The Weepies – Say I Am You (2006)
purchase this album
The Weepies Á¢€” or, as their moms call them, Deb Talan and Steve Tannen Á¢€” don’t have an original bone in their cuddly, adorable little bodies, and I love them for it.
Say I Am You is gentle, often heartbreakingly beautiful chick/dude folk-pop music, a record full of happy love and sad love, stiff upper lips and quivering chins, tearstained melodies and gorgeous harmonies. A record without balls, in other words, but goddamn if I can’t stop listening to it.
If you enjoyed Everything But the Girl’s Acoustic album, or like to listen to rainy-day music under a clear blue sky, The Weepies are right up your alley. It definitely doesn’t hurt that these are generally great songs, arranged smartly enough to keep a line like “I woke up and wished that I was dead” Á¢€” from “World Spins Madly On” (download) Á¢€” from being laughably maudlin. Similarly, when Talan sings “I know that you think you’re not good for anything/The world makes you feel so small,” during “City Wide Rodeo” (download), it doesn’t feel like the throwaway line it ought to, and the duo’s use of getting back in the saddle as a metaphor for “getting back in the saddle” is as moving as it is threadbare.
It isn’t often that music this honestly emotional comes along Á¢€” and rarer still is the batch of songs that manages to completely eschew irony or distance and emerge all the better for it. Say I Am You is a little on the sweet side, perhaps, but only the most sourpussed of listeners will be able to deny its simple, addictive charms.
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