January 07, 2010
top 25 songs of 2009: song 2
"Talking Hotel Arbat Blues," Handsome Furs. It would be Number One with a bullet if this list were for Clash ripoffs — or really Joe Strummer circa Trash City with a little less swing and a little more taut clarity: the band, after all, is two people (the husband on leave from Wolf Parade) and the sound is pretty much all scaffold and no building.
But the story concerns a building, or a few. Sugarhigh! caught the song for the first time at the end of this short film (which reminds us that in some regard the finest musical moment of the Fall of Occupations was this one, not for the song but for its performance: the mind boggles at such revolutionary cuteness, enough to make one want to live).
So it is something like contingency that sends the song this high on the countdown, as it just happens to turn its attentions to the significant activities of the year. It takes five seconds: eight quick kicks with accompanying claps, and then we were standing in the center of the occupation. OMG, so were we! And then it says, caught between the ground and the great gray sky. If you were there on November 20, it's just sort of weird — the sibylline accuracy.
This all serves as a salutary reminder that in the Top 25, context is the 26th tune, and can make all the difference. But it can't make a song out of nothing, and "Arbat Blues" makes the most of its formal clarity to reach after rhetorical simplicity as well: I don't know but I've been told, every little thing's been bought and sold, the chorus repeats and repeats.
It's stupid and true just like a pop song should be, and it's our stupid and true, and while we're waiting around for the next Coup record, we'll take it. Loud, please.
Posted by jane at January 7, 2010 05:32 AM | TrackBack