How often do you come to an Absolute. Dead. Stop. And focus on a song that just mesmerizes you? The music, ambience and story inside “Me and Damon Drinking Beers at the Grandview Hotel” by the Quality Used Cars band left me wrecked.
I don’t know exactly why. I’ve been thinking a lot about my own past, about sliding door moments. But also those sweet interactions and words that stay with us forever.
Lead Francis Tait is some kind of lovely combination of Bob Dylan and Lou Reed, but also so easy. He doesn’t try too hard. Tait is telling a story, not writing self-conscious lines for posterity. The delicate vocals, backing woo’s and lyrics are just the start:
“We talk about the world,
Talk about the future,
Talk about the ones we love
And all the ones we used to.
“You see Davey’s anti-vax now
And Joe’s off with his new dream.
Jamie had a breakdown,
They’re getting back up on their feet.
And you see Frazier bought a house,
Shit it’s the nicest house you’ve ever seen.
The sort of house you find in a
Better Homes & Gardens Magazine.
“And I keep waiting…
I’ve just been waiting,
Waiting all this time,
Wasting all this time,
Does it get much better?”*
Quality Used Cars band leader has all the feels
“Me and Damon Drinking Beers at the Grandview Hotel” beckons so tenderly you hardly realize Tait has opened a door to his world — and to your own past — that makes you think about everything differently.
He doesn’t suffer from the pretentiousness of later Lou Reed or Bob Dylan. Tait’s stories are prosaic and clean, like a more profuse Paul Simon. Speaking of which, you can hear Tait’s cover of You Can Call Me Al here.
Find more from Melbourne’s Quality Used Cars in last year’s debut Good Days/Bad Days. “Me and Damon Drinking Beers at the Grandview Hotel” is a single that I can only hope means a sophomore album very soon — and more sliding door moments.
*Lyrics deciphered by KZ without the aid of the interwebs