Cheap Sunglasses Might Disguise

That Fatal Mailing List #16 - "There's A Story In Your Voice" (2004)

I have a very specific subgenre of country and western music that I love–shitkickin’ music. It’s the stuff with a little extra twang, a little extra jump in the beat. The stories are usually worst-case scenarios about lovers who probably deserve every lousy break they’re getting. It takes a special kind of brain to write shitkickers; it takes an even greater gift to howl them. 

“There’s A Story In Your Voice” is an absolute shitkicker. Maybe it’s the tambourine? That certainly doesn’t hurt. It’s Elvis Costello himself jamming out on the tambo, yet another instrument he has mastered almost without trying. When it drops in behind the chorus, it sounds like half a honkytonk smashing their bottles on the floor at the same time. 

As they do throughout 2004’s The Delivery Man, the Imposters stir up a righteous noise on this cut, led by EC’s own razor-blade guitars. Pete Thomas’ drums rattle through the track like the last vestiges of a bourbon hangover at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning. In the distance, bells chime; it’s Steve Nieve on the harmonium. 

Lyrically, Costello once again draws some inspiration from the story/book analogy that he mined so successfully on “Everyday I Write The Book” (inspired by Nick Lowe’s “When I Write the Book”). Just as we heard last week on “Crimes of Paris,” adding a female voice transforms the dynamic, especially in a classic country-style duet like this one, where two characters are experiencing the same romantic collapse from two different perspectives. 

The gentleman has been drawn in by his lady friend’s “tale of wine and woe” and that pain she’s suffered proves too much for him to overcome. For her part, she’s suddenly found clarity beyond her gentleman caller’s lies: 

Once you told me fairytales

Everybody knows

But I didn't care for their prediction

Now you say you're leaving me

And packing up your clothes

I finally see you were a work of fiction

At the end of the day, they both seem to realize that there is truth buried somewhere beneath the stories, but neither seems willing to take the step needed to reveal it. Cheap sunglasses might disguise the real feelings inside; maybe glimpses of it escape in what the “bedroom light reveals.” But it’s easier to dismiss the fiction than to struggle with the truth. 

Bonus:

I put together a playlist of some of my favorite shitkickin’ tunes, anchored by “There’s a Story In Your Voice.”

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