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I wrote most of this entry wholesale back in 2009, for a different song entirely. But it bears repeating, in part because it reminds us how artists rise and fall: before she joined up with Steve Tannen to became half of indieblog darlings The Weepies, but after cutting her teeth on the music industry with an upbeat Oregon popband called Hummingfish, Deb Talan had a relatively low-key, small-scale career as a solo artist on the New England coffeehouse circuit. Her final solo effort from this period, 2001 live release Sincerely, reveals an artist on the cusp of full-formed musicianship -- still a bit unrefined, still a little repetitive -- but the potential for greatness is clearly there. You can hear it in the sweet longing of this favorite tune, the sheer pink-petaled simplicity of its central metaphor a perfect match for Talan's girlish, impish tones and self-doubting, self-aware tendencies.
