THANKS FOR CHRISTMAS/XTC

Like so many Christmas songs, they'll get to you when you least expect it, even in July.

HUNGRY EYES/Eric Carmen

Every morning when I prepare to feed the cat, she stands there in the middle of the kitchen floor staring at me in anticipation. Imagine my horror today when the chorus of this truly awful song began playing over and over in my head. To remedy the situation I began thinking about the Red House Painters’ bizarre paean to one lucky feline, “Wop-a-din-din,” on my way to work, which got me to thinking of other songs about cats. (Commuting on the subway can sometimes be a bit mind-numbing.) I came up with two (it's a short commute), both by the Cure: “All Cats are Grey” and “The Love Cats,” the latter of which mercifully kicked Eric Carmen back into the depths of my musical memory, at least until feeding time tomorrow.

DRIVER'S SEAT/Sniff 'n' the Tears

You know how some songwriters supposedly use dummy lyrics as a placeholder until they write something for real? I don't think these guys ever made it that far. Oh, by the way, which one’s Sniff?

SOLDIER'S GRIN/Wolf Parade

I recall seeing Wolf Parade on New York Noise in that video where some guy’s wandering around a slummy city setting with several heads all sort of balanced on his shoulders. Whatever. But apparently they’re all the rage, with two spinoff bands (one’s called Sunset Rubdown, which is pretty good as far as band names go) and legions of fans all swearing by the stuff and writing ecstatic reviews of it in freebie handouts like The L Magazine. It’s kind of okay rock music I guess, but I’ve already lived through the whole “math rock” thing. These days I’m more excited by a good ol' Robyn Hitchcock song or something new and unique like Fleet Foxes and their baroque, vocally folkily (vocal folkal? volck?) pop. Nevertheless, it just goes to prove once again that it’s not always the best songs that get stuck on brain repeat, as this carnivalesque riff has been going through my head for the past couple of hours, a sure sign that I need to engage in a conversation or at the very least turn on the radio. . . .

P.S. I think if I’d been at this show I would have been annoyed by the audience. But as the band Sloan once sang, presumably referring to the Grateful Dead, "It’s not the band I hate; it’s their fans.” Although in this case I think I might hate the band, too. The backlash starts here.