"Worldwide local insider tip." - Ultimo "Poetic lyrics, melancholic pop music [...] exceptionally beautiful!" - Campus Radio Hertz 87.9 "It's soooo good I just kept clicking the button back and listening to it again and again!" - Jennifer Vogtner, Chief Music Editor junkmedia.org "Songs with depth and brain!" - Intro "The 200 Lurkers' finely wrought sound is unique in the local pop-scene." - Neue Westfälische

I love this song. Almost more than I love my dog, definitely more than I love Almond Snickers, which is saying a lot, but since I just ate an Almond Snickers out of my daughter's trick-or-treat bag and then played this song for the eighth time today, I think I can say that with some authority and certainty.

First of all, the way it starts off. Completely unpretentious, has that nice little second guitar line that rides over in the background. Let's just call it what it is: it's sexy. Then the drums. I know you sampled them off an indigo girls song somewhere, but they are fantastic the way they support the simple chord progression, then stumble down a short flight of stairs, then resume. It keeps it very interesting. I hate to compare artists but it's the same thing when Elliott Smith added big fuck-off drums to his songs (Bled White, Independence Day, Sweet Adeline) it turned an introverted artist into an extrovert. It became part of his voice, when his singing voice wasn't big or angry enough to express what was in the lyrics. Those were always the greatest songs; they felt courageous in a way.

Back to the bliss that is Cold Smoke: Every few measures, something gets added in : voice, drums, bass, accordion, xylophone, but it never gets heavy, it never gets too much. It just fills out the song and everything complements the core of guitar/drums perfectly.

My absolute favorite thing about this song is twofold: but it's the way you take your time between verses and play that short solo, which is one of those little graceful, understated figures that george harrison might have thought up on a track from Rubber Soul. But the BEST-best part is when you end it with the harmonic chord and there's a slight pause and it goes into about ten seconds of BLISS with the glockenspiel/guitar playing in that odd minor key - that part, and into the second verse, has affected me the same way since the very first day I heard it: I get this melancholy feeling that spreads through from my chest to my whole body. It makes me physically ache. And I've heard it many many times, and it always does the same thing to me. Very very few songs manage that. That is why it is GREAT.

There's something also about the way you sing this one too. I love the the way you overlap the lines, though I bet that is a pain in the ass to reproduce live. My one complaint about your singing sometimes is that your voice sounds far too nice and pleasant for what I know lies beneath some of these songs; although I'd say that has definitely has started to change in the last say 5 or 6 songs you've done. This one gets it exactly right; it does start out very gentle and a little melancholy as you set the scene, then there's a sense of longing that the minor key of the second verse of the song ("the men that you invited...") and then when you sing "so CHEERS to us" that bitterness comes bubbling up...ahh, that's a good moment. Again you add in some space right after that...which is important as the emotion changes once again to an acceptance/resignation of the "apology" outro....it's wonderful how it repeats to become the theme of the song, and the little notes that vary with the glockenspiel...and how much do I love the fact that you didn't fade it all the way out like one would expect, but finish it strong and echoing? Leaving me DEVASTATED, okay? And all I want to do is just hit "repeat" and play it all over again...