He does just that with songs five and six, the heart of the 10-track album. “The World in a Fishtank” is a terrifically bouncy pop track, with a guitar line that mimics the vocal delivery in the verse and Kilpatrick’s voice as much in its natural element as anywhere on the album. It’s a song about growing up, and wishing you didn’t have to. How many of us have had “another late night in the kitchen for mom and dad”? “They fight like crazy/ Is that the way I’m gonna be/ When I get married?” The first half of each couplet is quickly delivered, the second drawn out in counterpoint.
Really, it’s hard to beat reveling in nostalgia, for my money. “Every time mom would turn the lights down low/ They’d climb out the window” — like you didn’t do that? “Headin’ straight over to the seashore/ Another talk about the future/ Wishing it could stay like this forever/ instead of growin’ older.” The Frotus Caper’s Joe Boucher gives us an accordion wash to drive the point home.
“Carnival in the Rain” pulls further on the heartstrings. It opens with an appropriately down-in-the-mouth guitar line “because it’s been raining like hell since we got here/ Holed up in the hotel with cheap beer/ And all I want to do is head for home.” Kilpatrick here breaks out his falsetto for the first time, to emphasize the “home,” but subtly enough that you barely notice the first time around. A great guitar break from Calvin Goodale follows the first chorus, a little Bachman Turner Overdrive and the sort of thing that makes the second verse so much better for the spacing, and it sticks around for some phrases throughout the second verse.
When Kilpatrick delivers the clincher — “I’m holdin’ her hips cuz she loves me/ She loves me cuz I’m lucky” — you can just picture this as the music playing in the background of that scene in Spider-Man where Spider-Man is hanging upside down and Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane has pulled up his mask just enough to kiss him passionately (even if that scene was just written into the movie so Dunst would be featured prominently in a wet T-shirt, fueling the wet dreams of countless 14-year-old comic-book geeks).
If things go right, that’s just what you’ll find: Pete Kilpatrick tunes sprinkled throughout your popular culture. Hey, it could happen. Portland’s latest star shines plenty bright for the rest of the country to see.
On the Web
Pete Kilpatrick: http://www.myspace.com/petekilpatrick
