razorcuts - "sorry to embarrass you" (from the r is for ... razorcuts lp, available for purchase here.)

in brief : more stories of personal embarrassment, naturally, w/ the rhythm of twelve-string guitar.

dedicated readers of these pages may have noticed an optimistic--nay, an attitude verging on triumphalism in last week's evening posts. it was, as usual in these sorts of things, b/c of a girl, a local girl whom i totally dig--a local girl mind, in northern jersey of all places--and who, in turn, i thought dug me, in a romantic kinda way.

like lou reed said, just goes to show how wrong you can be.

for a doctoral candidate in literature, i sure do an awful lot of misreading. should that carry over into and taint my professional life, i may have a future in identifying women who have boyfriends, if a market exists for such a "talent." i won't go into details but, as w/ the sake story, it may find its way into a future posting.

"sorry to embarrass you," then. the razorcuts are one of those bands who sprung up between the demise of the smiths and the rise of the sundays; the razorcuts are a band who deserve to be known so much better than they are, but b/c they never had a gimmick or a beautiful female singer, they tend to get lost in your ipod shuffle. what they did was write beautifully crafted jangle pop, in the c-86 vein, and "sorry to embarrass you" is exactly the song that echoes in your ears along w/ the voiced bilabial stop of the "b" in "boyfriend" as it leaves a beautiful young woman's mouth. if you weren't anxious to flee the scene already, this is music the soothing properties of which will hasten your step while easing your shame.

the road was clear for me to embarrass myself and the other party, but since it involved the embarrassment of a third party, i shifted gears and changed direction. recognizing the need for co-existence, i took the path of least insistence, a path that allowed for a signifcant reduction in the amount of shared awkwardness--or perhaps the awkwardness was just on my side, perhaps it didn't mean all that much to her, perhaps she never knew. regardless, i'm a natural when it comes to resignation, i've an incredible talent for it, and decided to go that route, based on what i knew. it may be the v. reason why i'm an anglophile. it is certainly the reason why i find tracks like this so enticing.