I Just Want to be a Peacock, but I Don't Think that it's Allowed

Last week I had another another one of those exceedingly pleasant, but all too few and far between experiences. A band that I've never heard of found us on Myspace, and they aren't terrible! Cool!

What is even more cool is that the band in question Swimteam is local, and far from not terrible. They are actually quite good. Swimteam appears to be primarily the project Brian Young. The songs of Swimteam don't tend to stray too far from the elegant, lo-fi jangle pop of his solo recordings. The songs on the Myspace page are upbeat yet moderately paced, allowing enough time for the stories to unfold exactly as they should. A song that contains the details of the unrivaled excitement of a first kiss, and a song that contains slightly fewer details of a relationship that seems on the verge of failure are told with the same degree of wit. Especially worth noting is his observation about how the way one might hear a certain pop song will likely change given the context within which one hears that song. It's a theme that shows up more than once in these songs, and he makes an excellent point. An annoying song by an annoying band that one might have heard a group of annoying people singing at a bar on the day when a perfect first kiss occurs will now conjure up a fond memory, and one will have almost no choice other than to kind of like that song. Whereas a different song that one has loved forever will inevitably take on new meaning when one is forced to apply that song to new situations. Young's charming baritone suits these types of musings perfectly.

I can only hope that since Swimteam finds Young joined by an appropriately full band of Chris Chez on drums, and Bill Miller on the bass guitar more live shows will occur in a not too distant future. I actually have to hope for a lot more live shows since the jaw dropping-ly awesome line-up of Swimteam, The Tartans, and Magic Bullets at the Knitting Factory happens to fall on the same night as our next Squaregirls Presented show at Pehrspace on June 27! Of course the drive to the San Diego's Beauty Bar on June 29 for the Swimteam/ Magic Bullets portion of that line up does seem more than worthwhile...

Anyone feel like a road trip?

~squaregirl marion