chillout tent

I'm fascinated by the song "chillout tent" on The Hold Steady's latest CD Boys and Girls in America. This record is amazing in it's swoopingly romantic, almost operatic tales of youth in America. Drawing on a hodge podge of 70's influences (early Springsteen, Thin Lizzy, and Joe Jackson) Boys and Girls in America serves up adolescent nostalgia with its tales of love, loss, and decadence. But not in a cheesy, or superficial manner. It's moving and believable.

The best track is "chillout tent," a mini rock opera about brief, chance encounters between modern day boys and girls in america. The setting for this meeting between a boy and girl in America is, funny enough, an outdoor, rock music festival in Massachusetts. The girl in question drives a long distance with her friends to attend the festival, and escape the boredom of their everyday lives in small town America. Once there, she eats bad mushrooms, passes out, and "came to in the chillout tent," where she is given "oranges and cigarettes" to assist her recuperation. The boy in this rock drama also attends with a group of friends, and meets a similar fate after taking 4 pills (his friend advised him to only take 1) to kill his boredom. He recalls his overdose by saying "everything was spinning and I came to in the chill out tent. He, too, is given "oranges and cigarettes" to help him recover.

Shortly after the boy and girl "come to," their eyes make contact, and they eventually "kick it" in the chillout tent.

Using high-pitched, adolescent voices, the boy and girl, taking turns in the vocal delivery, tell us what happened after they regain consciousness. Both have similar stories and attitudes about their experience.

The girl says: "he was really cute, we kind of kicked it in the chillout tent. And I never saw that boy again."

The boy says "she was really cool. We kinda kicked it in the chillout tent. And I never saw that girl again."

The song ends with energetic piano and horn play while the boy and girl sing their brief enctouner away. They repeat the fact that they "kicked" it until the song fades and evaporates as does their connection.

So, The Hold Steady drum up nostalgic memories of adolescence by conveying a romantic, yet superficial and sadly pathetic story of two teenagers who overdose at an outdoor music festival. But still, it's sweet, funny and moving.

you have to hear it.....

jb