A Limerick Ox - Blog Archive » Vanilla Swingers

I am so glad that I don’t have to do job interviews anymore.

It’s not as much the dressing up, the painstaking selling of oneself, and the necessary exuberating affability than the questions. The questions. The endless barrage of self-answering questions which you’re supposed to shift and shape into the perfect “I figure this is what you want to hear” response to make your potential employer believe you’re in for it more than the money, even though he knows damn well you’re just in it for the money.

But the worst, the single most cruel, mind-rending question any interviewer can ever ask anyone is: “Where do you see yourself in ten years?” Holy jam spread on toast overboard a fiberglass canoe, I always felt cornered when that one would pop up. I have trouble seeing myself in in the reflection of a tablespoon, much less in ten bloody years.

But it would appear that the Vanilla Swingers have no trouble seeing into the future, since their upcoming LP tells the story of two people who meet and then bounce around in time, until they meet again in 2015. And we can already get a taste for it with Goodbye Lennon, which sets us squarely in the future (”It’s thirty years since ‘85″ sings Anne Gilpin in the song’s opening) amidst a spacey, synth-driven atmospheric pop ballad. Pads drone in the background with discernible heartache, curling gently around icy piano notes and distant guitars, as if fearful of getting too involved. The immersion into this longing dreamscape of regret and sorrow is wrenchingly successful, as both Gilpin and co-Swinger Miles Jackson’s breathy dialogue on what could have been and what should be aches to overcome its weighty bitter affliction, but can’t, try as they might. Throughout it all, one cannot but acquiesce that it’s a beautiful and sincere song with both music and lyrics serving each other to form a stirring narrative.

And in the end, it seems a little easier to project myself into the future, because I can’t bear to have mine in such a state.

(It’s a pleasure to offer Goodbye, Lennon here on A Limerick Ox, courtesy of Anne and Miles of the Vanilla Swingers)

MP3: Vanilla Swingers - Goodbye, Lennon

www.vanillaswingers.com
myspace.com/vanillaswingers

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 9:06 pm and is filed under download, free, MP3, Music, vanilla swingers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.