I have a massive hangover, which would be fine except for the drilling going on next door. The crazy, loud, endless drilling. What are they doing? It sounds like the kind of drilling that has no purpose. Like someone just decided to bust open a piece of concrete, for kicks. For fun. And then, at the exact moment it died down, I heard my neighbor yelling at his wife: “Then let’s go see your FUCKING mother then!” Then that fight stopped. And then the drilling started again. This was so awful it actually made me laugh out loud.
So I’m listening to Richard Swift right now, a nice discovery courtesy of my musically keen friend Sergio who went with me last year to see Wilco at the Greek (delightful) and Richard Swift was the opener. Serg had somehow swindled a VIP area pass and we were swilling and eating for free. I wanted to stay there as long as possible, because I am a fat little bitch. But Sergio, in his wisdom, said Swift was good and we should go check him out. I reluctantly leave the chicken satays to go hear music.
Swift has a Tin Pan alley crackley swirleyness to his voice that is really lovely. It’s such a genuinely nice surprise when you like an opener. Like finding money in the pocket of a jacket you haven’t worn in a year. I went home and bought his album “Dressed Up for the Letdown” (a very solid title) and have been re listening to it a lot recently. And this one song, “Buildings for America” is on repeat repeat repeat right now. He starts by singing to us, “I’m hungry, hungover” and this is a hangover song, but more specifically it’s also a still intoxicated song. The words fumble out like the drunk dial you make at two in the morning, to the person you’re not supposed to call, that you’ve talked to your friends about not calling, that you know you shouldn’t call. When you want to call you’re supposed to call your friend instead. You don’t call for awhile, you resist, and then you have another drink, and then you’re going home, and then you’re walking down the street, and you shouldn’t call, but all the drink bubbles are pushing your feelings up instead of down, where they belong, and the way the streetlights are making the leaves on the trees shine like tin foil is so pretty, it’s making you think of your drunkly desired someone, and what they’re doing, and how they’re probably wanting you to call them right this second, calling before would have been wrong but now it is right, it is meant to be, this call, otherwise you wouldn’t have gone to that party and walked home under these trees, the universe has a plan and this call is part of the plan, by calling you merely are fulfilling the plan, you have no choice, it’s a Greek tragedy, we learned in high school how you can’t escape fate…just a quick call to say hi…
“Please remember/to regret it/don’t be sorry, just forget it,” he sings. And then, “Jesus christ you’re a lovely thing,” he sighs, over and over.