Blame It on the Tetons

Language is a liquid that we're all dissolved in great for solving problems after it creates the problems.

I have to admit that I've never really been a big Modest Mouse fan. Their stuff is fine, I guess, but on the whole it has never really spoken to me. I went to that one free show they did in Salt Lake where there were too many people and people got turned away and it was a big deal and whatnot. It was a pretty good show, but yeah, they've never really been my jam. (If I'm being perfectly honest, that night I enjoyed Avi Buffalo a lot more than I did Modest Mouse. So sue me.)

Anyway, with that disclaimer about my real feelings regarding Modest Mouse out of the way, their tune "Blame It on the Tetons," man, it kills me. Ever since the first time I heard the first 10 seconds it was love. I mean, pierced through the gut, felt like I had to reevaluate my life choices love.

You know that thing where sometimes you're going about your business and out of heaven there seems to descend a lyric or a line of poetry or a guitar riff or a sunset or some other perfection that is just so sublime that the very moment you experience it you think to yourself, "yes." And that yes is as affirmative a yes as you've ever yessed? It's like you've been given the chance to look at the actual thing that is casting the shadows of the wall of the cave that Plato was stuck in. And even though it may be that that yes is really just a fleeting yes, as it fleets the yes is actually Yes. You know?

To be honest I'm not sure "Blame It on the Tetons" is quite up to that level of yessitude, but I've listened to it about 30 times today (both the Modest Mouse version and Josh Ritter's cover), and for whatever reason it's been feeling pretty yessy.

The Tetons