“Conquering Kangaroo” – Aaron Hunter Dennis
With its acoustic groove and delightfully arcane lyrics, “Conquering Kangaroo” nestles into an agreeable Guided By Voices meets Sufjan Stevens vibe, with a perhaps unexpected nod in the direction of Lindsey Buckingham. The song has two strong, competing characteristics: Aaron Hunter Dennis’s good-natured story-telling voice, and lyrics that tell no discernible story whatsoever. Many songs succeed either because of or in spite of unintelligible story lines; this is an especially successful one, a few tart phrases standing in for narrative clarity: “baseball cap but no team name”; “the pills have been helping, too”; “a company run by brutes.”
And while I mentioned the “acoustic groove,” careful listeners will note there’s more going on here than strummy acoustic guitars. There are scratchy high-necked guitar accents, wordless vocal flourishes, and a chorus in 7/4 time; the abstract (and sometimes unintelligible) lyrics further disrupt any idea of this being just a mellow toe-tapper. Probably my favorite recurring moment is the lovely way the verse melody resolves into the end-of-verse rhyme (first heard around 0:22) only to partially disconcert the ear with those 7/4 measures that follow in the chorus. Keeping the ear off-balance is a potent maneuver if a song likewise delivers some counter-balancing comfort. A parallel tactic: Dennis gives the cryptic lyrics an intelligible, if idiosyncratic, structure, in which the last word of each verse all rhyme (or slant-rhyme, to be more precise). This also underlines the idea that the songwriter knows exactly what he’s doing, even if the listener remains slightly bamboozled.
As for what the phrase “conquering kangaroo” means or refers to, all that pops in my head is a cartoon concept of a kangaroo with boxing gloves on. Is this a metaphor for the human condition, us poor souls stuck fighting battles we shouldn’t even be involved with? Your guess is as good as mine.
Aaron Hunter Dennis is a singer/songwriter based in San Diego. “Conquering Kangaroo” is his first single as a solo artist. He was previously in the 2010s band Tan Sister Radio, which had a song of theirs placed on the Showtime series Shameless; the royalty check funded a makeshift studio for Dennis, who there began to record his own material. Thanks to the artist for the MP3, which came courtesy of Tennessee Kamanski. Kamanski is half of the engaging duo of Allen LeRoy Hug, who have been featured here both in review and playlist. Kamanski and Dennis are engaged to be married. He’s played and recorded with Allen LeRoy Hug, she’s now helping with promotion, and so sent me the song, and here you are. Occasionally it’s that easy.
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