Unknown :: "The Importance of Being"

While I was posting the Bikini track yesterday I thought I had the best comparison when I name-checked Oppenheimer. I was fantastically incorrect. Oppenheimer is electro-pop to be sure and it is definitely sweet enough to be a yearbook message. But. Oppenheimer is sonically a little different than the Bikini-sound. The comparison I was looking for references a track that still is unclaimed by an artist and was long thought to a Postal Service demo/leak. The story:

Back in 2006, blogs began forecasting a second Postal Service record. We hadn't heard from the band since 2003 and it seemed. about. time. The following song , "The Importance of Being" was posted as either "the first single" or a leak off the yet-to-be-titled album. There were problems. One, the vocals sounded nothing like Ben Gibbard. People managed to convince themselves that it was Postal Service partner-in-crime Jimmy "Dntel" Tamborello on vocals. The second issue was Sup Pop quickly trotting out their legal team and saying, matter of factly, that the track has nothing to do with The Postal Service and that no album is in the works. Cue our disappointment.

But this still left "The Importance of Being" unclaimed and unaccounted for. MTV News did a story on it. And still nothing. It's a bouncy, chimey little cut that, yes yes, sounds a lot like the Postal Service's pattern of instrumentation and arrangement. No one knows who it is. It'll download into your iTunes and tell you it's by The Postal Service because this little package of zeros and ones is a liar. Obviously, if you have the answer or the culprit, let us know. Or maybe don't. As indie-rock mysteries go, this is right up there with who killed Elliot Smith.

Listen :: Unknown - The Importance of Being