Horns!

My headphones gave out yesterday. One half of them still works, the other drifts in and out with a crackly static, which works well for some sorts music but clearly not for other kinds. Weirdly, to coincide with this I’ve been deterministically listening to a lot of songs with peppy horn parts. I don’t know why, but they really appeal to me in this dismal weather, in these dismal midterms. These songs also happen to sound very different when the non-working half crackles—a kind of fiery, nervous exuberance that sort of freaks me out.

Okkervil River, “O, Dana”—This is a cover of a Big Star song that appears on Okkervil River’s new Australia only EP, Overboard and DownYou should be able to download it off Said The Gramophone still, and I highly recommend doing so. The lyrics are sort of nonsense, but the song still manages to mean something very visceral. “ I’d rather shoot a woman than a man/ I worry whether this is my last life/ Girl, if you’re listening/ I’m sorry, I can’t help it,” Will Sheff almost yells at the beginning, straight off. This song is intensely desperate, trying much too hard for its own good. The horn comes in at the chorus, compelling some girl named Dana to “come on”, again and again and again.

The Replacements, “Can’t Hardly Wait”—Ashtray floors, dirty clothes and filthy jokes, we will hear about this again, and probably soon. The horn section comes in after “try and try and try” and two wonderful beats when there is no sound, nothing. “I’ll be home when I’m sleeping/ I can’t hardly wait,” wails Westerberg. This song closes out Pleased to Meet Me with empty, disgusting hope, fraught by a loop of brass chords. It’s a completely weird thing, after a record about alcoholism, idolatry, and being bored in the Midwest. But hell if my record about being bored in the Midwest wouldn’t end with joyous trumpets.

Groovy Little Numbers, “Shoot Me Down”-- The Groovy Little Numbers were a Scottish twee band on 53rd & 3rd Records who released something like a total of five songs. But at least two of these songs are really fucking fantastic. They are mean, sad, depressing songs, lyrically but have the most exuberant, joyous sound—lots of horns, lots of guitar hooks. “I can only take so much, but want much more” crescendos into a poppy chorus punctuated by trumpets. “Heart of stone/ but your walls are tumbling down,” we learn, and maybe we do want a little less—but they keep giving us more and we can appreciate the effort, we can appreciate the loneliness inherent in such overblown production. Because after the band packs up and goes home, when I’m left with my crackling headphones and these songs, I can only wonder where exactly my personal horn section has vanished.