The Love Language
The Love Language "After three decades of sonic observation, you start to realize what really good music sounds like. You know what you like. You like the Beatles. You like Thin Lizzy. You like Stevie Wonder. The declaration, “You’ll love this band!” no longer arouses much excitement. You’ve heard thousands of bands, millions of songs, and find little incentive to embark on any audible adventure when “The Boys are Back In Town” has already been written. In terms of music, we download it, we burn it, but we rarely really listen to it. Perhaps I’m being selfish, but I listen to the Love Language because they write music I wish I’d written. I often picture myself playing these songs for some awkwardly shy, yet strikingly beautiful French girl on a jetty in Quebec, romantically duping her with my plagiarized sentiments. Dishonest, yet undeniably feasible. I could figure out those chords on guitar, and placidly convince some girl that these thoughts and feelings were my own. It’s not like trying to pass off “Blackbird” as an original composition. As you strum, you begin wishing that these poetically mundane moments were parts of your own past, until you realize that they are. That’s what the Love Language is to me: The modest declaration of the universal obvious. Songs written about apartments you’ve lived in and rotary phones that you’ve hung up. Although McLamb’s arrangements are typically overcast, each song reminds you of the towering trees that relish each falling drop. That there are winners and losers, but sometime tragedy makes the most beautiful story. After all, no one would remember the Titanic had it not sunk. That is the Love Language- the celebration of the sinking ship. Bon Voyage." – Jon Kirby, Wax Poetics