The Elected: "Not Going Home"

I don’t care what label these guys are on (Sub Pop). I don’t care what band they came from (Rilo Kiley). I don’t care if there’s a potty word in this song (the f-one). “Not Going Home” is an adult contemporary song through and through, appropriate for the closing credits of a particularly heart-rending episode of Grey’s Anatomy or as an album track from the album Shania Twain’s gonna release in four years as a bid for artistic respectability. It’s a pockmark on The Elected that Sun, Sun, Sun, a collection of otherwise unassumingly pleasant country songs, would contain a Savage Garden cut, but, f-word, here it is. 

Which means the drums have Mutt Lange thunder but “studio professional” restraint, the guitars come washing down in tasteful sheaths, multi-tracked ooooh's ooze emphatically on the build-up toward the chorus. As for the chorus, one pictures Blake Sennett standing in the rain with his arms outstretched, staring up, spinning and glorious, crying out, “Sometimes you can’t go home / Sometimes you’re already there,” the type of sentiments which maketh my saccharinometer bubble over. The plaintive guitar solo that brings the song to a close can best be described as the diametric opposite of shredding. I guess it’s hard to fault a song for being pleasant, but this is the type of warm bath that makes me long for a razorblade.