All this technico-political blather about soccer and America has made me desperate to talk about something purely artistic, in a more compressed, specific way that is less likely to get caught up in vast cultural nets. So let me start what I think (as I'm writing this sentence) will be an occasional blog series where I'll "close-listen" to my favorite songs of all time. I shall call this series Track-Flayer, in honor of the almost certain and doubtlessly icky injustices I will commit against great songs by subjecting them to hyper-analytic commentary.
First up, just cause I feel like it: The Dismemberment Plan's "Ellen and Ben." It's a happy choice because I've wanted to dedicate one of my first posts in this new effort to Mr. Jef Samp, who got me blogging and hosted both of my previous blogs, and also happened to get me into The Dismemberment Plan, a glorious D.C. pop-punk band that ripped us all a new music-hole from 1993-2003. You can read more about them here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dismemberment_Plan
But, unlike writers on certain music sites (cough, cough) I don't want my reviews in this series to have much do to either with band biography or my personal biography, except where it's particularly relevant. I'm an old-fashioned New Critic, damn it, and I don't care about much except the text (or in this case the song), and I think things are actually true about it, and that certain texts can actually be better than others, and I hate you "po-mo" youngsters taking scare quotes to my argumentative mailbox. Get off my property!
First of all, logistics: if you don't know this amazing song, you can listen to it here
or just get the mp3 for $0.99 from various places, or for $0.00 from places you may know, but I'm not privy to any more in my old age. I'll give you a couple days to listen to the song a few times (like I said, it's an amazing song, so it shouldn't be so bad), and then I'll follow up with my thoughts.
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