Today’s song: “Main Street,” Deer Tick

I never really cared much for Deer Tick’s music before, and I probably wouldn’t even have listened to the album that this song was on except that I was assigned a write-up of this video. To my surprise, I really connected with the song immediately. It’s funny what you can find in places you’re not looking.

It opens almost exactly the same as the Afghan Whigs version of “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” which maybe had a subconscious effect, but really, it just reminds me of what Nirvana might have become, if Kurt Cobain had lived and gotten really into alt-country at some point. It’s at a carefully-orchestrated mid-tempo throughout, with a pair of undeniable hooks — in the chorus, and at the start of each verse. It’s all of the things that Nirvana was good at, but it also sounds contemporary and like the pain that John McCauley is expressing is his own — this isn’t pastiche (which was my problem with so much of Deer Tick’s music in the past), it’s something original. It reinterprets their influences, but it’s every bit their own. And it really does sound great.