0021 - A Weather

I don't know much about A Weather, other than that they're from Portland, Oregon.  Portland is cool - not that I've ever been there, but their football team is called the Timbers, it's where Clark Gable, Stephen Malkmus and Chuck Palahniuk are from, Linus Torvalds lives there and the city flag is awesome.  That's cool enough for me.

Portland's excellent flag.

What's not cool enough for me is songs that are just too long.  As anyone who's ever had a proper conversation with me about music will know, I hate too-long songs with a passion.   Not that songs need to be short, just not longer than is actually necessary.  So this could mean the Pixies' Trompe Le Monde at comfortably under two minutes:

Or Yo La Tengo's Night Falls On Hoboken, a song so long (about 17 minutes) it needs two youtube videos:

The thing is that, even though one lasts about ten times as long as the other, both these songs are the right length.

I have four songs by A Weather and they're all gentle 2 minute acoustic pop songs.  Unfortunately, they all go on for about 5, or more, minutes.

I don't know why bands can't realise that a song has outstayed its welcome.  The only thing I can think of is that someone's written lyrics for 3, or more, verses, so there will be 3, or more, verses, goddamit.  It's possible that this is the case with A Weather and that the lyricism is of such a staggeringly high quality that it justifies the songs going on the way they do.  My other main problem with the band though is that the singing is the worst kind of breathy, whispered murmuring and I neither know nor care what's actually being sung about.

This is the song I liked most/disliked least - Screw Up Your Courage:

I don't hate A Weather, they're not terrible.  It's worse than that: they're boring.