It seems strange to be typing those words - I'm actually staring at my hands in horror, my brow turning in on itself like Lieutenant Worf - considering that ordinarily this kind of track would have me fashioning a noose from my own hair. It's the structure: that perfect pop structure. From the very first line the sense of deja vu will wash over you like nausea, the mechanics of the song laid bare as though through premonition. Intro moves to verse, to pre-chorus, to chorus, to bridge; instruments drop away, then launch back in - it's insidious, almost satanic in its mathematical precision. I'd have to check, but I'm pretty sure there's something in Revelations foretelling this track.
Ok, so on first listen it sounds a little too much like Counting Crows to be entirely comfortable, singer Gerard O'Connell's voice just a little bit angry like that guy from Matchbox 20, but once you get past that, this is a really good song. There: I said it again. No wincing or anything.
And perhaps that's the true great evil festering at the song's heart, some sort of subliminal hypnosis imbued by the arrangements that causes the suspension of cynicism - it manifests itself in the unconscious humming of the melody in the bath, the repeat:one playlisting in the car, the mechanical purchasing in the shop. Oh yes - you won't be able to help yourself. The bodysnatcher-communists used pods, placed by the beds of sleeping Americans: here it's an MP3, sound waves stimulating our ear drums until we're all afflicted, our minds wet cake, our voices monotonal. So go on people: buy it. What are you waiting for?
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