the Notes and Scratches

2005 Top Ten

You know, i had planned to dig through this past year’s musics and try to cobble together a list of my 2005 faves but i’m terrible at sorting and choosing and ranking. So, instead, my year end list is simply going to be the

Top Ten Reasons I Love the Devin Davis song Iron Woman [2.1MB] [mp3] (from his new CD Lonely People of the World, Unite! available here) (this list is in chronological order):

1. The first verse. The song begins with lyrics that are funny but almost crappy — “when you’re a caveman on the pavement in the USA” — so silly and seemingly trite until the verse’s end which is so well earned by the lines preceding it — “three whole weeks spent throwing matchsticks at the sun.” Which is a great great line but a line that needs the kinda goofy rhymes before it to set-up the moment. Is sisyphean a word?

2. The second part of the first chorus. The backup vocal harmony in the left-center channel that swings up to a higher note the second time “iron woman” is sung.

3. The vocal crack in the first chorus. When Davis sings “seven days at the bow of a wobbly boat” his voice perfectly breaks apart through-out the line.

4. The woo! Forty-six seconds into the song, there is a “Woo!” kinda in the background. I have listened to this song probably like 40-50 times and i still grin and often tear-up with laughter everytime i hear that woo.

5. The woo-who-who. At fifty-six seconds there is a woo-who-who in the background. It’s nice.

6. The end of second verse. Again with the silly and somehow also sad thing. “But once we conquered the mainland / she made some / high society friends. / I never heard one word / from my Viking girl again.”

7. The second part of the second chorus. Again the backup vocal harmony reaches a higher note, but this time it is both in the left-center and the right-center. Total smart-town.

8. The handclaps and sax solo during the bridge. Handclaps are always great, but a sax solo that doesn’t suck is a rare thing indeed!

9. The lilting ahhs at the very end. Is that a slide guitar? A kazoo? A voice? A slide whistle?

10. The last lyric. “I can still draw your picture in the dark,” a great image which again is both sad and sharp. Hmm, Raymond Carver’s Cathedral?

11. The ending noise. Davis says ‘hey?’ and then it sounds like stuff falling down the stairs. Charming to the last!

Alternate — if i knew what this was called it would have made the list — at two minutes in, with only twenty seconds left a piano comes in via that trick where you run the whole keyboard real quicklike, like Jerry Lee Lewis (or J. Geils).