hardcorefornerds:

So Cow - ‘Dunno’ from Meaningless Friendly (Tic Tac Totally, 2010)

My favourite Irish singer-songwriter, but mostly because he’s more of a one-man-band (except when he’s on stage, with a band, of course).

This song’s not much over 2 minutes long, but it’s the title track (in all but name) and kind of the kernel of the album. Fuck me, some of this is depressing - “I can’t stop shaking/memories of a teenage pregnancy/so just leave me be here”, and elsewhere, “Now I’m 26/I’ve got no mortgage, I got no kids… I’ve got a horrible feeling that I’ll never fall in love again” - but it’s all wrapped up in heartbreakingly sweet vocal melodies.

Meaningless Friendly might just have left behind the quirky indie pop for the goddamn deepest-cutting punk-pop album since Green Day wrote Holden Caulfield - from the Nimrod-aping rhythms of ‘Mokpo’ to the Titus Andronicus-like overdrive-pop of ‘The Tony Keady Affair’, and other tracks that just rush through - or past - you on waves of intensity, waves of fear and waves of punctuating drum fills. Though still with plenty of quirk, both knowing and oh-so-knowing, in between (there’s a fucking soccer joke at the end of this song).