Somewhere Out There

Marit Larsen, "Under The Surface" - I'm sure that a quick Googling would turn up exactly how many times I've prefaced an entry about a song by commenting on the profundity of the contempt my seventh-grade self would have had for it, but (1) I am a lazy, lazy man, and (2) uncertainty is always the more enjoyable route when you're talkin' shame, past or present. That being said, I would have really hated Merit Larsen's "Under The Surface" back in nineteen-ninety-OH-FUCK-ABORT-ABORT; it is, to put it bluntly, the Norah Jones-est song off the Norah Jones-est album that anyone with enough sense to keep from getting mercilessly taunted will ever hear. As you can probably imagine, I consider listening to it only forty or fifty times at work today something of a personal triumph.

See, here's the thing about me and adult-oriented pop: aside from some spectacularly obvious examples (translation: any time Phil Spector works with someone improbable), I just can't get into it. I mean, I'm sure Steely Dan have great records for days, but the facts of the matter are as simple as "Nothing on Aja sounds like my life", and I don't care who you are - ignoring that voice in your head only gets you a free ticket on the train to Loathesome Hipsterburg, where everyone celebrates their uniquely ironic appreciation for Kenny G records with bumps the size of anthills. If it's not there for you, well, all I can say is more power to you, and be glad you've got that much less in common with a guy who (unironically) still can't quite bring himself to sell off his copy of the Semisonic album. You know which one.

Of course, all qualms disappear in a heartbeat whenever a mom-pop song gives you something to chew on besides the music. The classic example is, of course, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours; as unimpeachable an Album Of Music To Listen To as it may be, it's with us today because of its status as an Album To Explain, since it's not like that impulse goes away once you graduate from middle school and maturity slams the brakes on the appeal of laying out how certain songs are actually about drugs ("Gold Dust Woman" in particular may as well be the "Lucy in the Sky" of breakup rock at this point). Which is, of course, perfectly fine; it's not like Rumours happened by accident or anything. But it does cast a rather long shadow over all the other pop music that occupies your mind with other stuff, crucially because that other stuff isn't necessarily anything of substance at all.

Like, for instance, "Under The Surface", a song which makes me think about nothing so much as the soundtrack to An American Tail - that's right, that movie - to at least the degree that Rumours makes me think about dissolving relationships. In and of itself, of course, this is absolutely nothing to write home about; I do like Don Bluth's movies almost as a rule, but even in my most Anti-Everything Everyone Else Ever Talks About moments, I'm pretty sure which one I'd tag as the more substantial accomplishment. It's just that I don't think that this diminshes "Under The Surface" as an accomplishment one iota; it's awfully hard nail something as dead-to-rights as "Under The Surface" nails "working in the shadow of Disney" without a certain level of either commitment or blind luck, and frankly, when the results are this striking, I don't much care whether it's A or B. I mean, it's not just the kind of artistic decision that makes you pay attention to a song - after all, I've heard other songs with bells that tinkle like the ones in "Under The Surface" or orchestration that swells like it (ahem). It's just that I've never heard anything specifically recall An American Tail, let alone this directly, and I found that once I got past the fascinated shock of the similarity (which, for the record, I am completely prepared to admit may only exist between my ears), I found that it put me in a particularly useful state of mind as far as appreciating the song itself went; "Under The Surface" is nothing so much as a song about both longing for someone and coping with the way your life seems to have worked out under your feet, two of the movie's central themes. And again, although this hardly elevates it to the level of "Go Your Own Way", it's still something remarkable, and it's all but guaranteed the song's usefulness outliving other, arguably superior songs (ahem).

Anyway. Great song, great-sounding song, and an easy pick for 2006's shortlist thus far. It's worth pointing out that Larsen's whole album is jammed deeper than yr moms as far as songs like this - that is, effortlessly transparent pop songs that just don't give a fuck how explicitly referential they are. Needless to say, it's quite the little album, even if it'll take me a decade and a half to get past the title track. (Under the Surface isn't currently available through either UK or US vendors, although it is available on iTunes by clicking here)

The Delays, "Valentine" - The Delays? Really? I mean, I liked "Long Time Coming" as much as anyone else without a violent knee-jerk antipathy towards British indie-pop, but it sure never pointed towards anything like "Valentine", one of the finer five-minute segments of indie disco I've heard this year. Somewhere along the way they seem to have picked up both a nigh-unscalable wall of synths that'd shame Brian Higgins and a sense for anthemic dance rock that'd make U2 collectively poop themselves inside out, and, as you can imagine, it really does make for quite the little dance tune. But seriously, THE DELAYS? (Click here to buy You See Colours from Amazon.co.uk)