I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: CAYUCAS-“High School Lover” (Field Recordings, May 9, 2013).

Five clean-cut California dudes, wearing sunglasses, sitting buy the pool.

This image calls a certain band to mind, but this is not that band.  This is Cayucas (whom I have never heard of).  For this Field Recording [Cayucas: Sunlight In Song Form], the five piece was filmed at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs.

Rather than super catchy melodies and lovely harmonies, Cayucas sings “laconic pop-rock.”

Sitting poolside on a picnic table, the band performed its bittersweet single “High School Lover” with only an acoustic guitar and light percussion for accompaniment. In any form, the song isn’t all sunshine — its youthful nostalgia gets filtered carefully through the prism of regret — but this performance is plenty bright, as Cayucas’ members locate their best-known song’s laid-back heartbeat. “High School Lover” provides a perfect soundtrack to the shimmery leisure that surrounds the band on all sides here. But it also leaves room on the agenda for hints of sadness and sunburn.

I don’t know what their recordings sound like, but this stripped down version is certainly low-key, bordering on uninspired–particularly the “heys” at the end.  It sounds like a Weezer outtake.

Although the guy dancing is certainly an enjoyable visual component.

[READ: January 4, 2017] “An Honest Woman”

I found this story to be more irritating than anything else.

I think that’s maybe the point?  But I was sort of annoyed by it the whole time.

Simply put, this is the story of an old man hitting on a young woman who has moved in next door to him.  It’s told from the point of view of the old man.  And yet he is shown as pretty much the predator right from the start.  I had no sympathy for him at all.  And again, I assume that’s the point, right?  If there was meant to be any empathy for the guy, it did not come through at all.

Having said that, this story was just frustrating.  Jeb is an old man (he used to be a redhead but is now white-haired).  He lies in a small house with a dirt backyard.

Next door a young woman moves in.  She had a guy living with her, but he hasn’t been around for a while.  So Jeb makes his move.

He talks to her and is somewhat flirty, but in a way that made me a bit nauseated.  That night he eats his diner in the basement listening to the sounds of her house.

A few days later Jeb’s nephew comes to visit and Jeb suggests that he bring some mail to the neighbor.  He does and they talk and apparently the nephew invites her for a drink.

The night of the “date” with the nephew–which she informs Jeb is not a date at all–Jeb can come along if he wants, there is a huge storm.  This prevents the nephew from coming across town. So when the woman (who I believe is unnamed) comes to Jeb’s house, he lies and says the nephew will be there shortly.

He then proceeds to hit on her in all kinds of creepy ways–plying her with drinks, showing photos of his dead wife, offering her to try on his dead wife’s clothes.

She is on to him from the start though, thankfully. And while I did love the way she messes with him at the end, I feel like he causes her to make a bad decision.

If I’m supposed to feel sorry for him in the denouement I simply don’t.

So, yes this story just made me angry.  Which, maybe it was supposed to.