| Julie Doiron on “said the gramophone” | View Comments |
Here are two recordings of another unhappy song – “The Wrong Guy”. Taken together, they are a perfect manifestation of Doiron’s unvarnished music: the same song, two or three years apart. Each one sung true, and different.
On the Split version (which doesn’t feature any members of Okkervil River, before you get excited), it is her and a guitar, slow, still in mourning for the realisation that “he was the wrong guy”.
On the new version, Doiron is less delicate. She is almost wry as she sings – describing a kiss, he-and-she, with a bitter humour. Years later, she doesn’t feel the same way about her mistake. And now her old band, Eric’s Trip, is here to be loud – guitars and drums and distortion, a noise of the inevitable, the past, the tragic. She is not for a moment sorry for herself. But she wonders at how easy it is for us to make such vast mistakes.
