Better Things: Everyone Chooses Sides

"Better Things" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year or Portions For Foxes series. See the introduction for more.

I'm back into the obscure stuff this week - as always, that's as far as I know; I'd be thrilled to learn otherwise - with a 2003 song from a band called The Wrens, from my neck of the woods. (Two of their record titles - Secaucus and The Meadowlands - make that clear.)

This week's song is Everyone Chooses Sides. [1]

It's more or less the story of a decision the band made after their previous record: either to go with their record company's idea, to become more "radio-friendly" and chase the big bucks, or stay true to themselves.

Fatty come a courting, Lord, the money!

And no one ever wrote or recorded a song about how they sold out and made lots of money.

Everyone choose sides
The whole to-do of what to do for money
Everyone choose sides
Poorer or not this year and hell's the difference

What I love about this song is the sound: it's a loud, fuzzy, pulsing song from the jump, with more than a little grunge in its DNA and a willingness to slide over towards noise when appropriate. (I've always been fond of songs that push the envelope of music into noise, or that let noise erupt into the middle of music.)

The words are growled, swallowed, spat out, full of complicated personal metaphors - all over that keening guitar and pulsing keyboard. It's a song that has somewhere to go, and is going its own way - if you want to jump on for the ride, good for you, but it's not there for you.

I've walked away from more than you imagine, and I sleep just fine.

[1] There seems to be some ambiguity about the title of the song. I have it as Chooses, from wherever I got the MP3 originally, and the video I linked uses that, but elsewhere, and in the song itself, it seems to be Choose. Does that make a difference? It's a matter of phrasing and emphasis, I think - the difference between a general statement and a notice that it's time to do this now.