I recently bought a bed from IKEA. I knew there was “some assembly required,” but didn’t realize the full extent until I opened the box and found no fewer than three bags of screws and bolts to match the dozens of wooden planks. I looked back and forth, in utter disbelief, between the picture of the bed I thought I was buying and what I actually had. I hypothesized that I had accidentally purchased a small ark; yet upon flipping through the instruction booklet, it appeared that a bed would in fact be the end result.
But I was on the verge of tears. How could assembling a bed really be this elaborate? “Only the socialists would take something so simple and make it so unnecessarily difficult!” I wish I had gone into some American store where everything would be pre-assembled or would come in a few pieces that'd slid neatly into one another. But it was too late. I had already given my money to the socialists, and I’ve been in their bed ever since.
Which brings me to The Carrots. First of all, they’re from Austin, which is to Texas what Scandinavia is to Europe (which is to say, full of hippies). And with something like a 2:1 member-to-instrument ratio, it looks as though these young people have a penchant for bureaucracy. Many of their influences can be traced back to girl groups of the ’60s or back to the time of the Iron Curtain, depending on how you want to look at it. In that sense, they are probably the only band I would compare both to the Soviet Union and The Ronettes. Their hearts are in the right place.
Bouffants and beehives welcome at any of the following:
