Sometymes Why, but always a-e-i-o-u
A couple of early impressions regarding Your Heart Is A Glorious Machine, the new album out today on Signature Sounds from Sometymes Why, a small-scale string-band “supergroup” featuring members of Uncle Earl, Crooked Still and the Mammals:
* The inevitable “sequel” of sorts to the racy track “Too Repressed” from the trio’s 2005 debut disc is the leadoff track, “Aphrodisiaholic”, which features Ruth Ungar on lead vocals promising “I’m gonna take you home and have my way with you.” I say “inevitable” because you probably just can’t live down having a song on your debut album with a refrain that goes “I wanna fuck you, but I’m too repressed/I wanna suck you/But I can’t take of my dress” without, well, sowing some semblance of future expectations. Which is sorta too bad, really; not that “Aphrodisiaholic” is a bad song (though it’s not a great one either), but Ungar and her bandmates (Aoife O’Donovan and Kristin Andreassen) are all plenty talented enough to not end up getting Sometymes Why pegged as a risque-novelty item. On the other hand, the three of them mostly do this side-project band just for fun, and they do seem to be having that, plenty.
* The real standout on first listen for me was “Joey”, which was about two-thirds of the way through before it suddenly dawned on me where I knew it from. Concrete Blonde?!? Not a bad cover choice, indeed: obscure now, but fairly ubiquitous once, and still a very catchy song after all these years. Most importantly, they manage to make it their own; their version is terrific whether your mind is drifting back to the original or not.
More later, perhaps, once I’ve had the chance to get to know the album in a bit more detail. Perhaps some of you folks out in the Northwest just caught them on their jaunt through there this past week….