B-Side Guys

“It seems like a fair trade,” Simon Choquette sings early in “Show Me,” and the rest of the song holds him to it. The verses run on matched exchanges: one person offers to demonstrate what love means, the other offers to demonstrate what losing it costs; one names what’s broken in a heart, the other offers to hold it steady. Vulnerability shows up here only as a negotiated transaction, one clause paired to another, as if nothing can be given without a return clause attached.

That hedge fits the project’s whole premise. EFE is the vessel Choquette built specifically to access the parts of himself his regular, self-assured persona doesn’t show, and “Show Me” plays out exactly that kind of controlled exposure. Even the admission that he’s just a lifetime of trouble gets wrapped inside the same fair-trade logic, an insult softened by its packaging, folded into the exchange as leverage.

Then the trade breaks. After two full verses of matched exchanges, the song closes by handing over more than the deal ever required, no clause attached. It’s the moment “Show Me” gives without asking for anything back.

None of this reads as heavy in practice. Drawing on the 90s alt-rock and Britpop touchstones threaded through Choquette’s work, guitars stay bright and the drums keep the track moving at an easy, sun-drenched clip, so a song built on emotional hedging still sounds like summer. Pulled from Choquette’s five-song debut EP “Fine Line,” a record that otherwise tracks heartbreak and self-discovery, “Show Me” lands as its most unguarded, hopeful turn. It carries real hesitation inside a genuinely happy tune, and lets both stay true at once.