This Is Your Song For....January 11th, 2014: No One Wants To Be Alone On Valentine’s Day by The Humms

Preachers To The Converted, Straight Outta Georgia...

Welcome to the first This Is Your Song for 2014!  Let’s go visit one of the Meccas of Modern Rock for a song that...quite frankly...I find hilarious came up right now (getting into a big ol’ fight with one’s romantic interest will do that to a person).

A bit of Googlemining reveal that The Humms are a band affiliated with the Athens. Georgia scene, although they’re originally from nearby Hartwell.  Oddly enough, their homepage is inactive, but they’re still together judging by how up to date their Facebook page is (their twitter, which is @TheHumms, hasn’t been updated since July).  They’ve also got an album out from bandcamp that you can download for free.   It does seem like they describe themselves as a garage rock band, although the song we’re discussing today has a very poppy feel to it.

And speaking of the song....

This is a fun little number, a very upbeat song about how ambivalent those of us who are...without can be on that most cursed day amongst the perpetually single.  The melody is very bright, with a structure which begins with a single guitar, with the other instruments being added gradually until we get a real hootenany feel.  The vocals, which I presume are by frontman/mastermind Zeke Sawyer (there are two other members of the band, but Zeke seems to do everything save mop up the studio), have a slight Rod Anonymous feel to it, ungainly and, well, human.  And the constant strain of the song is very clear--no one wants to be alone no matter what they say.  And yeah, while Sawyer assures us that they might say otherwise, these people are lying (some just find it hard/to tell you how they feel/they say ‘another day, another day, another day’).  And I love how the lyrics purport to be universal, but Sawyer very slyly makes it personal.  Over the course of the three minutes and change of the song, we learn very clearly that it’s not ‘no one’ who doesn’t want to be alone, but him.  The story starts coming out about him and his relationship with a significant other who won’t 'let me in and see what I’m missing out.’  As the song progresses, the charges get more and more specific until we get a very clear picture of what this person is putting Mr. Sawyer through, and how frustrated he is with longing, until he begins addressing the person directly.

Lord knows I sympathize right now...lol.

Anyway, a fun song--fun enough I downloaded the album.  No video for this song, but here's one from the album, Lemonland...