B-Side Guys

Michael Leviton had been keeping a list of favorite words for years before he wrote “Solitaire.” When his first long-term relationship ended, he reached for the word that already meant loneliness and independence simultaneously, a card game built for one, and wrote a batch of songs he called “singles about being single.” The word was waiting for exactly this use.

Love, BB arose from Brooklyn speakeasy gigs in the early 2010s, Brooke Backman singing while couples made out at the tables, Leviton on guitar, Matt Bauder on saxophone. After a fifteen-year dissolution, the three reunited to record their debut live to tape, the same way the music they love was made. “Solitaire” is the first single from that record, and it carries all of that history without announcing it.

The lyric is structured around a sleight of hand. The opening establishes solitaire as the rational choice after romantic damage: “at least the rules are fair,” “the game that you can’t lose.” The middle section holds that position, warning against romantic dreams and carried-away hearts. Then the final verse quietly undoes it: “solitaire, the game you lose / before you start.” The consolation was always provisional. The rules were only fair until they weren’t.

Backman’s voice and Bauder’s saxophone, the latter having since played with Arcade Fire and Father John Misty and arranged horns for David Byrne, give the song the smoky intimacy the production is reaching for. Recorded live to tape, it sounds like something caught rather than constructed, which suits a lyric about the gap between what we tell ourselves about solitude and what it actually costs.