Wingman, glides across the path of the initial timid light of a streetlamp, which strikes you after a long stroll on the walk home --that soft, old-fashioned light, which insidiously opens your heart ajar without making any attempt. Fiona Amaka does not so much float above what David Taro is playing, which shines with echo-kisses; she leans into it, the way candlelight leans into the grain of old brick, warm and trembling and a little unsure of its own sound. Her delivery also has a quiver that is someone squeezing your hand and at the same time telling you that they are afraid to release their hand first.
The arrangement is not aimed at impressing you in any way, which is what makes it strike even more. The stroked drums are the heartbeat of a timid heart. The bass walks on tiptoes round the sides, lest it should upset whatever precarious reality is suspended in the atmosphere. And the clean guitar arpeggios--they spark like the tracks of the rain falling down a window you are looking through at some unimaginable time of night and thinking of that same individual you are certain you will never think of again. It is the sound of falling in love with someone accidentally, and of looking up one night and finding them walking next to you longer than you thought, and then the entire world seems to lose its edge.
I continue listening to it on my headphones as the train rushes under me and the city unravels in lines of light. Perhaps it is due to the fact that the song embodies that special, painful feeling when the feeling of gratitude and longing are in the same chest. It's not loud about it. It doesn't try to convince you. It is nothing but that mute disarming realization that somebody has been your refuge in a manner that you only realize in retrospect. The melancholy here is sweet--such as the pangs of your chest when you have been in a wonderful slow dance and still feel the warmth of your partner in your arms.
Fiona and David somehow got the very sense of a wingman who was, by accident, turned into the entire horizon. Wingman does not profess its love to you with flourishes; it whispers it in the door, and you feel its breath on your flesh long after the final chord comes down. There are songs that are waiting to encounter you at the right time. This is the one that came right into me at the time when I needed it most.
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