A while back I got an unlabeled mix tape. Between songs I already knew and ones I’ve been able to figure out via Google, I’ve managed to identify a good deal of them. However, my favorite still eludes me. The song is jangly indie pop - it actually sounds a lot like something by The Clean or The Bats, both bands I like a lot but am not overly familiar with their work. If those names aren’t familiar to you, the songs also has the same sort of feel as The Proclaimers or something off the C86 comp, like The Wedding Present or The Bodines.
And for sample lyrics:
“I look at the sky but it don’t tell me much
You’re using this problem as a crutch”
“I don’t mind, you show the way to the door”
“Decide and decide”
I’m really crossing my fingers on this one - I love the song. I even asked the guy who made the mix a few months ago about the song, but he didn’t remember what he had put on there and the “using this problem as a crutch” line didn’t jog his memory.
What other songs are on the mix tape, and do you have any more of the lyrics? A guy is singing, right?
Yes, it’s a guy singing. At the risk of incurring the wrath of the mods (feel free to trim down the lyrics if they’re too much, although I’m thinking that this may not be the whole song - the mix tape is more like a collage of bits and pieces of songs), here are the lyrics as best I can decipher them:
(something something) and I’m getting late
I hope to see you again some day
I look in the sky, but it don’t tell me much
I’m using this problem as a crutch
I don’t mind
You show the way to the door
Shouting (something something) I know
Just what it means to be now
Decide and (desow?)
(something something) it’s time to go
I hope that my tiredness doesn’t show
(something) today, I’m getting away
(something) la la, another day
I don’t mind, etc
Decide and (desow?)
It brings me round
To what I know
Is what I found
Decide and (desow?)
Other songs on the mix tape: lots of stuff by The Magnetic Fields (“100,000 Fireflies,” “Why I Cry,” “I Don’t Believe You (original version),” Portastatic’s cover of “Josephine”) and Pavement (“Father of a Sister of a Thought,” “Stereo”). Also, The Fall’s “Free Range,” "Air Miami’s “I Hate Milk,” "Palace Brothers’s “O How I Enjoy the Light,” Tsunami’s “Genius of Crack,” Gram Parsons’s “Hearts on Fire.”
Oh, and if it helps, all of the songs came from vinyl recordings, either 7" or 12".