When I first started Friday Night Jukebox, it was my intent to feature a lot (though not only) of album cuts that less discerning (polite way of saying younger) music fans might have missed in the ever-present competition to feature only hit singles. Didn't quite work out that way (apparently, I'm quite the fan of hit singles myself), but this week it's nice to give one such album cut a place in the pantheon (or not) that is Friday Night Jukebox....
I wrote about The Shins in Jukebox XLIII in 2015, and in the years since they have continued their numerous band incarnations (with James Mercer remaining the only constant), as well as releasing their fifth LP in 2017. They finished a twenty-first anniversary tour in September and will undoubtedly have a few more before all is said and done. For their career, The Shins have released five studio albums (with two hitting the top five on the Billboard 200), four EPs, and 23 singles (with a whopping one charting).
"For a Fool" was not released as a single, and it appeared on their album Port of Morrow. The LP peaked at #3 on the albums chart.
Over the last twenty years or so, it seems that most of my musical discoveries occur while I'm driving to and from work, and "For a Fool" is a perfect example. Over the course of several weeks, it grew on me until I reached a point where I sang it again and again after I got home and looked forward to what could often be a miserable drive just so I could hear it again. Mercer envisioned the song as a country single (I can definitely see it) and based it on relationships he'd had throughout his life (good to know that even rock stars can be somebody's fool). The song opens with a lazy guitar and the vocals in the first stanza slide slowly over sparse musical accompaniment before moving into a lush chorus with heavier orchestration that puts the "catchy" in catchy as all hell. From beginning to end the instrumentation, lyrics, and vocals have a melancholy resignation (but never get maudlin) where you can hear the heartache of another lost love, with the heart telling itelf, "Not again...ah, shit, yes again." It's pop music magic, from a performer who seems to specialize in pop music magic.
Lyric Sheet: "If I can learn/Anything from this, then I'd be like/The fox in the fable of light..."
Enjoy:
Republicans = Losers
Peace,
emaycee
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