Bad Flamingo seems to have an endless well of takes on star crossed love and bittersweet nostalgia and “White T Shirt” finds the enigmatic duo tapping into a different palette of sounds in crafting a typically engaging song. Sounding like some kind of outlaw country folk pop song with a tone of youthful indiscretion shared between two young lovers rekindled when they reconnect after years apart though what brings them together in this moment is memories of past passion and bonding over the simple pleasures available to teenagers in a rural town. The fretting on the acoustic guitar is left in as a tactile detail as much as the line about “hands got rough but your lips are still soft” to anchor the song in physical reality. The chorus of “white t shirts falling to the floor, we’ve been here before, whiskey and cola from the corner store, drunk as before” really captures a ritual that might have been one of the few moments of actual joy and passion in an otherwise mundane existence. But then there’s the bit about “old habits dying so damn hard” as a recognition that while that earlier past time could get stale and seem like a dead end and thus our plucky narrator moved on to broader pastures even though she has taken a trip back home and encountered a past that still holds an allure the way the things from our youth often do even when we’ve moved on as adults. Bad Flamingo excels at taking earnest musicianship and performances atmospheric and imbued with a darkly romantic edge and turning the simple story into something approaching the epic and “White T Shirt” is no exception minus how the song demonstrates that the band is also able to consistently switch up its songwriting approach to lend its storytelling a unique dimension each time. Listen to “White T Shirt” on Spotify and follow Bad Flamingo at the links below.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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