This is a soggy day, the kind of day that upsets women who have just hung out the laundry and still have to pick up the kids from school. The sun is only a sigh in the sky.
I could not peel my body off the bed this morning. My sister attempted to wake me three times. It reminded me of when I was in grade school, six years of scrawny and sleepy, the daily straggler whose mother had to shock into alertness with a wet face towel.
This is a day that calls for hot soup music, pop that leaves a tingle on my tongue. Okkervil River fits the bill. On The Stand Ins, they are generous with likable hooks and unselfconsciously smart lyrics. I find Lost Coastlines hummable from the first snappy lick; Singer Songwriter is just plain funny. Starry Stairs reminds me, eerily, of The Lucksmiths’ The Chapter In Your Life Entitled San Francisco. I sing “Is it April yet, I forget sometimes how slowly summer passes…” instead of “They ask for more, what do you think this fan club is for?”
Are you warm enough, I remember how the fog comes off the water, and the days are ever shorter, and I worry you’ll be cold. Or have you found someone to hold? I spent the summer with the curtains drawn against it, cursing all the nights you wasted, under unfamiliar stars. Should it one day come to pass, that you sit down to your memoirs, where will this go, the chapter in your life entitled San Francisco?
Sorry, I got sidelined. Lyrics have a way of meeting and generating offspring in my head. Calling And Not Calling My Ex is the next standout on this album, a wry tribute to hemming and hawing. How lucky I am to have such tasty company on an otherwise bland, gray day.
