This week’s track, “The Accomodator“, represents another “one from the vault”. It’s actually from last year. I’ve always been intrigued by 80s tracks that are sonically paranoid, even though they might have a banal or sentimental lyric: Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer”, or Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night”. Actually, scratch that second one: now I’m watching the video for “Sunglasses at Night,” and it is way more paranoid — both the song and the video — than I remember from my youth. So I guess my point is a little spoiled…. but anyway, I’m shooting for the same kind of synth-string driven paranoid anthem, in which the protagonist finds himself in some kind of quasi-fascist state, either politically or domestically. This is a song that Baby Teeth have messed with but haven’t really come to any decision upon. Kiss it or diss it?
And here’s another question: What do you think of Aimee Mann? We recently got her album “Bachelor No. 2,” and I’m kind of baffled by it… I completely respect the craftsmanship of everything she does, both lyrically and musically, and yet I can’t help feeling like I’m the victim of some L.A. production scam, wherein I’ve been target-marketed as most likely to succumb to certain musical and lyrical tropes. Every chorus is either 4-1-5, or 1-5-4, or some other combination of the digits of the San Francisco area code, and yet it’s so right that I can’t just intellectualize it away. To borrow Aimee’s own phrase, “At least you know / You were taken by a pro.” Indeed.
