Iyanna Handy | October 28, 2014

previous album. The song is very short, almost as if it was meant to be just an introduction for what was to come next.

 

“Deer Head” starts off slow, and takes off toward the middle when Zauner starts to sing “I was happier before.” She keeps repeating the line and the effects on her voice, paired with the background instrumentals, made for an experimental feel which I wasn’t expecting from this band. It was a pleasant surprise because it made the song sound completely different from how it started, but that is what made it interesting. Interesting is always good; it’s much better than being boring.

 

The next song “Dixie Gun” has to be one of my favorites on the album as far as lyrical concepts go. I loved this song so much because of the emotion in it. As a woman, I felt a slight personal connection with the song, because it’s about an angry girl with a gun. Zauner sings about how she walks home from school with her gun and how she wants people to know that she’s armed -- she mentions that this is the case for every girl walking alone at night. Literally, females who are walking alone in the dark usually do in fact have some sort of apparatus of protection. Figuratively, I took the track’s Dixie Gun as a symbol for anger. It’s about a girl who is harboring anger and lashing out at anyone who rubs her the wrong way. We’ve all had those days where we seem to hate everyone, and this song describes that pretty accurately in the chorus, “I don’t ever wanna, I don’t wanna need nobody. / I don’t ever wann…I don’t need you. / Me and Dixie gun will be takin’ care of everybody.” About 2 minutes and 15 seconds into the song, it gets intense once she starts to shout. I love it when Michelle yells her lyrics at certain parts. It always comes on time and adds to the experience.

 

“Old Time Fun” is a very nostalgic tune describing the time shared with a certain someone. She sings about how she misses the times they use to have together and that she still wants him most of the time. In the beginning, she mentions him having a wife, which may be the reason that all the things she desires to do with him are “old time fun” instead of present-day affairs. This song made it onto my list of favorites because of one part: the harmony when she sings “always something small.” You would have to listen to the song to understand my obsession with that part. It sounds so pretty and cutesy, which shows a new side to Little Big League. That isn’t really their main style, but I love the small change.

 

It turns out that Michelle gave us an accurate description of Tropical Jinx a few months ago. The album is much darker than the first, but still correlates with the coming of age experiences recorded on These Are Good People. Tropical Jinx also offered some awesome guitar riffs and a few new things such as the dreamy vocal effects and the harmonizing. I can’t say that I like this album better than the first, but I do think Little Big League did a good job the second time around. Will I end up playing some of these songs repeatedly? Yes. Would I still love to see them perform these songs live? Absolutely. I appreciate that they changed it up a little, but still stuck to the style that won me over as a fan in the first place – great songs with an ear for melody and substantially deep lyricism.

 

Earlier this year during an interview with Little Big League, lead singer Michelle Zauner revealed some details about their upcoming sophomore album. She said it would be like a continuation of the first album, These Are Good People, as far as lyrical inspiration went, but with a darker sound. I was very interested to see how that would play out, and now the anticipation is over. Tropical Jinx was released under a new label, Run for Cover Records.

 

The first song, “Tropical Jinx” starts off sounding like the beginning of a teenage movie, giving off a punk-like vibe. It also sounds like it could have fit in well with the rest of their