I was listening to this album (Very Emergency) today, and i finally put it together for the first time in all the years i've owned and listened to it. The whole album is incredibly upbeat and happy, describing a really great relationship (most notably on Living Around and Happiness is All the Rage) and a general sense of adventure and fun (The Deep South or Jersey Shore) until you get to this song, and the entire mood of the album is dismantled. Suddenly the relationship ends, and the wide eyed view of the world Very Emergency introduced is torn away for a more melancholic atmosphere, in the same way we all start to see things differently when we get out of an important relationship. It's an amazing sense of narrative that most albums never bother with; it's usually all positive or all negative, and it's really rare for an album to change it's direction at all, but especially so late on the disc. Such a captivating story device The Promise Ring employed here, and i didn't even notice the first hundred times i heard it.
I was listening to this album (Very Emergency) today, and i finally put it together for the first time in all the years i've owned and listened to it. The whole album is incredibly upbeat and happy, describing a really great relationship (most notably on Living Around and Happiness is All the Rage) and a general sense of adventure and fun (The Deep South or Jersey Shore) until you get to this song, and the entire mood of the album is dismantled. Suddenly the relationship ends, and the wide eyed view of the world Very Emergency introduced is torn away for a more melancholic atmosphere, in the same way we all start to see things differently when we get out of an important relationship. It's an amazing sense of narrative that most albums never bother with; it's usually all positive or all negative, and it's really rare for an album to change it's direction at all, but especially so late on the disc. Such a captivating story device The Promise Ring employed here, and i didn't even notice the first hundred times i heard it.