Smells Like Records
2006
Wear And Tear Of Fear: A Lover's Discourse
About This Album
Two Dollar Guitar's trajectory has been long and varied, from a singer/songwriter vehicle to a full band and back again. All the while, Tim Foljahn's lyrics have revolved primarily around the same subject: love, especially relationships. Not until a reading of Roland Barthes' 1977 text A Lover's Discourse: Fragments has Foljahn found such a strong conceptual thread to weave through Two Dollar Guitar's continuing exposition on lovers and loving. Foljahn is at his most meditative and solitary here, miming the nature of Barthes' analysis of a single lover's thoughts on love and relationships once both have passed. The album moves like the arc of a relationship, beginning with the instrumental "Blue Coat and Yellow Vest" -- a title taken from Barthes' Fragment of the same name, describing the initial seduction. The lyrics in the 12-minute diptych created by "Cascade" and "The Wild Night" couldn't be more atypical or more specific: here are the mundane thoughts of any lover during the middle of a relationship. Eventually, Foljahn declares on the title track, "I've lost another one," and sheds some honesty on the actualities.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7)

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.