Twenty-Three
FEiN Little Homes bar scene: margarita, she looks like her daddy, daughter locked in her bedroom at twenty-three: father gone again, I know what he is.
Listen: SpotifyApple Music
ISRC QZ2QB1600008 (soundexchange)
Track nine on Little Homes (May 31, 2016), after Intro (track eight). SoundCloud. Walton/Woodward co-write. A bar pickup and a locked bedroom, set against each other across the family wound the song is really about.
A man eyeing a woman who couldn’t be a day over nineteen gets the line that flips the whole scene: she tells me I look just like her daddy. He has a daughter of his own, twenty-three and locked inside her bedroom, so empty. The chorus is hers, the child’s clear sight of a father who keeps leaving and keeps pretending: he don’t know that I know, yeah I know what he is. Then verse two answers it. The man at the bar slurs I swear I can drive, nobody can stop me as someone tries to take his keys, and we watch him become the exact father his daughter sees. The damage runs as inheritance, and the song closes by hollowing out the chorus to he don’t know, he don’t, he don’t, know.
Family is the first little home to fail here, before any politics. Pairs with Creatures, and prefigures the later Scoobert Damned (hey momma, hey my brother). Leads into Don’t You.
Written by Luke Francis Walton and Brandon Michael Woodward (FEiN). Produced and recorded by FEiN at Tiny Giant; engineered at LMU; mixed and mastered by Frank Rosato at Woodcliff (Discogs). Brian Robert Jones, bass (album). Luke Walton, percussion, Wurlitzer, synth programming.
Lyrics
All you can drink is a beautiful thing Through my margarita I see her alone She couldn't be a day over nineteen, So I sit at her table and offer a drink She tells me I look just like her daddy, I tell her my daughter just turned twenty - three Back in a single family household, So worried At twenty - three she found her life felt So heavy She'll lock herself inside her bedroom, So empty My father's gone again, Wish he would never come back My father will pretend, That he was neve r off track He don' t know that I know, Yeah I know what he is He don't know that I know, Yeah I've seen what he is She shook my hand and said, "Thanks for the drink" Well I'm far too great to be wasting my night Some idiot's tryna take my car keys I swear I can drive, nobody can stop me My father's gone again, I hope he never comes back My father will pretend, That he was never off track He don' t know that I know, Yeah I know what he is He don't know, He don't, He don't, know.