“That Thing You Like About Yourself (Is Hurting You)” – The Very Most (feat. Melanie whittle)
Clean, welcoming, and lively, “That Thing You Like About Yourself (Is Hurting You)” performs the neat trick of sounding at once sprightly and sad. We all know that one of pop music’s superpowers is its ability to set sad lyrics to happy music, but how about this artful corollary: composing fleet, toe-tapping music that itself, somehow, independent of the words, sounds bittersweet? I guess this is one thing that so-called twee pop often specialized in. But here we get the end result stripped of preciousness. It’s sincere, yes, there’s a flute, yes, but there’s also something refreshingly solid happening here . The song unfolds with both lilt and backbone; the drumbeat means business, the lead guitar in the intro arrives from a distant time and place, with a tone I can only describe as grown-up (a compliment).
The singing means business too: once it starts, words take over the song with barely a breath taken. We find ourselves once again in the land of indecipherable lyrics–but this time note that the band draws you in by allowing you to understand the words in the opening section:
Everything feels off
Maybe we should take a trip
My everyday places are making me so sad
Intractable problems
We only make them worse and worse
By doing the things we do as often as we do
Trying harder always trying harder
You can get a disorder
And you’ll never know why
How can you not love that, especially as voiced by guest vocalist Melanie Whittle, the captivating lead singer of the Hermit Crabs (see Fingertips, 6 Sept 12)? The music here, light and wistful in the background, surely reinforces her Glaswegian tendencies. And, go figure, even as I am normally a listener who craves and all but demands lyrics that scan properly with the music, in this case I find the un-synced moments fetching rather than frustrating. Listen in particular to the way the word “intractable” is (purposefully?) forced into service in an inadequate space (0:47). It’s very charming somehow.
After this, the words fade into a blur of language–it’s as if they want you to get the general gist but then float yourself more freely into the vibe, to receive the message at more of an intuitive than literal level. You may notice that the only words that seem to rise above indistinctness is the phrase “Trying harder, always trying harder.” Intended or not there’s a message in this. The words, however out of focus, arrive and arrive, always trying harder, with one break taken for the flute (2:11) that had slipped unnoticed into the background a minute or so earlier. Also very charming.
The Very Most is a band based in Boise and fronted by Jeremy Jensen. Drummer Jim Rivas is the only other permanent member. The band’s latest album is called Needs Help in part because Jensen brought in a lot of guests to make the record, utilizing 13 different singers on both lead and backing vocals, including the aforementioned Whittle on this song. The Very Most was previously featured on Fingertips in July 2008. Thanks to Jeremy for the MP3. You can listen to the whole album, and buy it, via Bandcamp.
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