By: Vincent Calder
Denver multi-instrumentalist finds humor, romance, and a little cultural absurdity in the endless performance of California cool.
Los Angeles has been selling the same fantasy for a century, and business remains excellent. Sunshine, sex appeal, reinvention, expensive sunglasses, and the comforting possibility that your next personality might be more interesting than your current one. Rock musicians have been buying into the arrangement almost as long as Hollywood has been offering it. What makes ARGYRO’s “She’s So LA” worth considering is that Scott Argiro seems to understand the transaction. He knows the merchandise is probably overpriced. He also knows he wants it.
That’s a useful distinction.
The Denver-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist isn’t attempting to expose Hollywood’s superficiality as though nobody had previously noticed. Nor is he offering another earnest sermon about authenticity in a world of manufactured personalities. Instead, he gives us a woman who has apparently absorbed the entire Los Angeles experience into her identity, then wonders why that makes her so irresistible.
The title itself contains the joke. “She’s So LA” isn’t a geographical observation. It’s a diagnosis, a compliment, and possibly a warning. Three words capable of suggesting everything from glamour to vanity, sophistication to self-absorption, depending upon who’s saying them and how much they’re willing to forgive.
Argiro, judging by the song’s musical disposition, is willing to forgive quite a bit.
The recording favors melodic accessibility over needless complication. Its pop-rock construction is polished, but there’s enough guitar presence to prevent the whole enterprise from dissolving into decorative background music. Damon Wood supplies the lead and rhythm guitars, while Argiro handles the remaining studio instruments and vocals.
That division of labor matters less as a demonstration of technical versatility than as an explanation for the record’s cohesion. The musical components appear to be working toward the same objective: making the central fascination sound convincing.
Jesse O’Brien’s mixing and mastering contribute to the clean presentation. Nothing about the production suggests an interest in rough edges for their own sake. That’s appropriate. A song about Los Angeles glamour probably shouldn’t sound as though it was recorded in a basement during a plumbing emergency.
The larger context is Glitterati, Argiro’s project examining fame, romance, image-making, and the peculiar modern belief that being noticed constitutes an achievement. It’s a subject with considerable comic potential, particularly when everyone with a smartphone can now audition for celebrity status without leaving the house.
“She’s So LA” brings those concerns down to a more manageable scale. Rather than trying to explain celebrity culture, Argiro concentrates on its effect upon romantic imagination. The woman becomes a walking advertisement for an entire lifestyle, and the narrator responds like a customer who has already decided to ignore the return policy.
There’s a certain honesty in that.
Pop music has always depended upon exaggeration. Nobody seriously expects romantic attraction to survive the scrutiny of an accountant, and few memorable love songs would benefit from a detailed assessment of their subjects’ personal shortcomings. The question is whether the fantasy generates enough emotional energy to justify its existence.
Here, Argiro makes a persuasive case.
His background in acting helps explain the cinematic character of the presentation. The accompanying video, directed by Denver filmmaker Elgin Cahill, extends the song’s interest in visual storytelling. Meanwhile, the fact that “She’s So LA” was written and recorded in Denver provides an amusing reminder that California mythology travels exceptionally well.
Ultimately, the song doesn’t tell us anything revolutionary about Hollywood, romantic projection, or the commercial packaging of personality. Its accomplishment is more modest and arguably more useful: it recognizes the absurdity of the fantasy without surrendering its pleasures.
ARGYRO knows that the woman, the city, and the dream may all be selling something. He also knows that a catchy melody can make almost anything seem worth the price.
And sometimes that’s enough.
Rating: B+
