Loudon Wainwright III Part 5: I'm Alright

Now we come to one of the best records of Loudon's career, perhaps his second-best of the eighties. It was recorded two years after Fame and Wealth, once again on the small folk label Rounder Records. I'm Alright was recorded in London, England, and Loudon himself moved there around this time (the song "Cardboard Boxes" is about moving house, as it happens).

Loudon had produced Fame and Wealth himself, but perhaps realizing that the sound of that album wasn't too great, he invited Richard Thompson on board again, this time as producer as well as session man. The result is a much cleaner sound, though equally stripped down. (Ironically, Thompson's own albums at this time suffered from misguided attempts by other producers to give them an eighties sheen; he might have been better off producing his own records.) As was noticeable with Fame and Wealth, Loudon has given up attempts to be a rocker, having parodied his efforts in "Watch Me Rock, I'm Over Thirty" (on Final Exam, as we saw.)

The opening song of I'm Alright is in fact the lonely acoustic troubador song par excellence. It is ironic, then, that many people today probably know it best in a lush band arrangement with harmony vocals. Yes, it's One Man Guy, the song Rufus appropriated from his Dad and now everyone thinks is his own.

I'm not denying that Rufus's version is sweet on the ear, or that there isn't a curious Oedipal thing going on, with Rufus apparently going against the grain of the lyric by suggesting that whatever Loudon may be, he, Rufus, is not a miserable, selfish loner. That, at least is the impression given by his use of Richard's son Teddy and his own sister Martha on vocal harmonies. How can he be a one-man guy with his best mate and loving sis behind him?

Thus Rufus's version, however sweet, doesn't interpret the lyrics so much as reject their message. This is another of Loudon's loner songs, simultaneously celebrating and recoiling from his motel room existence and his alley cat ways (check out "Motel Blues", "Ingenue", and several others). The song confesses the selfishness of this kind of existence, while clinging to it, even revelling in it. It suggests that the only thing we can depend on and trust is ourselves:

these three cubic feet of bone and blood and meat are all I love and know

Perhaps no one since Philip Larkin has been this honest about the selfish pleasures of the single life.

Thus as a son's gift to a father, Rufus's version is ambiguous, to say the least. Nevertheless, royalties on "One Man Guy" must represent one of Loudon's biggest ever pay days (after "Dead Skunk" and Johnny Cash's cover of "The Man Who Could Not Cry").

The song is written to be sung live at one of Loudon's endless solo shows:

People will know when they come to the show
What kind of a guy I am
They'll understand what I stand for
And what I just can't stand

Great word play, that! And a perfect concert-opener.

Here you can see Loudon perform the song:



And here is Rufus's very different interpretation:





The next song, Lost Love, is a breakup song without an apparent personal angle, it being highly stylized in the manner of a Noel Coward song or something from that era. I'm very fond of it, however untypical of Loudon it may be. There is some great wordplay again.

I've noticed that you never call me "darling", darling
I understand the reason wh-hy-hy-hy
There is no reason why you should call me "darling", darling
Leave love alone and let it die.

The middle part is more like the Loudon we know and are distinctly ambivalent about, however (see "Mr. Guilty" and the later "So Damn Happy"):

I'm not completely sure I'm sorry, darling
When I get angry, then I'm glad
I'M HAPPY THAT IT'S FINALLY OVER
[lapsing back into Noel Coward mode) But when I'm not glad, I'm sad.

As with his country pastiches on Final Exam you wish Loudon would write a little more in this jazz-lounge vein.

Then we have the blues parody, I'm Alright, the title track. Loudon introduces it in concert as the "happy blues." Those old black guys certainly make you think the bottom of their world has fallen out now that their baby darn left them, but a middle class white guy like Loudon can't be that unselfconsciously solipsistic, so on the whole you believe him when he says he's "all right without you", though there may be an element of protesting too much. The performance of the song below is prefaced by an interview with Loudon in which he explains that the album was originally going to be called One Man Guy, but his agent persuaded him that the record-buying public would think he was gay, so he changed it... The performance is a good example of the visual and physical element of Loudon as a performer: lots of spastic gestures and weird facial contortions.



In another interview excerpt shown after the performance of the song in the above video, Loudon says that he was originally drawn to the idea of making it clear that the singer is not "all right" after all; but in the end he was drawn to the comedy ending with the dental floss....

After those thematically linked songs comes a Loudon song about someone else (notice how these are becoming more infrequent as we go on? Not John is about the death of John Lennon five years earlier. It's a sincere tribute, though Loudon cannot resist an irreverent pun:

John Lennon and his wife Yoko - Oh No

youttube offers us a video montage together with the album performance of this song:



Incidentally, loser assassin Michael David Chapman may have been stalking a different victim 12 months earlier:





Cardboard Boxes is about moving house, as already stated, a nice semi-acoustic number with some great drumming.

Screaming Issue is a song written to Loudon's daughter by the singer Suzzy Roche (member of the family vocal group The Roches), who was born (judging by the song's lyrics) the previous Christmas. There would be another daughter (Lexie Kelly) by another woman later, so that it is sometimes difficult to be sure who these Wainwrights are singing about (Rufus has said that "Little Sister" is not about Martha, so is it about Lucy or Lexie?) At least there is no mistaking for whom this song is intended as Loudon mentions Lucy by name. The title puns, of course, on two senses of "issue." Delicate and beautiful.

Next we have one of Loudon's edgy funny songs, about the questions journalists always ask anyone who still has the temerity to outstay their welcome in the music business: How Old Are You?

The questions range from the nasty and impertinent:

How come you don't try to write a novel?
How come you don't try to write a play?
Isn't it time you died or retired?
Why the hell won't you just go away?
How old are you, are you crazy?
How old are you, are you really a drunk?
Are you bitter, have you grown lazy?
Were you embarrassed about "Dead Skunk"?

to ones that Loudon probably wonders about himself:

How come you didn't get big like Bob Dylan?
How come you didn't get big like Springsteen?
Were you unable or were you unwilling?
Tell us the truth about it, come on, come clean!

(Nice guitar by Richard Thompson, by the way!)

Then there is the utterly charming Animal Song, about the noises that animals make. A children's song. I don't trust the performer who never records at least one of those. Here's Loudon performing the song (followed by 'Five Years Old) live in 1987:





Out of This World is a hopeful song looking forward to the next life. Daddy Take A Nap is a slightly annoying brass band stomp with mildly amusing lyrics written from a child's point of view. Ready or Not (So Ripe) is an optimistic sounding song I've never got my head around.

The album closes quietly with Career Moves, which looks back over Loudon's career in the music business and as an entertainer with a lot of quiet pride:

For 20 odd years I have strummed on guitars
5,000 lost flat picks, four fingertip scars
I must have broken a million g strings
Picking and strumming, and playing these things
Banging and tunin', and playing these things.

And it's been 16 years now that I've written songs
Over a 100 and still growing strong
About drinking and hockey and flying above
Again and again about unhappy love
Over and over, unhappy love.

And it's music for money, but I'll do it for fun
Oh, I know how to do it, it's easily done
To stand on a stage doesn't make me afraid
I'm comfortable up there, it's gotten me laid
It always amazes me when I get paid.

So here am I doing all that I can do
You're paying, I'm playing, I'm grateful to you
Indoors and outdoors, at home and abroad
I sing these songs and you people applaud.
You haven't changed much, you still applaud.

With that obvious cue to the audience in the last line, it will be seen that the album is framed by two songs that seem written to order for Loudon's live shows. Moreover, "Career Moves" is Loudon's answer to some of the questions the hostile journalists ask in How Old Are You?, in particular, why he still sings and why he won't quit the business.

Here's Loudon singing "Career Moves" live on British TV in 1993:



You'll have to supply the applause yourself on cue!

I'm Alright was nominated for a grammy. It goes without saying that it didn't win...

Note: Scandalously, this fine album appears at time of writing to be out of print, with Amazon.com asking nearly $50.00 for a second-hand copy! Ordinarily I would not recommend that anyone download an mp3 copy of the album (that's against the whole ethos of these threads, which aim to present the artistic integrity of the LP/CD medium), but should you wish to support the artist, you can do so here: http://www.amazon.com/Im-Alright/dp/B000UDQ5VK/ref=dmusic_cd_album

Loudon Wainwright III - Part 3: T-Shirt & Final Exam

After Unrequited, like its predecessor, failed to sell, Columbia dropped Loudon, who then moved to his third label, Arista Records. His first album for his new record company, T-Shirt, was released in 1976.

This was Loudon's best produced record to that point in his career, and for the first time he sounds wholly comfortable with a band behind him.

However, at first listen it seems a strangely impersonal (and therefore very un-Loudon-like) album. The Loudon we know and love (since Attempted Moustache anyway) writes songs that are personal almost to the point of solipsism (a point which his son Rufus passed a long time ago).

But what do we have here?

The album opens with Bicentennial, a moderately sarcastic song about the anniversary of American Independence. It's quite funny, but it's more the sort of thing you'd associate with Randy Newman, who would be more pointedly satirical; Loudon is just poking his tongue out at the national occasion.

At Both Ends is about a young guy who parties himself into an early grave, and Loudon rocks out pretty well; but you can't help feeling Warren Zevon does this sort of thing much better. Reciprocity, a song about a couple into bondage, but it's not much more successful (and less amusing) than the song about gay sex on Unrequited.

Prince Hal's Dirge is a song about future King Henry V, whose conflict with his father is dramatized so brilliantly in Shakespeare's Henry IV Parts One and Two. Then we have Summer's Almost Over, a classic end-of-summer-back-to-school song that is given a gorgeous light jazz arrangement, with tinkling piano and shimmering xylophone; a song about a dog, Hey Packy; a quirky talking blues (Talkin' Big Apple '75), and a strange song entitled Just Like President Thieu.

Almost the only sign of the old Loudon, it seems, is the perennial drinking song, Wine With Dinner and a few personal references in Hollywood Hopeful.

So where are those songs about growing older, never quite making the big time, broken relationships, and family feuds that we associate with Loudon Snowden Wainwright III?

Well, all is not as it seems with this record (and I admit it took me about 30 years to realize this).

Although it starts off with a song called Bicentennial, the real anniversary that is the theme of the record is Loudon's 30th birthday (this was the year he met the dreaded 3-0). The existential dilemma posed by the approach of middle age is for Loudon, as for many of us, whether it should mean a change in our behaviour. Summer's Almost Over is the perfect metaphor for this: "Adopt a brand new attitude... For all those lazy, hazy days you must atone" (wonderful line, that). This accounts for the atmosphere of almost unbearable nostalgia in the song, as Loudon is reluctant to say goodbye to those "crazy days."

"Hollywood Hopeful" continues the theme of maturity vs. youthful irresponsibility (and fame/failure, of course):

Never thought I'd see the age of 25
It's 29 years now I've been alive
The panic I feel can hardly be told
In a matter of months I'll be 30 years old.

"I am full-fledged grown up adult/Trying to make a dent, trying to get a result/I'm holed up in a Hollywood hotel suite/Tequilla to drink and avocado to eat." These are classic Loudon rueful lines on the elusiveness of fame and fortune.

Both Ends Burning is a cautionary tale of someone who never knew when to put away excess. That's what's in store for Loudon if he doesn't reform his ways now that he is on the cusp of middle age. But Prince Hal's Dirge is the key song.

As you know, according to Shakespeare (following the history chronicles), the future Henry V was a tearaway as a young man, mixing with low company, getting into tavern brawls, etc., much to the dismay of his father the king. But all the time the young Prince Hal remains confident that, at the right time, he will be able to shake off this unruly life and accept his responsibilities:

If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But when they seldom come, they wish’d for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So, when this loose behavior I throw off
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes;
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o’er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I’ll so offend, to make offence a skill;
Redeeming time when men think least I will.

Loudon transforms this into a well-constructed, two-paced song, that starts off slow and builds to a dramatic climax:

Give me a capon, and some roguish companions
A wench and a bottle of sack
Take me to the alehouse, take me to the whorehouse
If I vomit, keep me off of my back

And in view of the fact that Loiudon was himself the son of a dysfunctional father, the following lines is interesting:

My father thinks I'm good for nothing
And that I won't amount to much
But he's not aware of my secret weapon
I can count on myself in the clutch

Show me a breach, I'll once more unto it
I'll be ready for action any day
I'll straighten up, and I'll fly most righteous
In a fracas I'll be right in the fray

I can drink you under 25 tables
Fight and be any lady's man
But all this will change when I'm good and ready
To be king of this land!

Self-reliance is to be Loudon's secret weapon ("I can count on myself in the clutch"). The song builds to a tremendous climax, probably the "heaviest" Loudon has ever gotten musically, suggesting real tensions in the lifestyle choices with which the singer is faced. For the time being though, he is not yet ready to shake off his dissolute lifestyle. This is probably why the drinking song Wine With Dinner is reprised again at the end of the record. The party is to go on, even though the dreaded landmark of 30 years old has been reached... "

A few comments on the other songs:

Hey, Packy

This countrified ode to a faithful dog was written by George Gerdes, the actor, who put out a couple of interesting records in the seventies (one of them with the entire group of Nashville musicians who played on Dylan's Blonde on Blonde!) and who co-wrote a song with Loudon on Unrequited (Kings & Queens). It's one of Loudon's best recordings with a band.

Hollywood Hopeful

A song held over from Unrequited (an outtake of the song from the sessions for that album was released on the reissue). This version uses the tune from the traditional song "Little Sadie" and has some nice banjo. This is the most directly personal song on the album.

Wine With Dinner

One of Loudon's droll songs about drinking (See The Drinking Song on Album III and Down Drinking at the Bar on Attempted Moustache).

T-Shirt, then is a very fine album, Loudon's finest to that date, with a unifying concept that makes it greater than the sum of its parts, and, as stated before, better produced than any of its predecessors. It was a crying shame that it was not issued on CD for so long.


Loudon's second album on Arista was a more lightweight affair, although it is just as well produced as its predecessor.

Many of the songs tend to the lightweight and ephemeral, though, such as Golfin' Blues, Pen Pal Blues, the title track, and The Heckler. However, the record ends with some strong songs. Best of all are the two country songs, Heaven and Mud and Two-Song Set.

A guy I used to share a house with in the 90s said, thinking about his approaching 30th birthday (he was a year older than I): "I'll be sitting here in this armchair, and all of a sudden, the desire to listen to country music will come over me."

I don't think he ever did get into country, at least while I knew him, but I myself have got into country music in a big way since turning 30. It does seem the more mature person's music. This is because it is less about strutting one's stuff like rock 'n' roll, and more a vehicle for talking about family problems, alcoholism, and the other joys of maturity. It's a shame, therefore, that Loudon hasn't used the genre more extensively. The two country songs on Final Exam are a real treat.

Heaven and Mud is a song about falling off the wagon after being "high on life" for "14 boring days"! Certainly any hopes Loudon had of cleaning up his act on T-Shirt have been abandoned.

Two-Song Set is a real gem, very well arranged and produced, with a great singalong chorus. Note how much Loudon's singing with a band has improved since his earliest records. Lyrically, the song is full of aching regret over missed opportunity and nostalgia for the old days.

The waitress is polite to me, but it's just not the same thing now
A few years ago, Bobby, I was the cat's meow
You win some and you lose some, that's an attitude I can understand
And I know what they're saying, Bob, they're saying I was a flash in the pan.

Then there is Pretty Little Martha, one of Loudon's neat little banjo songs. Martha was then two years old.

Finally, as if to emphasize that his rocking days are over, is the parody song Watch Me Rock, I'm Over Thirty.

But it wasn't just Loudon's rocking days were over. Final Exam also marked the end of Loudon's days on a major label. The Dead Skunk era was well and truly dead. Creatively, however, Loudon's best work lay ahead of him....

Note: T-Shirt and Final Exam have never been available separately on CD, but in 2007 they were remastered released as a "two-fer" on the Acadia label of Evangeline Records Ltd.

Loudon Wainwright III: A History (Part 2)

So far in his career as we have examined it to date, Loudon has recorded a handful of good songs (and one brilliant one, School Days), but his albums have been rather patchy. With Attempted Moustache, his fourth album and his second for Columbia, he finally produced an album's worth of quality songs.

The album was produced in Nashville by Bob Johnson, Dylan's producer on Highway 61 Revisited through New Morning, of Simon & Garfunkel, and a host of other folk-rock artists. Unfortunately, the results were not satisfactory, as Loudon notes in the liner notes to the 1998 reissue of the album:

I sure would like to remix some of Attempted Moustache. On several of the more raucous band numbers, producer Bob Johnston had me sounding like I was singing in some other room. The record was cut in 5 days, practically an eternity by Nashville standards at that time. Usually you'd do a song once, maybe twice, and that was it—the cats were out the door and on the way to the next session.

Still, the Nashville session musicians are undoubtedly brilliant, and as Loudon also notes, the album contains some of his best songs.

The Swimming Song

Loudon's best song since "School Days" and also much covered. Loudon noted in 1998: "My then-wife Kate McGarrigle taught me to frail (lovely verb!) a banjo, and it remains one of the nicest things I ever learned from anybody." Kate plays along on second banjo.

A.M. World

This song is a satirical look at the "fame and wealth" resulting from the success of "Dead Skunk." After two decades of listening to this album, I've finally realized that the album title could be a glance at this song! ("Attempted Moustache" = A.M.)

Liza

With this song, Loudon finally masters the art of sketching the funny-charming vignettes we know and love him for. In his 1998 liner notes, Loudon writes:

I went to school with Ms. Minnelli but it was in the second and third grades and we last saw each other in 1954. Someone from Danish National Radio once played her this song and taped her reaction, which went something like: "Oh yes, I remember little Loudie Wainwright, and if he keeps singing that way, he'll ruin his voice."

Very sweet and funny, but note that yet again that Loudon is in a familiar role: looking on while someone else gets the success and fame. He seems more comfortable in this role than in the long black limousine of "A.M. World."

Loudon sings this one a capella.

The Man Who Couldn't Cry

I consider this another my best songs—certainly it's one of the longest. I like the cutting sound of my DiAngelico on the track. Check out Johnny Cash's great cover of this on his fine record American Recordings.

Johnny Cash's version is an anomaly. Whatever his other great virtues, Cash doesn't normally do irony or piss-taking, subjects on which Loudon is a leading authority. Therefore he treats this strange story as a genuine tale of redemption, like the other songs on that masterpiece, American Recordings. Maybe there really is a serious story in there. Cash's version is sung live in a trendy young persons' night club on Sunset Boulevard. Loudon no doubt appreciated this extra irony.

Back to Attempted Moustache . Come A Long Way is the song the least marred by the production. It was written by Kate.

And finally, there are two songs about Rufus. The first was written to the lad while he was still in the womb. Loudon trumps the outrageous pun of the title—Dilated To Meet You—with an even more excruciating alternative one in his 1998 liner notes: "At Your Cervix." Sung with Kate. The second is Lullaby. To quote the reissue liner notes again:

Another song I still do. And it's myself I'm telling to shut up, not Rufus, as I led the lyric-reading listeners to believe.

(The printed lyrics add "you're Rufus" after the words "you're ruthless.")



Loudon's fifth album was released in 1975. Critics and fans had complained that his studio records were not on a par with his live performances, so on Unrequited Loudon tries to have it both ways. For those of you who don't remember the days of vinyl, the records had two sides, and when you reached the end of the first side, you had to flip the record to play the second side. The first side of Unrequited had seven tracks recorded in the studio; side two's tracks were recorded live at the Bottom Line in New York City.

On the 1999 reissue, Loudon writes:

:

The big picture of me on the front cover of the album with the tear rolling down my cheek (a glycerine drop I can now confess) seems to say 'look at the sad clown.' Yes, I was sad, but I was one pissed off clown, too. In 1974 my marriages to my wife Kate McGarrible, my personal manager Milton Kramer, and Columbia Records were all on the rocks. Kate and I were separated. Milt and I battled constantly about the direction of my career, and Columbia was poised to drop me from their roster. My last effort for the label, Attempted Moustache, had bombed badly in comparison with my first record for them, Album III, which had contained the hit 'Dead Skunk.' In 1974 things were't going great. Just check out some of the titles of the songs...

Indeed, all the best songs on the album are about the breakdown of relationships. The other tracks, especially those with a band, are not very successful, particularly The Lowly Tourist, which is a faux reggae pastiche (reggae parodies were very popular in the mid-70s; the most successful were 10CC's Dreadlock Holiday and the Kinks' Black Messiah). It does have Harvey Brooks playing bass on it though—that man gets everywhere!

Much better is Kick in the Head, which Loudon sings at the piano, about a man whose lover sleeps with his best friend. But the record really takes off with the savage Whatever Happened To Us, which has some very caustic lyrics:

We used to be in love
But now we are in hate
You used to say I came too early
But it was you who came too late...

There's a whole lot of crap about a tender trap
What it is, is a suicide snare
And all I want to do is forget about you
And our lousy love affair.

Another good track is the jazzy Crime of Passion, which has some great sax. But even better is....

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

This one has Kate singing along with him. A song of tender regret, it's the obverse of the nasty 'Whatever Happened To Us?"

Things weren't easy when we were together
We had plenty of days of lousy weather
But now...I'm in a hurricane
And I'm gonna grieve
And I'm gonna moan
'Cos you not here
And I'm all alone

The joke's on me, you had the last laugh
I find out the hard way who was my better half
And now...I'm the worse for the wear
When I see you again, expect some Champagne wine
And on Valentine's Day expect a Valentine
'Cos now I know how much I care.

This well-constructed song is the first really successful personal song of Loudon's career, the first in a long line that includes such heartbreaking classics as "Your Mother and I", "April Fool's Day Morn", "That Hospital", "Dreaming", "Surviving Twin" and others.

Now lets flip the record over and listen to the live tracks. They are all good, and it's hard to know which to single out.

On the Rocks

Another song about breakup, but the live audience allows Loudon to really camp up the funny parts. It's a blues send-up. Part of the humour is in the use of modern, middle class terms like "domestic problems" instead of "the blues" to describe falling out with the missus.

Even funnier is...

Mr Guilty

This is the least guilty song you could possibly imagine! Loudon confesses to his faults, but you don't really believe him! Especially when he hits the mock teenybop chorus...

Call me Mr. Guilty
Mr Guilty, that's my name
Without a doubt, it's all my fault
I am the one to blame

You say that you're unhappy
I do believe it's true
'Cos I'm the one, the no good bum
That did it all to you.

Ooo-ooo-ooo. I'm so sorry.
Sorry as a man can be.
I'm so guilty
This is my a-po-lo-gy...

A comedy classic.

A curiosity on Unrequited is Untitled (actually called The Hardy Boys at the Y, but Loudon's manager feared a lawsuit from the author of The Hardy Boys Mysteries), which deals with a gay relationship. It's not exactly homophobic, but in the seventies you could only sing about homosexuality if you were treating it as one big joke. Loudon sings the whole thing in a fake British accent of indeterminate location. The song is quite pornographic, and when Loudon sings the aside, "It's fabulous", he sounds just like Rufus.

Unrequited to the Nth Degree

Another of Loudon's songs that seems to be aware of life's comedy at the same time as its tragedy.

Old Friend is about the breakup with a long time friend. In view of Loudon's comments quoted earlier, he might be referring to his manager Milton Kramer.

The original album ends with Rufus Is A Tit Man, which achieved a retrospective irony when the then infant Rufus grew up to be more of a cock lover than a tit fancier. At the end of it, the crowd can be heard chanting "Dead Skunk, Dead Skunk!", as Loudon notes ruefully in the liner notes to the 1998 reissue. The reissue also includes a studio version (with band) of "Rufus Is A Tit Man" as a bonus. It's actually more successful than some of the other songs with a band.

It's interesting to compare Unrequited with Dylan's masterpiece Blood on the Tracks, which was released earlier in the same year. Both albums are about the breakdown of relationships and divorce. But the similarities end there. In songs like "Idiot Wind", Dylan stands like Lear in the tempest, and the breakdown of his marriage seems like part of a universal malaise that's sweeping all over America itself ("From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol") in the aftermath of Watergate. As in Macbeth, all normal values are reversed ("What's good is bad, what's bad is good/You'll find out when you've reached the top/You're on the bottom"). The pain of love's ending is like a corkscrew to his heart, but eventually he wills himself to pull through in the cathartic "Buckets of Rain."

Life is sad, life is a bust
All you can do is do what you must
You do what you must do
And you do it well.

On top of all that, there are spiritual allegories like "Shelter From the Storm" and the cinematic scope of "Lily Rosemary & the Jack of Hearts", where the star-crossed lovers take on symbolic or allegorical roles.

Unrequited isn't anything like as ambitious or as traumatic or all-encompassing. It's the sound of one guy singing to himself to cheer himself up. But in its own small way, it's a minor triumph also.