Even a sadder song like “In My Room,” which is clearly not about the beach, makes you feel like you’re resting after having already been there: “In this room I lock out all my worries and my fears / Do my dreaming and my scheming.” It’s all about creating your own world and finding yourself. I remember going to Johnny Rockets (a retro chain restaurant) to get a burger and fries, putting “ Surfin’ U.S.A.” on the jukebox, and pretending I was back in the ’60s. This collection of pre-1966 hits feels like a beach party in California. Honestly, this record is pretty much perfect, and you will find yourself humming the songs after you’re done listening to it-if you can even figure out a way to turn it off.
Then there’s “I Don’t Really Mind,” the last song on the record, which has this super awesome instrumental breakdown in the middle that sounds like multiple suns rising from behind a crystal cave in a new universe. In another song they sing, “Why won’t you make up your mind? / Give me a sign.” It’s a totally heartbreaking sentiment, but Tame Impala make it seem OK to wait for this person to give me a sign, because I am grooving in this valley of sonic awesomeness. “ Desire Be Desire Go” is one of my favorite songs here, because it’s a li’l bit more rocking, but then it has a really chill chorus, and I can only understand half of what they are singing (it seems really sweet). It’s like it has a built-in innocence chip that will make you look at the world with wonder and feel like everything is possible. Some music has the ability to make you feel weird inside, which happened a lot when I was little, and this record totally makes me feel like that. This is a current Australian band, a fact I feel needs to be pointed out, because their music is so perfectly dreamy and hazy that you might feel like it was some long-lost record from another time when everything was easy, or maybe even a world where it’s always sunny and kids (and adults) gallop around in slow motion in a field of daisies. Sadly, Wong Kar-Wai is not directing my life, but when I listen to this album it’s easy to pretend otherwise. (My boss, on the other hand, insists on listening to the Top 40 radio station.) Their sunny and sad vocal harmonies make all the mundane aspects of my life feel like they are leading toward a peak, like every transitional moment is part of a montage in an engrossing movie. It’s dull work, but the Mamas & the Papas get me through it. I’m currently working a day job similar to Faye Wong’s character, except my café is in Toronto, not Hong Kong.
The song is played incessantly during her scenes in the movie as she blasts it while she works.
In Wong Kar-Wai’s wonderful 1994 film Chungking Express, Faye Wong plays a counter attendant at a snack bar who is obsessed with the Mamas & the Papas song “ California Dreamin’” (found on this album).
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