The Fine Art of Surfacing

Anybody who is smart enough to make a play on the great Magnetic Fields lines "won't be happy with me/give me one more chance/you won't be happy anyway" is ok in my book, and that's what The Submarines do on "Peace and Hate" with "if you should go/I won't have you to blame/for my unhappiness, for darker days." That they set it to a lilting pop tune doesn't hurt, neither, plus they do the male-female vocal trade-off trick I'm almost always a sucker for too (see X, Los Campesinos!, the Mekons, Yo La Tengo, etc.). So, while you might know them for the boppy ditty backing the omnipresent iPhone ads*, they're probably more than that.

And we'll get to find out for sure when the Submarines play SOhO tomorrow (Thursday) at 9 pm. See you there?



*And does Apple do it on purpose, excerpting songs that would never quite make it in the advertising world in their entirety? This Submarines cut is "You, Me, and the Bourgeoisie," and at least a bit of a comment on consumerism. Still, that's better than the iPod ad that featured Chairlift's "Bruises," which focuses on bruised and grass-stained knees, no doubt from a lover deep in prayer. (Oh, and Regina Spektor really deserves some royalties from that one, no?)