The Dismemberment Plan - "The Ice of Boston" from the CD The Dismemberment Plan is Terrified

That this bittersweet celebration song from the same guys who brought us the powerful and poignant "Time Bomb" is, along with The Standells' "Dirty Water," one of the best songs about the city of Boston is certainly true, but also something you might guess at from its title.

But what you might NOT guess from the title is that it's also one of the greatest New Year's Eve songs ever.

It's that, too. Perhaps THE greatest. Can't think of too much competition, actually, once you get past Guy Lombardo.

"The Ice of Boston" is not a perfect song. When our hero tells us that he doesn't want to admit these pathetic ridiculous and absolutely true things about himself, affairs DO get fairly maudlin. Maybe he followed her, maybe he didn't, I don't really care.

But no matter: when he pops that third bottle of cheap champagne open, pours its chill froth all over his naked self, lets it drip through his scalp and through his chest hair, then stares down through his kitchen picture window onto the scads of drunken Bostonians gathered below, well, it's an all-time classic image.

And no song, ever, has captured the unexpected and unwelcome Call From Mother so very well. And I'm here to say no song ever will, either.

So, as the clock ticks towards 2011, as our public places become more and more clogged with intoxicated celebrants, as the skies in Boston or elsewhere become thick with fireworks smoke, and tinted orange with celebration, as someone, somewhere, slips on the muddy ice, let me say to my readers, to The Dismemberment Plan, and to everyone else: Here's to another goddamned New Year.


File under: New Years Eve songs