Boy Meets Girl

Album: Europe (2008)
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Songfacts®:

  • Ghost Mice is a folk-punk band that formed in Bloomington, Indiana in 2002. The two piece band is made up of Chris Clavin on guitar and Hannah Jones on violin. Both Chris and Hannah lend their voices to Ghost Mice's music. Ghost Mice plays entirely acoustic, without speakers, amplifiers and microphones, so they are able to play anywhere from a stage to a street corner. The DIY aesthetics of the band mesh with their anarchist beliefs and the ideals of Plan-It-X Records, a record label started by Clavin in 1994.
  • Ghost Mice's "Boy Meets Girl" tells the story of an encounter between a boy and girl and the deeply honest answers that emerge from a getting-to-know-you sort of question and answer session. The frenetic guitar and violin begin simultaneously with singer Chris Clavin's voice intoning, "she asked me if I liked to sing/ I said 'of course, I like to sing/ anyone who doesn't like to sing/ must be dead if you ask me.'" The song moves from topic to topic gracefully and by the end the conversation has moved from singing and touring to employment, dreams, love and death. The son of a cemetery employee, a devout anarchist and certified romantic, songwriter Clavin is well suited to expound on such topics. Despite the dim history that seems to underly the exchange in this song (indicated by such lines as "she asked me if I want to die/ I said of course, I do sometimes/ anyone who doesn't want to die/ must not really be alive"), Clavin himself remains admirably optimistic. In our 2010 interview, Chris told us, "keep in mind that the world is an awesome and amazing place. If you don't like what's happening, change it." The beauty of the world that Chris speaks of is exemplified by such conversations as are depicted in "Boy Meets Girl," and the lilting violins and conviction of the voice of such bands as the Ghost Mice.

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