Song of the Day: June 9th

Red House Painters: "Wop-a-Din-Din" from Old Ramon

There's a lot of subtlety in the work of Mark Kozelek, whether it be the progression of chords in a slow building ballad or the boxer metaphors found in Ghosts of the Great Highway. However, no Kozelek song is written with more of subtle wink than "Wop-a-Din-Din" which, despite seemingly being a straight-forward love song, could easily go misunderstood by most of the people who listen to it. It starts out simply enough, with an opening stanza like "she's got big green eyes and a long Egyptian face/she moves across the floor at her own pace" it's seem to be pretty clearly a love song. Later, however, you may wonder at a line like "and if I role an kick around, I might knock her to the ground/but she'll come back anyhow" or "she'll yawn and stretch, and stare me down expressionless/and lay back down in her nest" but you may just chalk that up to some rough times and a little artistic expression. You'd be wrong, however, as this song, though never acknowledged anywhere in the lyrics (not even in the parts in Spanish), is about Kozelek's cat. That's what makes his work so interesting, he doesn't have to spell it out for his audience with a *wink-wink* at the end, he just lets the song speak for itself. This isn't lowest common denominator songwriting. If you get the joke, good for you, if not it's just a love song to human instead of a cat. And make no mistake, this is a love song.

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