(Drive-In, 1997)…And meanwhile, halfwit John McCain is a serious candidate for President. Wha?? How?! The guy’s a buffoon and a phony, an elderly tough-talker who couldn’t chest-puff his way out of a rhetorical paper bag. Can this race POSSIBLY be as close as the polls say it is? Will any of you ACTUALLY stand up for a hawkish McCain administration (given how well a hawkish Bush administration has worked out)?? And will anyone ACTUALLY dare to play the “Obama is inexperienced” card after months of bizarre McCain foreign policy gaffes and Republican scrambling that ultimately results in the right trying to co-opt Obama’s positions?! YEESH!! But I’ll give you this: Perhaps you and your fetishized future dead soldiers would rather have a beer in heaven with Bush and McCain than with Kerry and Obama. Well, congrats, morons. You really showed ’em!
And this single? Shucks. It can’t possibly get me as worked up, cuz it’s just an inoffensive gtr-pop twee moodpiece that goes for nasal rainy-day mopiness in yer standard wimp-pop vein, leaving no real impression either way. Except! The brief violin breaks on “Archipellago” (sic!) give the song the kind of “sure, yeah” emotional resonance that the Rentals achieved every now and then, and that’s, uh, whatever, a nifty feat for a few seconds. But: was the song ever tortured by the Viet Cong? I THINK THAT’S THE REAL QUESTION HERE. Argh. Please wake me when we’re all D-E-D.
