The Mayflies USA

Summertown (Yep Roc)
by Jamie Kiffel

This is the strummy, sunny, swaying head harmony stuff that’s so impressive at free, bandshell concerts… but a little droopier when you get it home on CD. The culprit here is the deeply concerned lyrics. Deeply concerned with suburban high school life, that is. “So long now… Baby’s got her own ideas,” sighs the band. You can practically hear their flyaway bangs swishing over their worn collared shirts. “Passin’ in the halls… she could be with me now, we could be anywhere,” they swoon sentimentally.

References to The Stepford Wives (who were given a drug and became placidly identical – sounds like a metaphor for something, doesn’t it?) add nothing. These are the silly, soft tunes that blow behind your ears in warm summer breezes, making you stop in a sudden rush of humility, realizing your littleness in the giant fry-doe sunblock and late night club world that is summer. Dizzy and deceived by the searing sunshine, lotion in your eyes and fluorescent painted girls, it seems totally possible to move into a dune and sell crabcakes for the rest of your days. And then the first brown leaf falls and you wonder what in hell you’re doing with that thing in your hair and a shirt with flowers on it for chrissake. Well, we all get fooled every year and it feels good while it lasts. Listen and your brain might blossom an Indian summer.
(PO Box 4821 Chapel Hill, NC 27515)