Beautiful girl once said to me
Some men will rob you with poetry
In I Don't Want What You Got Goin' On Ike Reilly has taken Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll and added wheels - which really should have been in there in the first place. It's the opening track to his 2002 EP, Cars & Girls & Drinks & Songs - and the EP's title comes from this song's chorus.
The opening lines have Ike in his folksy Bob Dylan/Tom Petty mode, but he soon puts a little more pace and edge into it. The verses are difficult to describe. They're a folk-rap, stream-of-consciousness mixture that owe an allegiance to Dylan, but - in some way - carry Ike's own unique stamp. The delivery can be breathtakingly fast. For instance, the third verse consists of 8 lines, 104 syllables, that Ike spits out in just under 20 seconds and whose literal meaning is only fit discourse for dream interpreters.
Meanwhile, the choruses use up all the available amperage - a guitar army wall of sound with a Celtic influence that brings to mind the Dropkick Murphys. One expects to hear bagpipes churning somewhere in the mix.
On the surface, this base-urge anthem matches Reilly's attempts to come off as a simple guy concerned with simple things. He'd like you to think he's just your average middle-aged, middle-class, midwestern white male whose life can be summed up within the confines of your favorite local tavern on a Saturday night:
Cars and girls and drinks and songs
Make this world spin around
But Ike Reilly is a subversive artist. He immediately questions his own assertion:
What about love and what about trust?
It's an age old duality. Ying versus Yang. Masculine versus feminine. Selfishness versus altruism. Reilly provides and answer that is both cunning and sublime:
I know you can't love the enemies
of all the things you trust
Despite his Catholic upbringing, Reilly tells us that Christ's directive to 'love thy enemy' isn't possible. These two simple lines encourage us to ask ourselves what are the things we trust - and who are their enemies? And just what is going on that he doesn't what any part of?
Reilly gives us some clues, but one gets the impression there is far more here than meets the ear.
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