Wooden Stars - "The Cigarette Girl"

The Wooden Stars are currently on something like a reunion tour. They will be playing in Montreal in March and I will be there, excited and nervous. Excited because the Wooden Stars are one of my favourite bands and I was afraid that they had broken up for good, and nervous because I so want them to be good, would be so disappointed if they didn?t live up to what I expect of them. After all, The Moon, though a good album, was less surprising and original in the songwriting and playing than their earlier work.

On ?The Cigarette Girl? we hear what makes the Wooden Stars such a great band. They move seamlessly from complex but straightforward musical interplay (jangly guitar, fat bass, banjo flourishes, weird bag of glass and springs drums) to restrained spiritual outbursts; notes held back until the last minute, appearing suddenly out of necessity, each a bright revelation. Their voices are strained, pushed to their voluminous and dynamic limits. The songs, though structurally unorthodox, remain entirely coherent and natural.

At 3:58, when the guitars come in slow and heavy behind the ?She?s a good cigarette? refrain, be jealous that, if you didn't, that you didn't grow up in their hometown like I did and that, if you won't be, that you won't be at their Montreal show like I will.

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Jeff Hanson - "Just Like Me"

If Elliot Smith had been a man who sounded like a woman, he would have sounded like this man. Crisp acoustic guitar and impressive gender-bending vocals are what this song is about.