B-Side Guys

“Everybody’s talking about the land-locked Navy / where the sunken ships float above the fields.” That image doesn’t explain itself, and it doesn’t need to. It belongs to the specific grammar of small-town mythology, the kind of local legend that gets passed around a bar until nobody remembers if it was ever true, which is exactly the register Five Wild Hares are working in.

The third single from their forthcoming debut record, “Indiana State Line,” builds its world out of accumulated mundane detail: cigarettes cheaper at the state line, Pabst Blue Ribbon that does get finished, sand in the hair, a small-town bar they go to every night. None of it is particularly remarkable on its own, which is the point. The song insists that ordinary geography and ordinary habits are worth the kind of attention usually reserved for grander subjects.

The chorus leans directly into Billy Joel, quoting “Only the Good Die Young” and building the rodeo imagery around it, which is a gamble that works because the song earns the reference rather than borrowing its weight. “The sinning is just too fun / and only the good die young” lands as genuine affection for the kind of night that doesn’t end when it probably should.

What holds the song together is the refrain at the close: “I remember the first time we drove to Indiana,” repeated three times without embellishment. After all the mythology and the bar-song bravado, the feeling underneath is just memory, someone trying to hold onto the first time a place felt like somewhere worth staying.