Song #54: Two Hours Traffic - Heroes of the Sidewalk (off Little Jabs - 2007)
This is post 6/15 of the Facebook 15 Albums meme. Little Jabs makes the list because it is a perfect album. There, I said it. I am not usually forthcoming with hyperbolic compliments like that, but my PEI boys found an all-killer-no-filler way to prove that the East Coast music scene has been revived to its former glory.
Natalia once described this album as “musical catnip for girls” (I am most likely paraphrasing - she said this in conversation three years ago). I definitely understand where she’s coming from with that - I envy the hypothetical girl for whom these songs are written. The courtship stories that weave through all eleven songs are as ideal as a realist like me can imagine.
In fact, if I could have been the muse for any song written in the past ten years, it would be Heroes of the Sidewalk. It’s not that I have a MASSIVE crush on Liam Corcoran (I do - I have eyes and ears, after all - but it goes beyond that). It’s the purity of the song and the emotion that really get to me. I know it’s completely edgeless, but it’s also completely unpretentious. Some of the lyrics don’t even make sense. To me, this song epitomizes love and I can’t even explain it.
The other songs are similar, though there’s a bit more edge. This album will always stick with me for its poppy perfection, its romance and its ease. It’s about me, but about every other girl at the same time. It’s about that idealized East Coast love that I grew up fetishizing with Joel Plaskett and Sloan.
