Better Things: Family Tree

"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 don't think I'm ever deliberately obscure. There's stuff I like, and some of it I happened to randomly find - mostly back when I was paying more attention to popular music, or maybe when the ecosystem of popular music was more attuned to the kind of things I like. Some of the songs in this year's series are big and famous: we've already hit "I Don't Like Mondays" and the Dire Straits "Romeo and Juliet."

And some are the songs I loved the most on a record I bought because I heard a different single.

The Odds were an alternative band from western Canada in the '90s - I see from Wikipedia that they re-formed after an initial breakup at the millennium and are still around; good for them. I bought a couple of their records, and had that sense that I loved a couple of songs and didn't always connect with the rest.

But one good song is all you need - one good song is what each post in this series is all about.

So today is for Family Tree, from The Odds' 1991 first record Neopolitan.

I'll be gone before the things that I do now go wrong
Family tree is burning to heat my house a little longer

It's about someone burning down his life - it's all in metaphors, so we don't know what, exactly, he's doing. But we know he's doing it. (For my SFnal peeps: you could argue that "he" is humanity and the family is the Earth. Frankly, that could easily be the intended meaning. The more I come to think about it, the better I like that interpretation, to be honest.)

It's got a great rhythm, starting up with a rattling drum intro and transitioning into a jangly beat that continues throughout the song. The chorus - I just quoted it above - is strong, and gets bigger as the song goes on. It's yet another song that just sounds better the louder your turn it up, especially in your car with the windows open.