The Divine Comedy "To Die A Virgin"

The ravenously unpopular Mess-o'Potamia into which the current administration has led this country has given many artists pause to reflect on their particular roles as public figures. The Dixie Chicks decided to tell the Wal-Mart crowd to fuck off, Pearl Jam and Neil Young released kind-of-funny-because-they're-so-earnest protest albums, the Coup unsurprisingly released this, and, well, read this for a better synopsis of why Tom Morello needs to shut up. But there's not been a better example of the existential dread caused by the never-ending-by-definition war on terror than than what we've got here on our computer screens right now, "To Die A Virgin" (mp3), from The Divine Comedy's latest, Victory for the Comic Muse. Over a bed of strings and George Harrison guitars/horns, the notoriously unshy Neil Hannon sings with his fey Freudian sincerity, "With all the bombs and the bird flu, we're probably going to be dead soon, and here we are in your bedroom, did I tell you I love you?" It's a clever if overused strategy, but surely bound to see more success for Hannon than the one contrived by the much more sinister cabal equally interested in screwing.

Pre-order Victory here.

MOREOVER: Dave Eggers has his way with American soccer at Slate:

The abandonment of soccer is attributable, in part, to the fact that people of influence in America long believed that soccer was the chosen sport of Communists. When I was 13—this was 1983, long before glasnost, let alone the fall of the wall—I had a gym teacher, who for now we'll call Moron McCheeby, who made a very compelling link between soccer and the architects of the Iron Curtain. I remember once asking him why there were no days of soccer in his gym units. His face darkened. He took me aside. He explained with quivering, barely mastered rage, that he preferred decent, honest American sports where you used your hands.