Within a Room Somewhere

I am reluctant to tell people that Sixpence None the Richer (aren't they that band from Dawson's Creek?) is my favorite band. From a broad cultural perspective this is tantamount to admitting something like maybe you subscribe to Cat Fancy magazine. 

[Which I don't, by the way. I'm just saying.]

Anyone who thinks of Sixpence (aren't they that band from She's All That?) as a namby-pamby soundtrack band needs to be subjected to 3:50 - 5:03 of "Within a Room Somewhere" and  you need to turn up the volume a little at 4:22 and then you really need to turn up the volume at 4:44 and then if that person is not willing to reevaluate things you are going to have to punch him in the face.

The word "rage" seems inappropriate to the casual Sixpence  listener. Being stuck and unable to get out (or in) is a pretty persistent Sixpence motif, but Nash is not Zack de la Rocha. Her instrument wrings all kinds of longing and despair and desire out of Slocum's lyrics, but it never rages. The guitars -- and I am counting at least three, one of them very low in the mix singing all kinds of agony -- do all the emotional work here, straining to escape and maybe, maybe breaking free during that last notebend before it all breaks down and we get ready to move back into some serious doldrums on a vaugely gothic love song ("Melting Alone") about drinking alone.