Hardcore for Nerds

Woods - ‘Broke’ from How To Survive + In The Woods

I’ve been thinking about my list of albums of the year, and up in the top 5 and top 10 are two LPs (slabs of black vinyl with colourful labels) by Woods and So Cow. I never really connected the two before, because sonically there’s not much of a connection outside of the broadest brush-strokes of ‘lo-fi’, but then I got to thinking about the lyrics, how the chorus of the former’s ‘Rain On’ is “sung with a sort of optimism, and you kinda feel like he shouldn’t sound so OK with the sentiment”, because to my mind that fits a lot of So Cow songs, possibly even all of them. And then there’s the song above, of abject self-abuse (the less physical kind), which could have been written by So Cow if it wasn’t quite so dark.

“…I don’t have the money to visit you this week
But I can’t take another week without you
And I don’t have the self control
To stop myself from getting on a train 
To take another train to take me to your house

But you won’t spend the money and you won’t take the train
So I’m the one who’s waiting on this platform in the rain
It looks like I’m the sucker going broke this week again”

(via SongMeanings)

I say it’s not about lo-fi except in the broadest sense, yet this week’s guest post on Those Geese Were Stupefied takes amateur and professional pornography as an analogy for “lo-fi/bedroom culture” versus traditional production methods. Unrequited love, stupidity, etc., is a long-standing tradition - the long-standing tradition - of rock/pop that is in lo-fi being sentimentalised, satirised and paid homage to all at once. Or maybe it is totally genuine, natural artistic sincerity, I don’t know. Looking forward to Brad’s ‘4000 goddamn words about emo, gender, subculture, appropriation, wanting to kill the things living inside me.’, as it might provide another perspective.

So Cow - ‘Runaway’ (Del Shannon cover, original released in 1961)

“from any number of compilations of the greatest songs of all time.”

Those Geese Were Stupefied: So Cow In The Sitting Room

which reminds me that Road Records are selling the Ramones Rock’N’Roll High School soundtrack LP for €9.99 (I wouldn’t exactly call ‘Smoking In The Boys’ Room’ one of the greatest songs of all time, but there’s a sort of similar intersection of punk and old-fashioned pop going on there).

Side A - ‘Commuting’

‘Commuting’ and ‘Greetings’ are probably my two favourite So Cow songs, so it’s cool to have them (almost) back-to-back. ‘Commuting’, in particular, is like a perfect encapsulation of Green Day’s first couple of albums:

“There was a lady lived in my town

never went I out

I’d often see her on the first bus heading south

but those days are gone

and we’ve all moved on

where she is I cannot say

and at seventeen I had just one dream 

to make that girl mine some day

I’ve let it go now

I have had two other things on

there have been other girls on buses

those buses are gone

but I’m getting old

and I’m less inclined to act like I am the shit

I bend my head down as I walk downtown

and I’ll stumble across it

I’m still alone and the years just pass me by

but I’ll take the bus in search of us

and I’ll do until I die”

Side B - ‘Swords’, ‘Greetings’

“…I’ll get a tattoed x on my hand,

adopt the traits of Buddhist monks

get hip! with all your nomenclature

compromise with your drug culture…”

(So Cow, Greetings)