Eddie Bowers – I’ll Be Damned
Perhaps someone would’ve let you place a bet back in 1971, due to be paid out at the start of this year, and involving what musical genres would still be active and successful all those decades later. Smart money, I think, would’ve been on “power pop.” You would’ve probably got great odds, too, with everyone fighting their way to lay a few bills on “blues” or “jazz.”
And, if anyone gives you the same bet and odds today, I say you take it. Don’t worry too much about your personal longevity. Simply know that there’s nothing that suggests great pop songs written with the aid of guitars are ever going out of fashion. Eddie Bowers knows, and together with his band proves, for the n-th time, that there’s just something miraculous about this formula when it works.
Yeah, yeah, there’s a sweetness to “I’ll Be Damned,” regardless of the song’s title. The lyrics themselves, fittingly, talk about the otherworldly nature of love when done right. And, of course, that’s a very fitting tale of the genre of “power pop” itself, music born out of pure optimism, out of the realisation that, sometimes, everything feels possible, likely and achievable. How can the world do without it? How can guitar music survive without people like Eddie Bowers and his friends?
Endearments – Summersun
People just don’t cry over the past the way that they should. They won’t do it unless they have their favourite song playing in the background. And, most of the time, everybody’s favourite song, as it turns out, is a melancholy-filled ode to the inevitable passing of time.
The smartest, most capable songwriters have done their studies, have read stats, and have figured out which levers they need to push. After all, they deal in dreams and illusions, hopes and disappointments.
It doesn’t even matter if they’re making things up. Rock stars are, by definition, travelling musicians who get paid to change as little as possible. But, they must ache just the same when they’re honest. That is, at least, what Enderments lets us know.
There’s a pleasant indie-rock sound that drives “Summersun,” and an undercurrent of unresolved emotions. There’s a lovely vocal melody that ties the song together and lyrics about wearing costumes and finding places in which to hide. This is a song about the passing of time, and about how fitting in gets tougher every day. And whether the Endearments songwriter is penning this from personal experience makes very little difference. Someone, somewhere, will be wiping away tears when they hear this.
