedrock inner truths do not need to be.  The simple, direct, and humble statement is profound if you allow it.  There’s really nothing more to this; it’s a portrait of social trust set to song like haiku on a paper crane.

[full set of lyrics - as transcribed by me - are in the description on the youtube page]