Lest you think a week might go by without a Harry Nilsson reference or touch point, we’re delighted to debut Atlanta native Charlie Greene’s Harry-esque “Two Sides.” And sure, you’ll hear strains of Merle Haggard among others, but that’s just beside…the point. “Two Sides” is taken from Charlie’s brand new, self-titled release which arrives in stores on February 25th.
“‘Two Sides’ is about having two seemingly opposite desires at once. It’s about feeling a powerful need for something but not knowing what it is. It’s about duality and fighting forces and being pulled in two directions at once.
I had just moved to East L.A. when I was wrote it and was spending a lot of time walking around downtown. I was reading John Fante’s Ask the Dust and was really struck by the earthquake scene and the idea of a post-earthquake Downtown Los Angeles martial law sort of atmosphere.
Also the part where he’s chasing a girl into the ocean and she disappears. I spent a lot of formative years chasing cruelly indifferent girls into the Pacific and the Atlantic like some sort of auto-pilot libido zombie.”
—Charlie Greene