Best of 2004, #12: Does He Love You? by Rilo Kiley

Man, I so freaking love this song. I'm seriously in the part of the show where each song was so close it was really really tough to edge one above another, but that's what they pay me the big bucks for around here. It's time to just trudge on.

I overheard a Rilo Kiley song (not this one) on the local college radio station here last summer -- WKNC at NCSU. I ended up buying some of their stuff from iTunes, including this amazing song.

Rilo Kiley has been called "alt country" and "almost alt country" in some various and sundry reviews I've read. Let me tell you kids, this is utter bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I really dig this band, but their "country" experiments are forced and unconvincing. Their true strength is in their Indie Rock stuff, which I'll admit have a serious "true life" feel as Bill Monroe would say. They're about real people, with real flaws, and their real emotions. In that way, I consider them cousins to our blessed Americana and alt country music, but the instrumentation is straight up Indie Rock.

This song is a tragic love triangle story - two people married, with a mutual girlfriend having an affair with the husband. They're separated by distance -- both geographical and emotional. The speaker of the song is often unclear, and so the same lines seem to be spoken by each woman at the same time and have vastly different meanings. It's a very powerful technique in song-writing, and it's one I can't remember encountering before.

The commentary on loneliness, even within a marriage, fidelity, life ambition, family bonds, and trust is just amazing. And the lyrics and story are all so very simple! This is going to be a song I'll grow and grow with, I can already tell. I think it'll mean something completely different to me in ten years, and something else ten years after that.

The whole song is actually just a slow and subtle crescendo. It builds and builds through the back-story, picks up the pace at the moment of dawning suspicion, and then quickly ramps upward to a screaming/sobbing "and your husband will never leave you... he will never leave you for me" climax floating among grinding guitars and pounding drums. It ends in a sudden stop of all instruments but a flourish of classical violins -- not fiddles. I find myself clicking the volume up and up and up all the way through the song, especially when I'm in the truck. By the end it's just solid sound with the human voice barely audible.

If my sorry description here isn't enough to sway you, here's another interesting nugget. Last Spring I was standing in line at Starbucks (sorry Sean!), and I picked up the Elvis Costello mixed CD at the register. You know what I'm talking about? Those "these are my favorite songs" collections by famous artists like Norah Jones and Emmylou? Well anyway, on Elvis Costello's collection, this was song number two or three. Oh yeah.