The Postal Service
Give Up
(hear it)

When I got my Super Nintendo (20 bucks for the machine with 10 games! And those old games are fun games. Video games are like books in that way, except that they don't charge 300 dollars to buy new books) I did so partly because it came with two Super Mario World games and Yoshi's Island, which is one of those games that in Japan doesn't feature Mario and his pals, but here in the USA it was Super Mario World 4 or something. I played them constantly, with enjoyment factor through the roof.

I listened to this album most of the time I played. It is perfect Super Mario World music. The whimsical seriousness of the lyrics ("i'll wear my badge: a vinyl sticker with big block letters adherent to my chest / that tells your new friends i am a visitor here: i am not permanent" - all whimseriousness needs to decapitalize the first person pronoun, and colons help, too), the boom-chack drum parts, of course the bleeps and bloops. Everything plays right into Mario's three-milimeter high hands, desperately trying to save whatever while he jumps up and down.

I'm not sure that means well for Give Up, by the Postal Service, the piece of music. Or maybe it makes them a perfect accompaniment to our times.

bb, 23 Jun 08