now I'm just crazy, and fucked in the head

Girls really had to grow on me. No, not like that -- Girls, the band. Maybe a bit less than the xx, I was wary of the hype surrounding these guys. Pitchfork's review had a most interesting story on the band's background, but that still wasn't enough to get me to listen to the group. An initial listen to "Laura" didn't convince me of their talent any more either. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I half-recall listening to the particular track featured in this post, "Lust For Life," but if I really liked it that first time (in the summer if I remember at all), it would certainly stick out in my memory a bit more than it seems to right now.

No, it took a very random and recent listen to "Lust For Life" for me to warm up to Girls even a little bit. I'm still not totally into them, and it hasn't even been two weeks that I've had the track I'm speaking of. But -- damn is it ever catchy. At 2:25, I've probably taken longer pees. But the ridiculously jangling guitars, the almost-cartoonish half-croon/half-whine of lead singer Christopher Owens, the barely-there beach vibe, the sustained tempo of the whole thing (not much time to really do anything different with it anyway), the out-of-nowhere harmonica riff that for the life of me I can't place quite which 90's TV show it reminds me of...for God's sake, it's not really fair that a song with really only one verse can be this good. Even the way it trails off at the end is irresistible, and I frankly can't get enough of the song.

Thankfully -- and probably a big reason why I like the song so much -- what it's lacking is that "chillwave" beach-haze, symptomatic of this summer's drowned-out, barely-audible excuses for sun-soaked soundtracks. The song could've easily went that way, but laid bare (or what some people might call "not produced with layer-upon-layer of tape-deck hiss, pushed to the background vocals, and unrecognizably distorted guitar"), it sounds ten times better than anything else of a similar ilk put out in the last six months.

Girls - Lust For Life

Obviously if you wanted to, you could delve into the deeper meaning of the track, as there's certainly enough there to work with. Owens' probably-personal longings -- some we can relate to (sun tans, beach houses, bottles of wine) and some we can't (boyfriends, for those of us heterosexual males; and fathers, for those of us who grew up with them) -- abound. Vulgar thoughts of insanity and matters of the heart even wander their way into the condensed-soup of a song, but it never feels like too much -- rather, it feels just right. Even if seemingly nothing in Owens' world is.

did you dive too deep, like you always do?

Music for me isn't just the sounds. It's the feelings and the memories and the stories associated with those unique sounds. Sometimes it's complicated, like a concert experience. Sometimes it's as simple as a memorable tune in your car or on the radio (not a great chance it was on the radio nowadays though). "Lions For Scottie" by Hey Rosetta! has a very abstract backstory for me.

My younger sister occasionally borrows my car. While I usually listen to my mp3 player when I drive, she brings along her own mix CD's, which she tends to leave in the car afterwards. After I moved out this September, I started taking quick drives around town, as opposed to the half-hour treks I used to commute on before my move, so that meant either forgetting or foregoing my mp3 altogether. As alluded to above however, the radio absolutely sucks in Halifax. So on those quick drives, which would sometimes extend into mini-shopping trips or proverbial taxi rides for my roommates, my sister's CD's came in more than handy.

On one particularly eclectic mix, I found some Noah & The Whale, Death Cab For Cutie, Joel Plaskett, some oldies, and a few Hey Rosetta! cuts. Very representative of my sister's listening habits to say the least. Those Hey Rosetta! tracks really connected with me though -- until then, I'd really only listened to one of their songs with any consistency, aside from seeing them in concert this summer. So picking her up one night from work, I asked if the songs were indeed by Hey Rosetta!, and told her how much I liked them. A while later, I got the band's two albums (as well as a concert ticket for their Halifax show this December) and though I'm still missing a few songs, they've got a solid catalog already just from that pair.

"Lions For Scottie" really stood out to me for one reason or another though. It's one of the more immediate songs the group has, starting with a few drumstick hits and launching into a full-out assault right off the top. It doesn't build and well up like most other Hey Rosetta! tracks, and singer Tim Baker's vocals are among his most exuberant and impassioned on the Plan Your Escape disc "Lions For Scottie" comes from. Though the album cut is 7:41 long, the meat of it really only extends 3:26 in, then gives way to a markedly more somber and diametrically opposed affair. In iTunes, I left that self-titled "Extended Mix" alone as part of the whole album, and cut myself the shorter version for easier listening to the single. Take a listen to it for yourself here:

Hey Rosetta! - Lions For Scottie