The Bulrushes - The Bongos

The Bulrushes - The Bongos
2:36
Drums Along the Hudson, 1982
Written by Richard Barone

This is a jumpy, quirky slice of power pop.  I never had an '80s music fixation, so I only came to this song via Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoff's much later cover.  The lyrics are fairly oblique; the title makes one think of baby Moses bobbing on the Nile, and indeed, the words alternate disjointed Biblical references with mundane modern remarks: "Unleavened bread comes down from heaven" and "Oh, Sally, let's look for baby Moses."  I read that the band was originally lumped in with avant-garde and post-punk acts like Television and Lou Reed, and eschewed bland melody for experimentation, but you wouldn't know it from this single song, which, while it has a scrappy garage immediacy, is all straightforward guitar pop.  There's crisp, trebly strumming, a clipped, propulsive beat, and a melody that refuses to get weird even when the lyrics do.  Maybe that's part of the charm.