RIFF MARKET

Boston

Download: The Walkmen: "Lost in Boston"

I'm sure the Perceptionists or 7L or the Blanks or whoever had at least eight or nine concept records in them about the Big Dig, Boston's euphemism for the blackhole of dirt and money rackets that eventually rerouted Interstate 93 underneath the downtown. It is, says wiki, "the single most expensive highway project in American history." Good for you, Boston. But I wonder about the Indians who helped you dump all that tea in the harbor, what they'd have to say.

While surely some sweet undergraduate or feathers-not-dots type is writing five theses on the Big Dig's psychological effects on Boston pop, I'd just like to note that DC's the Walkmen have written what could be the New York Yankees of fly-by Boston sucks rock tunes--their own "big" "dig." If "a 100,000 blinking lights are making me exhausted" isn't about that miserable stretch of Big Dig shitdirt near the top of Hanover in Little Italy, the one with the accordian player hobo I used to give money to my way in off the T, then on the way back I'd wave to him and he'd say something like "I don't want your wave, I want your money!", I don't know what it is--maybe something about the Scientology building? Don't get me started on the bums over there.

But the psychological effects. What the weather and blue laws and curse of Babe didn't already do to the place... I mean beyond nothing downtown open after 2am (or 11:30pm if you didn't have a car or the cash for the city's notoriously pricey cabbies--sidenote, if you ask me, that's why Brian's "I'll pay for your taxicab... if you suck etc etc" seemed so reasonable at first), there was the navigation difficulty. That line "we're clearing our stuff and we're packing the car and heading on uptown..." is ten retards brilliant because Leithauser delivers it so cheery, so optimistic--maybe uptown's awesome. Then comes the disappointment: "...and nothing's gone on.... you can hear a shout for miles around."

That said, this song could have been better if it was about being lost in Boston.