I’m drinking a Chai Tea Latte at Cairbou Coffee enjoying having black, low-top Converse in common with Paul Doucette (Matchbox 20) who is wearing a pair in the pictures for his album, milk the bee, with his band, The Break & Repair Method. Doucette’s singing in my ears, the tea is calming my inner chai, and my leg is bouncing to the piano-driven rock.
And then, more than sharing black, low-top Converse, more than sharing a driving beat, Doucette shows up to share a frame of mind: don’t enjoy how well things are going because the other shoe’s bound to fall.
On a bouncing, lilting piano like Charlotte Martin meeting Chris Martin (Coldplay), Doucette sings:
Don’t get caught now
With your head in the clouds
Singing ‘everything’s turning out great’
Because if you decide that you feel good inside
Things are surely to change
And you know I can’t have it that way (“Forget About the Brightside”)
It’s irrational. It’s a mind trick (or really much worse, a mind f*@!). It’s the kind of thinking that I’m trying to undo in my own brain. It’s like the song “Morbid Girl” by my friend Emily Dunbar. She sings about trying to prevent a disaster by thinking of the disaster in complete detail (pre-order her CD).
Yet, more than encouraging the thought, Doucette’s song illuminates it, lifts it up on that beat, and makes me turn a knowing eye to the thought, raise an eyebrow, and smile wryly at the sheer silliness of it all. If I really thought that happiness would bring down an immediate event of sadness, I would never wear those black, low-top Converse—because they make me feel quite happy. And I would never tap my Converse to the Break and Repair Method’s tunes, because what would be the point?
So “Forget About the Brightside” exposes the silly thought and makes me all the more confident in bright, sunny days to come.
The Break and the Repair Method’s piano leader Paul Doucette brings to mind piano-led Britrock (Keane, Coldplay, Athlete) , but there’s also a jazz-influenced rock sway like Elvis Costello. But on song like the rockabilly-kissed “I’m at a Low,” the rhythm bounce of the throwback 60’s rock is most reminiscent of White Rabbits.
The Break and Repair Method
Bluhammock Music
