LES SAVY FAV – “Adopduction”
Kidnapped!
I was kidnapped!
I dreamed I was kidnapped!
And so the song begins, riding like a car with a bad transmission, and Tim Harrington is the poor kid gagged & bound in the trunk, head smacking against the inside of the trunk lid, piecing together the story as it comes to him. After detailing the situation a bit (describing his captors), the song hits a semblance of a groove – this would be the part where the car pulls over to the side of some deserted road and his captors lead poor Tim into some shoddy cabin. And little Tim is tied to a rickety splintering chair, sweating underneath a musty light blue pillowcase, talking to himself as the guy with the moustache and the chick with the eyepatch take turns talking into a cloth-wrapped cellphone. And, then, things change – “So if slowly, I could trust them – dare I say it, even love them – who’s to blame?” Banging the point home is the world’s most demure Beach Boys harmonizing, a miniature chorus of “wooo-oooo” mocking every wistful detail – getting glasses, making ransom notes, eating dinner – digging at the scab the same way two fingers rubbing together like cricket’s legs diffuse any bathetic tale of woe, the same way that ratty rope rubs against his wrists, the same way the trunk hood kissed his forehead.
This is the dream of a kid that feels completely abandoned. That’s the saddest thing thing – it isn’t the narrator getting closer to his captors, or his family not caring enough to actually get him back for more than half the original ransom. It’s the fact that all of this is a dream, and he’ll wake up, and he’ll be back with the family that couldn’t give a rat’s ass about him, and there won’t be any saviors waiting in the wings with duct tape and handcuffs, offering salvation, offering an escape, offering some small sign that he matters. Instead, he’s left talking to himself, at night, in bed, in the dark, where the wonder of the adventure turns into something less enjoyable – “Although we got so close, you know they never even told me their real names.”
Eventually, he goes back to sleep.