Suburban Living :: "I Don't Fit In"

During the 1980s, movies aimed at teenagers attempted to reconcile the image of the "outsider." The Breakfast Club notably grappled with the role of the individual and "the other," ultimately deciding that everyone was cool in their own way and love was a product of embraced individuality. Or consider, Can't Buy Me Love and Say Anything, two movies that essentially boil down to the revealing of the secret coolness (or worthiness) of a perceived outsider. Even Ferris Bueller, for being universally beloved, seemed to have few real friends beyond the super foxy Sloane and the sardonically morose Cameron. Bueller is in some sense the archetype, a guy who has claimed his coolness by operating firmly outside of societal constraints. Teenage movies haven't materially changed - if anything these same tropes have moved to post-adolescent territory. The themes are still about how to "fit in," how to find love in a developmental stage that rewards only group-think. The appropriately named band Suburban Living attack this issue on single, "I Don't Fit In," the title and chorus resounding like Cameron kicking his Dad's car through the window of the family garage, a kind of dreamily destructive raison d'etre. "I Don't Fit In" can be retrofitted as marching orders, a celebration of purpose - for footnotes see the concluding 15 minutes of any of the above mentioned movies. The guitars borrow wholesale from the Cure catalog and the chorus is a layered, elevating and beautiful mess, as good a dream-pop single as 2012 will have to offer. It sounds cool and you'll love it, which seems to always bring the outside in at the end.