A Little More Than All

(photo via deadlydesign.com's Flickr)

Lose your cool.

There's been all this talk about "Where's our summer jam?" (as if the universe owed us one, sheesh).  Swallow yr pride and soundtrack your life with this:

Local H - Michelle (Again) (mp3) (buy!*)

Roll those eyes back down and hit that PLAY button.  This is pop, peoples.  "Michelle's" simple-stupid riff and smart-dumb lyrics are genius; if it gets a bit shouty at the end, it doesn't do so in an emoaggro way.  Guitars are allowed after Memorial Day, too.  What, you gonna tell the boys from Thin Lizzy to get out of town?

PLAY IT AGAIN.

I've been waiting since February of 2007 to post that track.  Loved it at first listen, haven't stopped loving it since.  Though it only spent some time on a myspace page, I called it the best thing about all of last year.  It's on disc, now, and I can't imagine anything topping it in AughtEight.  It was the second song the band (myspace) played at Union Pool a couple weeks ago and, no matter how much I like their whole catalog, two songs later I started hoping they'd play it again.  I want to hear it blaring from open car windows, I want to hear old people humming it in the park.  I want EVERYONE to know that Heather had it all, Rita had a little more than all, but that nothing else has got it like "Michelle."

I want to be able to come back from a Local H show and complain about how bad the sound was at Terminal 5.

Why the hell isn't this song just fucking HUGE?  It's not that I don't understand, I guess.  It's just that I'm not in an understanding mood.  This band, my favorite band, is not hot or hip or young.  It's not some nascent ascending entity people can clutch to their chest as a precious personal discovery, it's not some newly-crowned part of the poptimist canon makeover.  They are not cool.  But the other side of that fucking hill is a pretty interesting place, folks.  Good stuff in them thar.

Also, er, it's not the single.

Whatever, who cares.  Summertime's no time for sour grapes.  This is a great song from a great band.

PLAY IT AGAIN.

(*  It's always a nice surprise when I get a report from Amazon that someone's actually bought something by clicking through from here, but it was especially cool to see that people were buying this record.)

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As a palate cleanser, here's an acoustic version of their TV on the Radio cover from a radio station appearance (via, via).  You can understand the words!

Local H - Wolf Like Me (Live Acoustic TV on the Radio Cover)(mp3)

*

WIRE is in town!  Come join the drunk yammering investment bankers at the Seaport tonight!  Yell requests for their big hit, "Connection!"  Soundbites has a slew of mp3s.

*

This is a fine record, and a track from it is included in this fine mix.

tags: local h  12 angry months  twelve angry months  tv on the radio  

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