#26 Japancakes – If I Could See Dallas
Japancakes are another one of those silly Athens, Georgia bands that probably do not get the credit that they deserve. Sure they did an instrumental version of My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Loveless’ which was the price of admission but unlike some of the other bands that have graced this list, this is the first band which is completely instrumental.
For me the emotional connection for this record is two-fold. One, this album is my soundtrack to Athens, a sleepy little college town that the Japancakes seemed to have been able to capture through the tempo of the record. Living in Chicago, the south has this very deliberate nature to it which does not exist here. Often the speed is such that we are already worried about three breaths in the future rather than where you were and what you are doing. The album has always just felt like warmth and well, falling asleep drunk in a fountain in Athens, if that is even possible.
Secondly, the album has also become part of my southern listening. While the summer of 2013 has not been a killer like last year, Chicago can still get hit with high heat and humidity. And for this reason, it’s become a fairly regular standby on my pod and probably my go to summer album.
“Now Wait For Last Year” pulls you in with it’s Steel Guitar and the Japancakes wind you up and down the streets of Athens showing off different images and feelings. ‘Elephants’ offers the warmth of strings alongside the steel guitars as this extended epic gives you the opportunity to stare out the car window and dream of trees being covered in Kudzu (Or dream of eating Szechuan . The daydream is able to be snapped from the poppy “Westworld”, a reminder that the band is still aware of current pop songs.
As I have been counting down the albums and staring at the unlikely #26 in the eyes, I was thinking that maybe I was being a little too generous with this albums place but I realized that as I am listening to it now, maybe I short-changed it. Sometimes, it’s these types of albums that just seem to fit the holes of our soul.