Today's Track - Tuesday, May 27

These United States - First Sight

click here to be taken to the song

I have no idea how I first found out Washington, DC’s These United States, but I have been slightly obsessed with them ever since. The quick singing, yet easy to understand lyrics of “First Sight” will definitely be on every mix I make all summer long. Jesse Elliott is a talented songwriter, who crafts each song more like a story that you want to listen to over and over to make sure you’re not missing a single inflection along the way. I am clearly not the only one to have fallen for Elliott as he recuited over 30 area musicians to help him record the album from which “First Sight” is the title track, A Picture of the Three of Us at the Gate to the Garden of Eden. I missed their last NYC show, and they’re spending June in the United Kingdom, including playing sets at the Glastonbury Festival (WISH i was going!) but I’ll be waiting right here for them to return.

Check the lyrics for “First Sight” - no chorus (i LIVE FOR a great hook) and yet I’m addicited to every word:

“With her mouth making movements to introduce thoughts, I sat. Deafened by trust on the sofa across, quietly calculating the logistics of lust – of when unspoken things could then happen between us. And once all those were done, and we’d got through to love, we would shoot from the hip, reacting off of the cuff. Splitting up at the fork when the going got rough, with a plan for a point to rejoin on the road further.
Up our windows thin, where the ice carved its flowers, I would hold her, and let the wind beat back those hours. And then swaying in subway trains, clutching her dress, dependent on her balance. The walls were useless. While it’s alright to hold tight, please don’t try to hold on; because it’s a home run we hit, love, as it’s going. And gone. But then the world turned so fast it was astoundingly still.
And it must have been that moment made of midnight on the hill, right when the cataracts-ed alley cat spat back at the moon, thrown out into the nighttime. Nine lifetimes too soon, we had come such a ways and knew just what he meant.
There’s a picture of the three of us at the gate to the Garden of Eden.
You can get home, but you can’t get in; locks are like longing, an ever-changing thing. And keys are just clouds made of metal and spark. We knew exactly who we were, and yet couldn’t say quite who we still are. I saw it all happening in one grand epic sweep. From that first sight, we wouldn’t get to sleep for a week. Generations would follow the course that we’d charted.
From the sofa across, I couldn’t wait to get started.” First Sight

if you are These United States (whoa!) or their people and you want the track taken down, just let me know and I'll be happy to oblige.