Grass Grows From My Tears

Holy Hail “Dig My Grave With The Songs I’ve Sung” – There’s a tension in this song, this audible push and pull between what this great tune would be in the hands of other artists, and how it is performed by the people who wrote it. Holy Hail’s tiny voices and relatively anemic playing renders in miniature a song that seems built for hugeness and passion, and it’s hard to tell whether this is simply the band performing to the fullest of their potential, or the result of timid bet-hedging. I believe that they err on the side of the former, and that they are getting by on their considerable cuteness and charm when even they know the song could use more power. There’s some cleverness in scaling the song down and avoiding the obvious, and in most ways it works, as their reading lends some interesting subtext to the recording. It sounds like children dressing up in their parents’ clothing; this grasp for a maturity that’s just out of reach. (Click here for the official Holy Hail site.)

Elsewhere: My review of Andrew Bujalski’s Mutual Appreciation is up on The Movie Binge. I’m not sure if it is totally clear in the review how much I really, really like the film, but you should know that I do.