"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.
Here's another obscure one, I think. (I always hope I'll post something like that and there will be an immediate comment to say "No, man! This song was huge! Sold a million copies, the band is still on a global tour, piling up the simoleons!" We always want the things we like to be liked by everyone.)
My song for this week is the bluesy stomp Eye Witness on the Run, by the band TJ Kong and the Atom Bomb, from their 2012 record Manufacturing Joy.
As far as I can tell, the official lyrics aren't anywhere online, so anything I quote below is me listening to the song and trying to parse it out.
This is one of those songs that starts slow, and gets slow in the middle - I'm listening to the great shuffle-y section at about 3:30 as I type this - and then speeds back up for the lyrics. I don't think it means much of anything; I think this is a "telling the mundane story of a recent day in my life" kind of song.
And that's just fine, when it sounds like this, and the musicians are jamming together so well.
Oh it was late last night
And the Texaco light burned
Like a moon on the map of his face
That's how it starts; that's the way it goes - that kind of imagistic, allusive description of events that were probably fairly pedestrian. But any events can be big and exciting and meaningful with the right music - and this is.
Just let it start to play, that stop-and-start guitar line, the maracas or whatever in the background, and then let the rhythm section kick in. I suppose there are people out there who won't find it compelling, but, man, it must be sad to live like that.
No comments:
Post a Comment