Compensated For My Charm

A Giant Dog “Fake Plastic Trees”

This isn’t a Radiohead cover. This is an original song that in no way references the famous Radiohead song “Fake Plastic Trees,” or even uses any of those three words in the lyrics. It’s hilarious to me that a band would do this, but hey, it’s not as if Radiohead’s the only band with a song called “Creep,” and Stone Temple Pilots beat them to that title by a year!

A Giant Dog’s “Fake Plastic Trees” is glammy garage rock song about being a cool loser. It starts off with Sabrina Ellis and Andrew Cashen asking for a ride somewhere – “it’s on the way, it’s on the way!” – and digresses into verses about being bored and depressed, eating at Whataburger, smoking weed and eating tangerines, and their favorite scene in Terminator. I love the way the song doesn’t focus its attention on anything for long, and in doing so sketches out a detailed portrait of a troubled but fun protagonist. There’s a few musical curveballs to go with the lyrical twists too – the strings come out of nowhere on the bridge and give a fairly bratty song a few moments of grandeur and elegance.

Buy it from Amazon.