The Hold Steady - “First Night”
(Rediscovering this song, I recalled the opening lines of this album: “There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right. Boys and girls in America, they have such a sad time together.”)
Rediscovering this song, I wondered, would I give the same (perhaps questionable) advice it contains? If a young girl was in hysterics (inconsolable, unhinged and uncontrollable) and I had to say something, do something, would I say the same thing? Angry, wanting justice and wanting somehow, if harshly, to comfort and validate her: Don’t bother talking to the guys with the hot soft eyes. You know they’re already taken. Don’t even speak to all those sequencer and beats boys. When they kiss they spit white noise! And then, then I would have the chorus back me up, a group or boys and girls calling through the window “WHITE NOISE!” It could go on and on like a lullaby.
White noise! White noise!
