The Albums That Matter: Bigger Than Your Boyfriend

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.

Bigger Than Your Boyfriend

Washington Social Club

2008

How I got my hands on this LP from this mostly forgotten Washington D.C.-based power pop band is important for my own personal perception of the album, but I think it is also indicative of Washington Social Club—why they were important, why they disappeared, how they survived, it's a story refracted through many identical exchanges happening all over the place in the late '00s along the east coast. 

The music itself is only part of that story. This isn't mind-blowing stuff, but it's certainly enjoyable. Washington Social Club are (were) a quintet out of D.C. that played an upbeat, danceable rock 'n' roll. It's very aughts, like the Strokes without the we're-from-N.Y.-so-we're-cool baggage, or like the Dandy Warhols without the pretentious hippie worship, or like Louis XIV without the embarrassing over-the-top sexual references (but with plenty of fake British accents). I wouldn't be writing about Bigger Than Your Boyfriend if it wasn't enjoyably inconsequential. 

Maybe a bit too much so on that last point. Reading the very few interviews with the band that exist online from 2008, its members basically answer every question like: "Hey man, we're just trying to party with our fans." I'm sure this led to some great live music experiences, but that kind of attitude is not conducive to longevity. Bigger Than Your Boyfriend was released on New Year's Day in 2008, and the band was broken up by the following New Year's Eve.

After two LPs, Washington Social Club was gone, and that probably adds to the legend. Here's this good-to-great power pop CD, but the fact that the band immediately exited stage left means that the CD is going to have to live on by word of mouth alone. It became almost like a secret, whispered in ears, held close because it feels personal, not even because it's the type of album that seems personal in and of itself, but because of the simple fact that no one else on earth seems to have heard of them.

I had never heard of them in the spring of 2008 (so this was post-BTYB-release, pre-band-breakup). This was a time in my life when plugging your iPod into other people's iTunes and copying their music was a normal thing to do (I miss that). This was also a time in my life when I was desperately trying to hook up with a chick in my honors triple, and I used the "can I steal some of your music" line as one of many excuses to go to her dorm room (another one: "Can I hang out here? I just found out I'm going to be expelled.").

She included Washington Social Club in the hoard of music transferred over (she being from the D.C. area). I was immediately smitten. I especially enjoyed a song called "The Breakup," a great, fast-talky song about avoiding the pain of severing ties with an ex by concentrating on getting your music collection back from your ex. I remember posting a lyric from this song as a Facebook status in order to impress the girl I was trying to date ("You took the best years of my life, I took the Best of Bob Dylan: '65-'75, the Columbia Recordings"), and I remember that she texted me that night, 1/4th impressed that I liked the music that she gave me, and 3/4ths indignant that the "secret" was out. (The irony of trying to date someone based on a shared fascination with a song called "The Breakup" was lost on me at the time.)

As is usually the case, the music outlasts most college relationships, and so here I am, a dozen years after going through with our own Breakup, and here I am, still enjoying the heck out of Bigger Than Your Boyfriend. It still feels like a secret. Just last year, I was chilling on the back deck of a friend's new house, when a Washington Social Club song came on the shuffled playlist. I was more baffled than anything—there are other people who listen to Washington Social Club? He had discovered the band through word-of-mouth years ago too, and he too thought that they were fun enough to hang on to. Parallel stories.

I don't even want to overhype the music all that much—it's enjoyable, but it's nothing revolutionary. No, the fact that Washington Social Club feels so intimately unknown is definitely the most memorable thing about them.

So here I am, ruining the secret by letting you in on it. You're gonna find a lot to like if you listen to this album. And one day in the future, I'm going to be chilling with you, and "Diamond Hipster Boy" is going to play out of some tinny speaker, and we're going to look at each other like, wait, you know this? And we'll both mutter "huh" and realize that one day, everyone is going to enjoy this shit.

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If this album sounds interesting, then try this song: "Let Us Go"

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Stray Observations

• I thought about reaching out to my ex to ask her about her own experiences with Washington Social Club, but not only do I not know how to reach her in my post-Facebook life, and not only am I embarrassed to admit that I spend most of my time blogging, but also I don't think that would be sticking to the ethos of "The Breakup." She can have my dignity, just let me keep the CDs that she gave me.
• Other bands that I got into because of that 2008 music swap: Tokyo Police Club, the New Pornographers.
• 2008 was apparently not a good time for organizing music collections: I realized just this week, while preparing for this column, that the tracklist for Bigger Than Your Boyfriend was all fucked up on my iPod, and has been for twelve years. Apparently "The Breakup" is the fifth song, not the third? Apparently the second song is a title track, and not called "Jarvis Cocker"?
• It's weird that I didn't notice this sooner, because I noticed about a year ago that the tracklisting for WSC's first album, Catching Looks, was all messed up too. They've both been fixed.
• I'm not gonna lie, I probably like Catching Looks more at this point, even though I have more of a personal connection to Bigger Than Your Boyfriend. That first album does a much better job of acting as one of those "we're growing up and we miss being young" statements, which I usually love.
• ALBUM TITLE: There's nothing beyond the snark here. The lead singer is literally saying "Oh yeah? You don't think we are going to be successful? Well, at least we'll be bigger than your boyfriend."
• ALBUM COVER: This is one of the worst album covers ever, right? The color scheme is putrid. You can barely see the text (red on brown?!). The car looks like something Willow would draw on her Magic Doodle. I can't find any evidence of this, but this has to be the work of some friend of the band who was fucking around one day, and the band decided to use it as a half-joke.
• I mentioned interviews early, and I had to mention this one, because it cracked me up. It's with the drummer, it's only one question and one answer, and the dude basically ends the interview immediately by saying "We just fired our manager LOL." Looking back, maybe it was obvious this band wasn't long for this world.
• Washington Social Club got back together a year and a half ago, it looks like, and even released a one-off EP, to very little fanfare. The secret lives on, it seems.
• I wonder if they played any reunion gigs at Comet Ping Pong, the infamous D.C.-area venue that has attracted a lot of crazies these past few years (in other words, I'm wondering whether Washington Social Club have any connection to Hilary Clinton's secret pedophile ring). (This is as good a place as any to say that you are the dumbest person alive if you believe that Clinton runs a secret pedophile ring.)

NEXT TIME: Birdie by Slaughter Beach, Dog