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Friday, February 24, 2006

brave young bachelors

She Gave Orders

I was thinking about posting the Furnaces' "Teach Me Sweetheart," but Stereogum beat me to it. You should give it a listen if you haven't already. It's an interesting case study when you compare it with the guitar-only version they did on the radio a while back--whereas they had a tendency with the other songy-songs on Bitter Tea to dress 'em up in maybe a few more things than they needed, or to deliberately avoid using traditional arrangements, arguably to the songs' detriment at times, "Sweetheart" clearly needed a little something, since while it does have a very nice melody, it's pretty much one chord a bar, starting right at the beginning of the bar, in two four-chord patterns. So most of the odd little noisy bits they perhaps overuse on the rest of the album fit right in here, especially that high-pitched little backwards loop that runs through most of the song (and is kinda Beatlesy), and that allows all the fancy variations (different keyboard noises, subtle percussion changes, guitar noodling) to come off as much less showy. It all sorta fits here, and while a big part of what they're doing involves things not fitting, when that final little flourish comes at the end, it really hits. This is a different kind of pop purity than on Gallowsbird's, but it's still quite a jolt.

ADDENDUM: I'm quite a fan of "Borneo," too.