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October 17, 2008
CMJ Spotlight: Best Friends Forever
It's going to be pretty impossible to profile every band playing After the Jump's CMJ week events in-depth. There's just too much goodness to go around. Luckily, readers of this site are well-informed regarding the merits of many of these bands already. Just taking the Tap Bar for example, I shouldn't have to tell you again about the specific radness of the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, My Teenage Stride, or A Sunny Day in Glasgow. That quality has been sufficiently parsed. So I dedicate this space towards the lesser-known Best Friends Forever, a group so Minnesota OG that their MySpace influences are limited to Prince, Dylan, and Soul Asylum's Dave Pirner (perhaps the members of the Replacements have personally offended them in some way?). The BFFs in question, Bri Smith and Jes Seamans, sound giddy in love with everything in their songs: life, guitar licks, each other, boys, playing keyboards, presidential history, you name it. Below are a couple shiny apples from a bushel of songs sure to swimmingly kick off next Wednesday evening .
Best Friends Forever - "Twins in Love"
"Oh, I don't know you, maybe that's why I think your the perfect person. I can fill in the gaps anyway I want to, and spend my time dreaming of the fake you."
Now, it's been quite a while since I've been out on the dating scene, but from what I remember, the first lines of "Twins in Love" are damn apt. Everyone disappoints eventually, but this track captures the heart skipping first blush quite well. The combination of playfully earnest lyrics, deceptively rocking guitar work, and a mind-sticking "Oh-oh-oh" chorus is swell.
Best Friends Forever - "My Head in Front of Your Head" (live on 89.3)
This summer I talked about my discovery of BFF's ode to that eminently respectable Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, and here they are crushing hard on that party's finest representative (no, not Reagan). The girl's make it clear that they aren't in it for Abe's position of power, but rather his rakish charm. "I know you were an unhappy man, funereal, they say..." is the clever in to a happy faced narrative of what Lincoln might have enjoyed in the loving embrace of one (or both?) of our heroines. Dancing, Shakespeare reciting, hair combing, it would have been a hoot, and they even promise to have thwarted JW Booth as a capper. All of this might again be a touch precious if it wasn't for that nagging little ear worm guitar riff that starts the song off and keeps it moving throughout.
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Best Friends Forever play at 8 sharp on Wednesday, October 22nd kicking off a seriously stacked Tap Bar lineup at the Knitting Factory. It's worth resisting your shattered CMJ attention span to come early and stay late.
Posted by Jeff Klingman at October 17, 2008 01:30 PM
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