Caroline Smith and The Goodnight Sleeps
The Wait Aches For The Good Man
Aug 2, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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Tying My Shoes
original version appears on Backyard Tent Set
This is actually one of my favorite songs I've written based on being able to say exactly what I wanted to say. When I write a song I'm always going back in forth about how to proficiently say things and rarely settle on something I think says it right, but upon finishing this song I definitely sat back and said to myself "I really nailed that one."
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Closing The Doors
original version appears on Backyard Tent Set
A song about knowing when to throw in the towel, call it a game and close the doors on a helpless situation.
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Where Has Sally Gone?
original version appears on Backyard Tent Set
The lyrics for this song evolved from a short story I wrote sophomore year of college. I have a fascination with personifying the wind in my songs and in this particular one it rescues a little girl in the grips of abandonment.
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Lack of Height
original version appears on Backyard Tent Set
As one of our leading power-pop numbers, we are always surprised at everybody's positive reception of this song. We were worried as to how this rockin' pop ballad would fit in with our folk driven line-up, and we were very happy with the dynamic it adds to our set. This song was written about the biggest crush of my teenage career and the dissolution of its presence in my life. It's an interesting feeling getting over the boy of your 17 year old dreams and realizing there's more out there.
Caroline Smith has probably devoured a lot of Flannery O'Connor short stories in her time, letting the Southern gothic, Depression-era mindset get into her, to make her weary of the hardships and the people that bring them on. These people are predominantly immature men and they do insensitive, idiotic things as if they're only capable of buffoonery and crushing beer cans against the side of their heads with a grunt and a groan. She believes that a good man is as hard to find as O'Connor does and it's a weighty thing. It's as if the good ones are without their goods for the longest time, like an incubation period that has no known ending date. So they ferment and sit there, just being worthless and disgusting until the day that they're less so, when they can be taken places and shown off as usable members of society and worthy sources of companionship. They're finally stable enough to not make as many fart noises by sinking their cupped palms down the collar of their t-shirts and under their armpits. It takes a long time for that to happen, so what Smith and other mature women do is they deal with the immaturities and the fart noises, putting up with the riff raff, waiting it out until there's some sort of payout and shared adulthood. Smith and her band, the Good Night Sleeps, ring the triteness out of these man-boys by making it sound like the light, hissing sighs of a tea kettle just burbling and rocking into a boil, the steam escaping in a low howl before the freakout. She stomps and she emotes, but it's in a very collected and settling way, as if she's made amends with the prospects of having to make it through all of the duds before getting to the good ones. She sings with such a unique pinch to her voice - a come hither warble that predates her body by generations and generations -- and the music comes wonderfully like a lazy locomotive, giving it the subtlest brawn and lung power, giving her the confident horsepower that she casually exudes in bringing these doldrums and dolts to light. It's as if there's a low and full moon hanging above her words and melodies, servicing them with the electricity that they need to do the rest, to be as sharp and as bummed out as they need to be. She begins the song "Closing the Doors" - and continues it until the very end - dragging on the futility of the men that she and those others that she knows come into contact with all the time. She sings, "When the men will be boys and the girls sing the chorus again," hoping that there will be a time when everything will change and there will be a legitimate reason to find love in one of those men instead of another case of mothering. Time passes during the song and eventually there's a reckoning and a prophetic conclusion that there will be life "when the men all grow up and all the girls start to see a new day," and that's what's out there, what could be. Until then, Smith and her other staring-at-the-moon friends will just wear out the time until then even though the wait aches.
Caroline Smith and the Good Night Sleeps MySpace Page
