Susan Goodnight

It might be your light, it might be your front door
It might be the last time, I don't know
Something's on your mind
Something's on your mind

I stayed away 'til I knew you'd already phoned
You're not out walking, nobody's home
Something's on your mind
Something's on your mind

Come by my house, stand by the backyard gate
Somebody's early, somebody's late
Something's on your mind
Something's on your mind

Susan, goodnight
Susan, goodnight
Goodnight
Susan, goodnight

Is there any vocalist more improbable, and more underappreciated, than Robert Ray, professor at the University of Florida and the author of titles like A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1980 and How a Film Theory Got Lost and Other Mysteries in Cultural Studies? Here he sings the last cut from (to date) the last Vulgar Boatmen album, Opposite Sex. At a minute and forty-one seconds the song is easy enough to overlook, leaving aside the fact that since Opposite Sex was torpedoed by its own label shortly after its release in 1995 few people are likely to have heard it all. It doesn't assert much of anything, it doesn't manipulate the listener, and in a world that does far too much of both maybe the best reaction to the song is just to listen to it and leave it at that.