Portions for Foxes: Hem

"Portions for Foxes" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song by a woman or a band led by a woman. See the introduction for more.

Minor-key songs often sound sadder than they're supposed to be. (I hope I'm saying that right - what I mean is that there's a whole category of songs that sound sad to me, even if the lyrics aren't directly depressing.) This is one of them; I think it's actually pretty positive - but it sounds plaintive and almost despairing.

This is Not California by Hem, from 2008. From what I understand, it's half a joke, about all those young-people-in-LA shows on the CW back in the early Aughts. The songwriter and the singer are different people, and he (the writer) is slightly chiding her (the singer) about her love of something they both know is deeply fake.

But the chorus is quietly devastating if you're not listening closely, in its simple power:

And it's not true
And it's not fair
And it's not you
And it's not California here

It's a slow song, with a folky vibe, driven equally by Sally Ellyson's lovely singing - quiet at first, building as the song goes on - and a combination of mandolin and pedal steel.

And I'm not strong 
And you're not rich 
And we're not lost 
Where we don't live 

It comes across as plaintive, reaching out to another person who maybe is too focused on "California," the image of a perfect life, of perfect people, of being someone else somewhere else and abandoning all the things that make up their real lives where they are.

I see a lot of people online have taken it as a song about moving away, about living in places you didn't grow up - for good or bad. That's plausible: every song is half what you bring to it.

But I think it's mostly a warning: that wherever we are, even if it's on the beach in Santa Monica, thin and young and beautiful with no cares in the world, it's still Not California, still not that dream. And it never will be. Chasing that dream will never work.

(And let me close by linking to another great version of this song, a slightly countrified cover by Elizabeth Cook.)