53 Tsunami “DMFH”

I’ve written plenty about Jenny Toomey and Tsunami, so it’s about time that we hear from the band. They released 3 albums and 1 complication of singles, b-sides, and miscellany. I don’t know the story of their last album, Brilliant Mistake, in whether or not Kristen Thomson and Jenny Toomey knew this was going to be the last, but the song “DMFH” comes across as autobiographical in that sense.

Lyrics in the song contain allusions and outright statements about DIY music, the misery of the traditional music industry, that money is always an instrumental good not an intrinsic one…

And noble beliefs are wonderful to live by but can be easily lost when you need to put food on the table.

And friends who share those ideas are fantastic partners until other paths call.

There really isn’t too much to the song structure itself. It sounds to me like it is the two chords referenced in the opening stanza of C to D (albeit a fancy D) with an occasional drop to a G. But Toomey changes the vocal melodies in several ways throughout the song that give it much more depth than one might expect from two chords.

Recently as of this writing, Tsunami put out a complete box set of their albums and went on a short tour to promote it. I got to see them in Philadelphia with Ida, and it was a joy. I was especially pleased to see that Toomey and I play the same style guitar. No, I did not pick mine for that reason, I bought it in the years between their last album and now. I can’t even remember the guitar she was playing the last time I saw her before this show. I’m just saying, I can be cool too…