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The second post on this blog about an act from Quebec, fact fans!
I have a feeling that I didn't actually like this record when it first came out and became a minor hit in 1998. I don't think I actually disliked it either, but I was a bit suspicious of a lot of the post-Beck slacker-rock stuff that seemed to be emerging as Britpop wound down. However, I think it was that Christmas that my brother got their remarkable album Glee, which made it clear that this Canadian collective had more to them than the Marcy Playgrounds of this world - though curiously, even after this track became a huge hit, no further UK singles were extracted from the album.
Then this song was reused in a beer commercial, and became inescapable for a while, which put me off it again for a good couple of years. But here in 2009, it's sounding pretty good. I was never much of a drinker - and I've never been to LA, in fact - so songs about boozing tend not to interest me much, but this connects to the older tradition of songs about aimless drinkers. Whilst the mellow vibe about the track indicates that they're having fun, they're not revelling in the booze like William Hague; they chorus does, after all, ask what the hell they're doing drinking and getting nothing done. That tendency to distraction certainly is something I can recognise, bearing in mind the day or two it usually takes me to write one of these short posts... It does make this seem a laughably inappropriate song to advertise beer with though.
In a reverse of the situation with yesterday's Tom Jones track, this record proves its worth through an inferior cover version. Briefly popular latterday baggy act The Twang reached Number 63 with it (as the flip of their own 'Push The Ghosts' and, well, they sounded like they couldn't see anything wrong. Fair play to them and all, but the song doesn't work that way. And in case you ever need to know this for a quiz somewhere, BV3's only other Top 40 single to date was the rather fine Curtis-Mayfield-sampling 'Astounded'.
Available on: Glee (MP3 album)
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