Tomorrow’s election day, and I have one thing to say to you: “Obama, I wanna go surfing.”
Alright, alright. That’s not actually what surf-rock[1] band The Drums are saying in their song “Let’s Go Surfing”, but it pretty much sounds like it, and I needed some way to relate this article to Election Day, and I often find myself fitfully musing about what if that really was what they were saying in the song, and how super awesome that would be. “Obama/I wanna go surfing/Obama/I don’t care about nothing.” Invariably this train of thought leads me to wonder if Mister Prez really does know how to surf—he grew up in Hawaii, after all—and, what do you think, guys, does he wear boardshorts or what? One of those wetsuit dealies? I don’t actually know anything about surfing, but I do know that Obama is the hippest president of all time[2] and that if anybody was gonna fill out a pair of board shorts like a boss, it’d be him. Dude’s pretty buff, even if his hair is graying at an alarming rate that makes me question the profundity of modern science. I mean, if the White House doesn’t have the most up-to-date defenses against aging, who does? Amirite?
Anyway, tomorrow, when you’re standing at the ballot box trying to decide whether to vote for “Most Likely To Be Able To Surf” or “Most Likely To Outlaw Surfing In An Eerily ‘Footlose’-esque Piece Of Legislation”, I’ll be making some hard-hitting decisions of my own. Namely, I’ll be trying to decide for about the eight-hundredth time whether my favorite contemporary surf-rock band is The Drums, or Surfer Blood—a band who actually does make lyrical allusion to Barack Obama[3]. (Why didn’t I lead with that, then? I don’t know either.)
In the category of band names, Surfer Blood clearly wins out—naming yourself something containing the word “surf” when you’re a surf-rock band is so deliciously tongue-in-cheek that it basically makes up for the fact that their album cover featuring a hungry shark is a little too on-the-nose for my taste. The Drums is an okay band name but it also sorta seems like the kind of band name you’d come up with in middle school, a time when one of my best band-name contenders was “The Bassments”, which, obviously, is a pun on Bass, which presumably said band would contain. Thankfully The Bassments never came to pass, and we all know that even if they had, they wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good as The Drums, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a pretty mediocre name. Thankfully, naming is a pretty irrelevant category for considering the merits of a band.[4]
Lyrically, we start to run into some problems right off the bat. The Drums have a really nice way of not overcomplicating things: “The days go by/and I never needed you” pretty much gets straight to the damn point, which I respect. And you’ve got to love a band that has a song whose chorus goes “I want to buy you something/But I don’t have any money/No I don’t have any money”. Who hasn’t been there? I pretty much live there. These guys aren’t T.S. fucking Eliot, that much is clear, but they seem pretty comfortable doing what they’re doing, and they’re catchy as hell, and sometimes it’s best just to say what you mean. Not always, obviously, but sometimes.
But then again, sometimes obscurity is its own reward. In that corner, we’ve got Surfer Blood. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know what a “Catholic Pagan” or “Adolescent sour mash”[5] is, but hey, you do you, SB. At the other extreme, one does sorta get the sense that they get sick of trying to rhyme sometimes and just shrug. “I have to rhyme with ‘into’ again? Can we just—oh, wait, how about ‘aaah-aah, oooh-ooh’?”[6] Yeah, that works, guys. That works. But neither of these extremes makes them unrelatable: don’t we all just wish we “knew everything it takes to get along”? I mean, we all went to middle school and felt like thoroughly dysfunctional organisms. I distinctly remember thinking that there had to be some sort of standard-issue First Aid Kit-type set of tools that everyone else in my class had been given in order to function properly. To be fair, back then “everything it takes to get along” probably consisted of a Hollister hoodie and some Pumas, but let’s not pretend that concept is any less mystifying now than it was then.[7]
And then there’s the final category: presence of a song about Twin Peaks. In this category, Surfer Blood wipes the floor with The Drums like Norma mopping up after a long day at the Double R Diner[8]…largely because, well, Surfer Blood has a song about Twin Peaks and The Drums don’t. Is this a fair criteria on which to judge a band? Probably not. Do I care? Definitely not. Am I going to systematically list the top 5 Musical References To Twin Peaks right here, right now? Well, now that you mention it, yes.:
1. Surfer Blood’s “Twin Peaks”, obviously. It doesn’t actually reference TP that much lyrically, aside from saying “Twin Peaks and David Lynch” every so often, but it’s such a good college-life song: hanging out on the couch, talking about Twin Peaks, trying to decide how much trouble you’re putting yourself in if you make a move on the object or your affections, self-loathing in response to the outcome of that decision (regardless of which way you went), and, of course, “making fun at the video store”. If this is the wrong way to spend Freshman year, I don’t wanna be right[9]. Did I mention it’s catchy? It’s so damn catchy.
2. McChris (or is it MC Chris?)’s “Twin Peaks” which not only is just a big ol’ David Lynch-punning romp lyrically, but also makes use of the actual TP theme song. Bonus points for the Ghost Busters reference, shortly followed by “That’s right, I put a Ghost Busters reference in a song about Twin Peaks! Everybody’s happy!” It’s a pretty stupid song, but I like that sort of thing.
3. Twin Peaks’ “The Black Lodge”. Not sure if any of the actual song is about Twin Peaks, but the opening is part of Log Lady’s monologue, and Log Lady is obviously the coolest character in that show. Plus the owls hooting in the background[10].
4. A tie: either Fieldmouse’s “Falling (Twin Peaks Theme)” or She’s So Rad’s “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart (Twin Peaks Cover)”, both of which, aside from being kinda mellow and expected, are actually pretty good tunes when just playing in the background somewhere. In other news, does anybody know of any “An Invitation To Love”-inspired tracks? Because that would be some next-level shit, that right there.
5. LCD Soundsystem’s “New York, I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down (With Twin Peaks Theme Intro)”. What does this have to do with Twin Peaks, really? Not much. But have you heard the live recordings from the last LCD Soundsystem show at MSG? Fuckin’ heartbreaking. Especially this track, for obvious reasons. If you’re honestly going to ask me why this made the list, you either a) have no soul or b) don’t know about the clause in my contract with WJHU that requires me to mention LCD Soundsystem at least once per article.
Uh. Wow. Aren’t we glad that just happened?
So, er, like I was saying. Don’t forget to vote.
[1] In iTunes, The Drums are listed as an Electronica band, but this strikes me as obviously untrue. In fact, just the other day, when describing another band as being “surf-rock”, the friend I was describing to said, “Like The Drums?” to which I enthusiastically replied, “YEAH!” even though the band in question was almost wholly (but not quite, Douglas Adams fans) unlike The Drums. I was just so excited that my friend was using The Drums as a cultural referencepoint that I got carried away with myself. (But, much like Sam in Garden State, I went back afterwards and admitted that what I said was basically untrue.)
[2] Or at least since Taft.
[3] “Barack Hussein Obama would have a field day/If he knew at all” (Catholic Pagans)
[4] Didn’t stop me, though.
[5] Points for using the phrase “sour mash” in a song, though.
[6] “Come pick me up in the morning/And we can find a hole to crawl into/We’re still pretending to be lightweights/My arms and legs, they will grow soft, aaah-aah, oooh-ooh” You’ve gotta hand it to those guys.
[7] Seriously, what was it about Hollister hoodies?
[8] Nobody likes this joke. Nobody.
[9] It’s also probably important to mention two other lyrics in the song, “Your sexual advances/Are unconvincing and untrue”, and “Your humor’s getting sour, too”, for their resounding truthiness. In the scheme of the aforementioned Freshman year, didn’t everybody have that one romance that was almost wholly unromantic to the point of just being vaguely insulting? Didn’t everyone also have that one love interest who was originally into weird shit in a way that made them seem really intriguing and complex but ended up just being, like, sorta alarming? No? Not everybody? Just me? Okay, then.
[10] And if you don’t know why this is relevant, you probably are not enjoying any part of this article. My bad.
