Wednesday, April 19, 2006

A bishop, but not the church kind

NPR's Song of the Day today is "Central Booking" by Bishop Allen off of the February EP. You can listen to the song and read a little snippet about the band at:

A Youthful Misstep, Chronicled in Song

It's funny to me that the image linked to this story from the NPR home page is . . .
This gave me the impression that this band would be one of those "Our front man is a woman" bands. What's funny is that once you go to the story you see that the whole image is . . .
Oh, so there are guys in the band too? Well, if you actually listen to the music, you occasionally hear her voice, but she's primarily a guitarist/bassist. Vocal duties are spread among all of the members of the band... So I just think it's funny that NPR's teaser was a picture of a blond woman. I guess it caught my attention, so that speaks for itself . . .

Anyway, I can't find that EP available anywhere, but I found Charm School, so I examined some of its music. There were a few songs that didn't really appeal to me, but many of them did. Additionally, if you listen to the lyrics, some of them are pretty funny/cute.

Here's "Empire City", which toward the end features fun synthesizer and horn noises.
Somewhere in the front of the footlights
I'm looking for a good place to sit
All my lines get so complicated
That I take a fall into the orchestra pit

Samson suffered the same fate
Powerless and losing his hair
Somewhere in the wings there's a sensible whisper:
When the hero dies, does the audience care?

All the sneaky things we could do in the dark
And with every chance, I'd end up missing my mark
In the city of night, out in the city of snow
We kept playing the part where she's letting me go
She always reminds me:
We're playing the part where she's letting me go

Somewhere in the Empire City
Someone takes a curtain call
I'm so broke at the end of the evening
That you'll find me hopeless in the back of the hall

Brutus suffered the same fate
They left him all alone with his shame
Somewhere in the wings there's a sensible whisper:
When you wield the knife, learn to carry the blame

So maybe give them a shot.

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