Racking up plays: “Country Kids” by The Downer Party
These are the posts where I gush about some song that I’ve got a huge crush on at the moment, and you put up with it and listen because you’re a good friend.
“Country Kids,” The Downer Party
Skyscrapers, by design, are conspicuous. They are built to stand out and define a city’s skyline. Their names tend to be kind of grandly awkward, too, so it’s not easy to wedge one into a song without it flagrantly dominating the lyrics. Maybe that’s why there are so few songs built around specific high-rises. I’ve spent at least 10 seconds trying to think of tunes that do so, and all I’ve come up with is “The Seer’s Tower” by Sufjan Stevens and this rocking anthem by San Francisco’s The Downer Party, the opening track to the band’s newish EP, Cities.
The Transamerica Pyramid is inescapable in frontwoman Sierra Frost’s flippant discourse on life and love in San Francisco. She plops it down in the center of the chorus and repeats its name over and over, declaring some vague relationship problems to be a skyscraper-sized thorn in her side:
If there’s a splinter in your heart like the Transamerica Pyramid
Well, you can throw yourself off the Transamerica Pyramid
There’s a playful brutality to her attitude toward San Francisco, too. The city apparently has little to offer beyond fog once she decides that twinkling city lights are a poor substitute for fields of fireflies.
When I talked to Frost in March about the origins of the band’s name, she told me the band’s next record would be informed by a big ’90s alt-rock binge she’d been on. Cities was already completed and due for a release party at that point, but the EP still makes me want to grow out my bangs past my nose and put on my rattiest flannel. There’s something undeniably Pavement-like in “Country Kids'” cryptic cynicism and post-rock guitar lines.
The Downer Party is playing at Yelp’s Sunset Showdown party on Sunday at The Craneway Pavilion, 1414 Harbour Way South, Richmond, but you have to had registered in advance and the guest list is full now so you’re out of luck, sucker.
