Dinosaur Feathers
Daytrotter Session - Apr 13, 2012
- Welcome to Daytrotter
- Untrue
- City Living / Beatcha
- Young Bucks
The way that the personal dysfunction works in the Dinosaur Feathers song, Young Bucks,” is that the fella has done nothing wrong, he’s been candid that he’s done nothing wrong – insists upon it, as a matter of fact – and the lady friend is having none of it, believing the young buck fella to be about as lowdown and slimy as they come. He’s just reinforcing what she’s always believed about men and their tendencies. They’re going to lie and lie and lie until it just becomes the truth and everyone happily swallows that junk whole, instead of doing it haltingly, with a sick feeling in their stomach.
Dinosaur Feathers lead singer Greg Sullo is so damned convincing though in being adamant that he’s been true. He’s in the kitchen and he’s taking the heat. It’s getting hotter and hotter and he just withstands the blasts. He sings, “You dream I’m a liar/I dream of the truth/In between, there’s nothing we can do,” and at the end of the line, other voices join his and he’s got friends getting his back. It soars off into a place where no one is on the side of the lady who is just a nervous downer who’s way off base. We’re going to root for the guy with the three-part harmonies and the musical backing of others who sometimes prefer their Brian Wilson tendencies bastardized a little. They’re still down with putting a little salt along the rims and just drinking it all in until things get a little wavy and quite a bit wilder.
Sullo sings about recently having trouble sitting still anymore, but needing to get out and find the excitement and it might just be that his head is wired in a certain way too, as Dinosaur Feathers songs never linger too long in one spot, but make the most of abundant ideas and creative pastings. The feeling that we get from most of Sullo and Co.’s songs is that they’re getting the business from somewhere – always – but they’re hardly being brought down by any of it. They’re remaining kind of oblivious to it all, going on with their undulating, ebbing and flowing lives, riding the waves of discontent and joy the only way they know how. When Sullo sings about how something “reminds me of the good old days,” we hear it more as if he were saying, “Everything reminds me of the good old days.”
He seems able to live in those exceptionally good salad days of yore, channeling whatever residual happiness might still be there to have. It’s like they’re able to take shitty times and rinse them of most of the shittiness, rescuing them from the jaws of a mangy lion and presenting them as something not only salvageable, but as the kind of body language and bright spots that we’re always looking for.