Today’s “Best Song Ever”: The Auteurs “Unsolved Child Murder”

By Tim Duffy

Brit pop was a strange and diverse genre. You had the experimental drama bending of Blur playing alongside the stadium-pop histrionics of Oasis. You had the glam of Suede alongside the dramatic sexual and class politics of Pulp. Sincerely, grunge often categorized as the cross Atlantic pole to brit pop had nothing on this genre.

There was also room for the austere refinement and often dark songwriting of the Auteurs. “Unsolved Child Murders” was the kind of song that might almost be pegged as slight were it not for it’s charming string section and darkly descriptive lyrical content. The song has the sort of instantly knowable melody that is typical of brit pop yet the darkness of the song seems to run contrary to even the most unpleasant of 90′s Brit bands. The chorus is a repetitive “If I die before my parents die” undercut with some slightly mournful cello.

The whole song is over in just over two minutes. They’ve dragged bodies out of lakes and most of the people in the song’s town seem content to not discuss the unsolved child murders. Seems almost crass.

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