Song: “Like U Crazy”

I grabbed this at Amoeba the other day but only got a chance to listen yesterday. It probably played four times in a row while I was in my car, driving from one end of town to the other. I knew this would be my favorite track the first time I heard it, but every time it loops back around again, I get happy.

I realize now I picked this husband-and-wife album over the new Sonic Youth, which is still sitting wrapped on my desk.

How do those husband and wife bands do it?

Are there some mornings when Thurston looks at Kim and thinks, “It’s exhausting being this cool all the time. Today, can I wear suspenders, and you wear support hose?”

When you’re in a quirky band like this one, maybe you do your best writing when he’s in suspenders and she’s in support hose and you’re all alone in your tiny, dusty house where there’s a big dog taking up all the space on the couch, and a baby wandering around somewhere with jam all over his face, and you’re sweating and angry because he wants to put the sound of clapping coconuts on the song where you’re clearly talking about space pods in Jupiter, where there aren’t any coconuts, so if anything you want the sound of space pods ripping, which in your head kind of sounds like forks on a laminate surface, but he’s not listening and you’re sick of him taking over your songs and why haven’t you been asked to open for Rilo Kiley yet?

And then you look up and he’s holding that tiny toy piano, the one you found when your car broke down outside Phoenix when you were on that road trip where he asked you if he could tattoo your initials at the base of his left pinkie finger. He’s holding that little toy piano — the one with the drawing of a possum wearing pigtails — and he’s staring at you with those eyes that know how to talk to your brain and he says… nothing.

He waits as he watches you wipe your tears, hitch your guitar up your shoulder, and then quietly, slowly, count to four.

What comes out of you next is the sound of your hearts beating for each other.