Piñataland – Little Know Ye Who’s Comin’

The New York-based ensemble Piñataland, whose brilliant full-length Songs From the Forgotten Future Vol. 1 was arguably the best record of 2003, even threw their hat in the political ring, choosing (unlike many) to wax more pro-Kerry than anti-Bush by adapting an 1824 John Quincy Adams campaign tune for the new millennia. While the acoustic guitars of the online-only offering “Little Know Ye Who’s Comin’” aren’t far removed from the coffeehouse protest of McGee’s “The Bad President,” that’s about where the similarities end. The song — posted in the midst of the race and updated with accompanying text at this site after Bush’s victory — is a sometimes-subtle and carefully rendered track, something that’s fleshed out enough to fit alongside the history tunes of one of the band’s engaging full-length outings.

While Piñataland, in true imitation of the alarmist JQA (that other President’s son) tune, claims a Bush election/reelection would lead to famine, plague, slavery, wide-spread fires and robbery, and battles with pistols, guns and knives (among other second-term niceties), it’s really, really surprising to hear how toned-down the presentation is. Most of the two-minute song’s choruses (“Little know ye who’s comin’ / If John Kerry not be comin’”) are delivered in a near-whisper and only once (during the verse that claims a Kerry-less presidency will bring with it tears, fears, plague, pestilence, hatin’, and Satan) does the band get overpowered slightly with anti-Bush sentiment and lose a bit of their cool. It’s a beautiful thing. The band also deserves applause for being what is probably the only act to perform an angry missive against the Republican “war president” while employing the tender weeping of a pedal steel guitar. Sadly, though, Piñataland’s “Little Know Ye Who’s Comin’” now also may provide a subtext to many of 2004’s protest songs and a sad closing thought on much of the artistic response we’ve seen and heard in the last year or so. It’s another song they’ve created for a forgotten future.