FIRST RATE PEOPLE :: "Summer Job"

The young and brilliant First Rate People are back with a new single, "Summer Job", a wistful look over the shoulder at a season past. It backs recent one-off release, "Someone Else Can Make A Work Of Art", also available through the band's bandcamp. On "Summer Job", FIRST RATE PEOPLE are in top form, ebullient poly-rhythms bouncing under a melody so infectious that whole song feels like a chorus. Really just a two part exploration of summer pop turning from green to red, gold and brown before dying away with the fall. Jon Lawless and his crew continue to churn out bubblegum lyrics like "You could get a summer job/but it would to be summer again/'cause it's not" side by side with crushing resolutions like, "there are vultures that pick at your thoughts." As the song breaks into its second part, a harmonium and the sweetest female vocal you'll hear in 2011 chime around the lyric, "I don't want to say it will be different" before the male vocal returns (Mike Harloff this time) with the final hook, "Our debt will always unpaid". The final lyrics are echoed by the female counterpart, like a non-tragic version of Postal Service's "Nothing Better". Even with a happy ending, the song fades away like the restless, uncaptureable pop that this band makes so easily and well. If you can catch it, even for a minute (or three and a half), ephemeral and immediate, it is a season gone, but not forgotten.