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January 24, 2006
trailer full of sparklers
This is one of my favorite Built to Spill songs, so you'll have to forgive me if I wax emo about it a little:
Listening to the new song from "You In Reverse" that Built to Spill put up on their myspace page (which seems to be down right now) reminded me of the first exposure I had to the band; it was via the cover of 'Twinfalls' that Ben Folds Five put on their B-sides/live disc "Naked Baby Photos", which I obsessed over during my freshman year in college. Soon after I sought out the original, and I remember thinking that it was one of the most remarkably moving songs I had heard up to that point, and it was, to my 18 yr. old mind, totally apropos- having just moved away from a small town that I had nothing but contempt for, I was filled with happiness at the prospect of being separated from it for as long as possible. As that fall wore on though, I was struck periodically by an almost crippling nostalgia: for my home, for my family (of course), but also for the town itself, the crumbling, industrial library, the strange mixture of gas stations and dilapidated department stores that seemed to be the sole constituents of our main street area, the city parks that were constantly pocked with stagnant & larvae-filled puddles, etc. The town itself was composed of buildings and open places that seemed mysterious and powerful to me when I was younger (grade school); these were landmarks that had been figurants in some of my best memories, but it was like they didn't quite fully arrange themselves in my head in a comprehensive way until I was older. Probably a common living-away-from-home experience, but mine just happens to be closely tied to this song. Built to Spill just have a real knack for capturing the qualia of a whole spectrum of fuzzy, gentle melancholy, failure, disappointment, etc. and 'Twinfalls' is one of the best examples of that.
'Twinfalls' is from the classic "There's Nothing Wrong With Love", which you can buy here.
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FFFFs debut album, "Cracked" is out now(!). I wrote about Sean's awesome song 'Kissed' right here, and now you can check out a bunch of the other tracks from the album over at the FFFFs website. If you dig what you hear and you want to buy the album, you can do so through the Sockets CDR page.
Posted by Kevin at January 24, 2006 12:07 AM