- Welcome to Daytrotter
- Television
- Three Car Garage
- Fryer
- Realize
We don’t think that the people in You Won’t songs were asking for too much. They just wanted what was theirs. They just wanted the basic essentials, those few things that no one can do without. It’s the stability that comes from a stable home life. It’s general pride and convincing love. It’s nothing too out of the ordinary, just a decent shot at keeping everything together, of keeping some skin in the game and not just getting blown out of the goddamn water.
Josh Arnoudse and Raky Sastri of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, outfit, make music that feels a little agitated, the way you might describe a Mountain Goats song. The people in these tales have been battling for their air, for their space for sometime. They’ve been disillusioned, re-illusioned and back again so many times that they’re having a tough time keeping it all straight.
The song “Television” takes us into one particular life that seems all jumbled up, as if there’s no chance of winning that the person can possibly see. It takes others to point some specifics out to them, just in order for some slivers of clarity, even if it only amounts to a compounding of the problems. Here a man goes to the courthouse to have his name legally changed, trying to get away from some shame or embarrassment that has been brought on through his familial relationship. All he wants is some clean break – a chance to go out anew. It’s then – already at the courthouse, already filling out the necessary paperwork – that he’s reminded that such a action won’t work the way that he wants it to work, that there’s a little thing like destiny that paperwork can’t help anyone to escape. “It’s a delusion, it’s a delusion, it’s a delusion…” We hear these words many times, later in the session, and this is where the lesson comes in, as they learn from that judge. “His honor told me it always ends the same.” Furthermore, the lesson might be that no one knows what the right thing is to ask for when they feel like they want something else.