If this Sounds Phoney, Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn; This Place Suffocates and my Heart Yearns Me On

Tuesday. This day has been neither here nor there. I put together my pre-upload spreadsheet, which took up most of the morning, and now I am formatting yet another spreadsheet for the customer so it looks all pretty for them to pay the long list of open items presented on it. Other than that, not too much else is going on.

I listened to So Much for the City by the Thrills on the way into work this morning. I was originally attracted to this album for three reasons: first, I found the lead single from this album One Horse Town to be incredibly infectious. Second, I was intrigued by the fact that a band from Dublin could so easily adopt a folksy/Beach Boys sound (complete with lyrics about Hollywood and Santa Cruz) without giving one hint of their place of origin in sound or verse. Thirdly, one of their songs is named Big Sur, which is also the tile of a book by the prose master, Jack Kerouac. Am I so smitten with Monsieur Kerouac that I would pick up a rock album just because one of the tracks coincidently shares the name of one of his books? Um, apparently that would be a "yes."

While So Much for the City will never go down as one of the great albums of all time, it is a fun listen, especially on a cold February morning when the warm Southern California themes are particularly welcome. You won't find anything profoundly deep here, but for an indy pop-rock album it isn't that bad. Pick it up if you are into Irish bands pretending to be So-Cal beach bums or if you don't think twice about owning things that have only the slightest connection to Beat Generation authors.