Today I’m going to be so on the nose with my pick. Dando Shaft’s “In the Country” from their Evening with Dando Shaft album expertly captures why Mondays suck. Its never per se, because Mondays objectively are worse than any other day, its just that Mondays immediately follow our weekend. Aren’t weekends so great? That’s when you own all your time. Coming back to Monday and ceding that control seems so antithetical to a free human spirit. Ah well, there are lots of justifications for ceding such control…but damn if the weekends don’t make you think twice.
Anyway, back to “In the Country”, Dando Shaft was a peculiar band, so peculiar that they sound almost like a twin of the truly great folk-rock band Pentangle. What set them apart a bit was their more traditional lean in style. Pentangle, the better band, could draw from more progressive and urbane styles…Dando just didn’t have that open mindedness to remain as viable and timeless. This song in particular though is quite timeless because it actually sounds like Dando is passionately acknowledging their datedness. The music starts off beautifully by exhorting the virtues of leaving out in the country but then tonally gets darker in pieces as the music ends in spurts here and there with them extolling very aggressively how much they “hate your city, all the week day long” and how much they’ll “leave your city, all the week day long.” Its such a brilliant tonal change, because this shows this isn’t some twee song about the beauty of nature etc. but one that is plainly acknowledging its reasons to dislike the end of the weekend feel. Effin’ Monday’s am I right? Hopefully, just this week.