There's nothing more annoying than a website that plays music of its
own accord. Who asked it, anyway? Out comes some trancey W-Hotel
elevator electronica wreaking of cologne and nursing a brunch
hangover, gumming up my headphones, and I can't find which tab is
playing it. Furiously I search for the PLEASE MAKE IT STOP button,
flailing, failing.
So, when I land on Greenwich Village's The Little Owl restaurant site, the second I hear the music, I'm dubious.
But listen: What is going on with that high hat? It almost sounds like... LCD Soundsystem? Then, under it (but rising), there are these Bee Gees strings and doo wop vocal harmonies asking, "Who loves you, pretty baby? Who loves you, pretty mama?" Huh. Just as I'm really starting to listen in, completely ignoring the restaurant's "bold flavored Mediterranean cuisine," the song completely changes. Straight disco! Except it's got a Vegas sideshow's sense of the epic and Three's Company's drive for repetitive and erratic schmaltz. This keeps on for two minutes until the bridge, which thumps into a lean Italian disco/Giorgio Moroder bass riff that gets surrounded by a bunch of ghostly doo-doo-doos before bursting through them and back into the song's main motif via a tense piano interlude: Baby. Baby. Doo, doo, doo, doo. Come to meeeee! Baby, you'll see! Who loves you pretty baby? Whose gonna help you through the night?