Friday, February 20, 2009

4. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Pershing

I found Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin's last album, "Broom", on Thanksgiving Day a couple of years ago and loved it from the start and more and more the more I listened to it. Does that sentence even work/make sense? I think it does and is grammatically accurate. I digress. So, "Broom" was great. The Top 25 Most Played playlist from my Pod is full of songs from it including a song 'Oregon Girl,' that was a little bit more poppy than the rest of the album. Which one of these things is not like the other? Why, it is 'Oregon Girl', I believe. It might not have been my favorite song on the album, but it might have been tied for my favorite song. Anyway, I thought to myself often about 'Oregon Girl', "You know, self, it would be great if Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin's next album was full of songs that are more like this song than like the rest of the "Broom" album." Making a follow-up album that is similar to the most poppy song on your first(/previous) album is something that bands never seem to do. In fact, they seem to do the exact opposite, which is, take their most slow or even depressing song and make their albums like that. Then, they take the most depressing/slowest song and that more depressing/slower album and make an even more depressing/slow album. What do shampoo bottles say? Lather, rinse, repeat? Yeah, rock bands do what shampoo bottles tell them to all the time.

Last April, I pre-ordered Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin's second album, 'Pershing', and got a package of things along with the compact disc: a poster, little pins, a card that allowed me to download some other songs (that included a Nirvana cover (which I haven't used [yet] because I am not very good a learning how to download stuff and put it on iTunes), and an Airhead (yes, the candy [yes, that candy still exists]).

Guess what? They pretty much did what I wanted. They made an album of Oregon Girls, pretty much. From the first 15 seconds of the first song ('Glue Girls'), it was evident, and it never really stops. It became my spring or 2008 soundtrack. Here's the rub: 'Pershing' probably isn't as good as 'Broom' (unless it is spring and 'Pershing' is your soundtrack). BUT, 'Pershing' is still great. At first, there were a few songs that I wasn't as high on, like 'Oceanographer', which sounds like a boring Beatles song. But, after taking some time away from the album and coming back, even that song is a pleasure to me.

'Pershing' was full of some of my favorite lines of 2008, (including my favorite: "Maybe I won't, but your cold eyes, baby, tell me I should be looking for love with some other girl.") and has a lot of songs where the more I listened and figured out exactly the words Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin was singing, the more I liked the song (instead of the other way around, which is all too common).

Maybe you need to spend some time with 'Broom' to really love this 'Pershing'. But, what if you hate 'Broom' and then never give 'Pershing' a chance? That would be a waste of 2008's music. But don't take my word for it...........


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