I'm just as lost as you
The only reason I even discovered this song was because of Pitchfork's list of the Top 50 Videos of the last decade, where you'll conveniently find "Since I Left You" as the 4th greatest video on that list. I'd greatly recommend watching the video first, because every time after that, whenever you hear this song, you'll be reminded of what goes on in it (I'm not gonna describe it...just go watch it). Usually, a music video would ruin my mental image of a song, and I'm not exactly the biggest fan of music videos in the first place. So "Since I Left You" is definitely an exception.
The song itself is - like the entirety of The Avalanches' work - a combination of dozens of samples, both musical and vocal. Whereas Girl Talk pieces them together while quite obviously keeping the originals intact (mashing if you will), The Avalanches masterfully craft entire new songs using just snippets of ones they'd spent many an hour digging through crates for to find. Eventually, I'm going to get around to listening to the full album of the same name as the single, but I'm a little hesitant right now, given that "Frontier Psychiatry," their only other song I've heard, is basically a mindfuck of juxtaposed vocal samples straight out of 1940's and 50's television and radio ads and shows.
"Since I Left You" is then a weird juxtaposition in itself. It's a song where I gladly let the music video "ruin" my impression of it, while I won't chance listening to the rest of the (highly-regarded) album it's featured on, for fear it might sully what's left of my impression of The Avalanches. It's certainly an amazing song in its own right, dream pop mixing tinkling bells, flute, female vocals, an unashamedly disco groove, bouncy keyboards, and even an intro consisting of guitar and shouting you'd expect to hear from an afternoon at a South American weekend market. I just don't know if the rest of the album will be filled with similarly stunning material, or something that just degrades my already fragile impression of the group - this song not withstanding of course.
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