If there are two words crawling all over the internets which make me want to punch my fellow bloggers in the fucking face they are ‘remix’ and ‘exclusive’.  Remixes seem to be to bloggers much like candles are to moths – I just don’t understand the fascination, but they are every-fucking-where – whereas there can be nothing more guaranteed to give any member of the press, professional or amateur, a great big hubristic stiffy than the opportunity to use the word ‘exclusive’.

So, without further ado, I present a Song, by Toad exclusive: the release of Pull, by The Lightning Bug Situation complete with, yes, you guessed it, a remix of the single and an exclusive b-side.  I know.  I feel the shame – I can barely look myself in the eye any more.

But, just to be absolutely clear, all I am ripping the shit out of with that little diatribe is bloggers scrabbling for attention, but mostly myself for having to eat some of my own more colourful words… again.  Most certainly I am not taking the piss out of the band, who have actually come up with a really nice way of getting their music out to people, packaging up songs from their new album with a b-side, a remix and custom artwork, which they are inviting individual bloggers to host as a kind of online single.  It’s almost like breaking the album (buy it here) up into a three-dimensional jigsaw, with pieces which work nicely enough by themselves, but which can be put together such that a whole new picture emerges across the top surface.

The song itself is cracking too, not least because it kicks off by telling the school reunion to fuck off.  I know it hardly does this in an bold, empowered manner, but it’s still an important sentiment I never get tired of hearing.  There seems to be a sort of softer relation to the likes to the likes of Casiotone and The Mountain Goats at play here, with less of the harsh confrontational edge those bands often deal in, and the album itself is definitely worth hearing.

The Lightning Bug Situation – Pull

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The Lightning Bug Situation – Pull (Brent Murphy Conspiracy Mix)

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The Lightning Bug Situation – The Plains at Night in Winter

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