Last weekend I discovered I had created a playlist of all the worlds greatest dad albums available on Bandcamp, only I couldn't remember why. I searched my email but there were no press releases in there for the band, so I figured I must've read a post / tweet / Facebook post / suggestion from a friend, snagged the tunes, and saved them for later listening.*
At first listen, worlds greatest dad sounds like they grew up on Matador '90s indie records. An obvious soft spot for me. But as the songs went on that superficial comparison fell away as I was enthralled by Maddie Duncan's emotionally drenched vocals. The chords inside her throat bend and shred to her will, revealing a raw honesty that can literally make your head whip around in wonder. The band's secret weapon in that Duncan is a raw conduit for delivering lyrics with a weight that punches straight through your brain and deep into your heart.
Case in point, and the moment I realized I now loved this band, is one plaintive yowl of a lyric delivered with shuddering effect starting 0:37 seconds into "A Song For Mogis." Duncan sings, "And goddamn I’m almost 25 / I thought i’d feel a little better a quarter through my life."
And when Duncan hit that "better" and then that "quarter" in my headphones I felt the connection and a plaintive longing blanketed me as that lyric became a universal reality that I suddenly felt through to my bones. It's just so, so ... sad. And relatable. Even to an old guy like me.
Speaking of old, Duncan does look into the future later in the song, updating her potential situation to "goddamn I’ll be 35 / sleeping in somebody's basement the rest of my life" and it's at that point I want to reach out and say a lot can change in ten years, just you wait. But then again, you may be right.
Only one way to find out.
*I looked, and it was Kip (of course, because he has excellent taste) who clued me into the band at the end of April via a bunch of texts. So that answers that!
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