Foxygen – ‘Where’s The Money?’
Now, before I divulge the ins and outs of why L.A. outfit Foxygen are one of my favourite bands, I must first make a confession. No, I have not sinned (recently), but the truth is that although I now count myself as an ardent follower of the American musical misfits, this was not, initially, entirely of my own accord.
You see, I had one of those moments, life-changing in a musical sense, that some call coincidence, others call fate, and the mystics call synchronicity. It’s rush hour, on the dreary bus ride home through the city’s beat-up streets of urban decay, I’m dreaming up a new band to fall in love with, incessantly skipping through a back catalogue of the 1960s and ’70s songs in some vain attempt to rekindle the spark of the groups I’d played so much I almost felt a part of. That’s when it happened: alighting the overpriced public wagon, I noticed a scrap piece of paper on the floor and, amidst a few lines of indecipherable psychotic scribbles, read the words ‘Foxygen, must listen’.
Safe to say, it wasn’t long before I was utterly immersed in Sam France’s (vocals) and Jonathon Rado’s (guitar) experimental pop project, especially their Alice in Wonderland-esque track ‘Where’s the Money?’ that, by no surprise, is our Track Of The Day.
This tune captures my imagination for several reasons, the main being the fine way in which the eclectic, random and psychedelic instrumentation throughout seeps into every nook and cranny of the mind like a benevolent lysergic that, like all adventures into the back passages of our deepest thoughts, can summon some sinister periods. The darkness, in this case, comes with France’s dank lyrical content, in which he projects the tale of an unhappy, dead-end marriage while all the while edging toward an end product that could’ve come straight off an original Sgt. Peppers pressing.
“He goes to work; his boss is a jerk, yeah, you know, while his wife smokes three cigarettes in a row, by the time he leaves the office, he’s got nowhere else to go,” wails France in a monotone manner, entwining buoyant psychedelia with the perverse, mundane reality of many a life.
Besides the tune itself, I could go on for days with other reasons why Foxygen have become one of my favourites.
We haven’t yet touched on their wild stage antics (which recent shows have been cancelled as a result of) or how the pair, heavily influenced by Brian Jonestown Massacres’ Anton Newcomb, can play nearly every instrument under the sun; the page could be filled with further insight into the group’s total abandonment of contemporary music and how France impersonates different musicians on different records.
For now, though, I think this track is a more than adequate tribute, and if you dig these guys as much as I do, then I highly recommend you set some time aside and acquaint yourselves with their latest album, We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic as it gets a whole lot better, I promise.
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