"cant seem to make you mine" by the Seeds

Borne of the psychedelic garage scene in 1960s Los Angeles, the Seeds were a four-piece band that toiled in relative obscurity before finding sudden but short-lived fame. And despite the success of their top 40 hit “pushin’ too hard,” they gained little notoriety and were soon forgotten. This song however, their first 7-inch, is totally cool. Released as a single in 1965 before leading off their debut album in 1966, it’s the first-person account of a man who’s lost the woman he loves and, you guessed it, he just can’t seem to get her back. Singer Sky Saxon, trapped within the dreary confines of his self-imposed state of depression, plays the role of dejected lover well, singing in a dismal drawl and sounding genuinely lugubrious. Even though he references her mean-spirited nature when he warbles “the only thing you do/is try to put the hurt on me,” he realizes that he can’t let her go. His problems effectively compounded, he pleads to her, “can’t you see what you’re doing to me/you fill my heart with misery,” before continuing, “in every breath and step I take/I’m more in love with you.” The song itself is driven by a simple bass line and the ceaseless but faint shaking of a tambourine. It limps along at an easy pace, plodding gently down the well-worn path of melancholia. The backing track is flavored by some deftly plucked notes that guitarist Jan Savage allows to linger, thereby reinforcing Saxon’s feeling of not being able to let go. And though keyboardist Daryl Hooper adds some texture to the verses, his most notable contribution is the tinkly solo after the second verse that sounds as if it’s sprinkling pixie dust on Saxon in an effort to relieve his heartache. But Hooper’s attempted remedy proves to be all for naught as Saxon’s pained howls between lines grow more impassioned as the song progresses and nears its climax. The end of the barely 3-minute song finds him repeating the title refrain and retreating deeper into despair, wailing before expiring for having never made her his. I’m reminded of a fitting line from a Tennyson poem: “’tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”