My claim is not to know more about music than the people I spend most of my life with. It simply is that I seem to think more deeply about a particular strain of music than any of them likely imagine possible.

There are times when this seems like another adolescent hangover that I should have shedded a long time ago. But then I come upon another album, another song, another turn of phrase that makes me remember the large body of work I've taken so much pleasure from the past decade or so. I make no special claims about their structural depth; my taste firmly and unabashedly lies with the deft manipulation of words, set to pliable melodies. Where once I would have naively claimed that these assuredly belong to the world of poetry, now I'd just assert that what ever the world may think of them, I know only that this mind and body is particularly attuned to the skilled exponents of this craft. And I'm content with that.

These structural limits of the format, ironically, seem to act to the benefit of the composers. On the written page, the absolute freedom on offer seems to have compelled practitioners into a direction that elevates structure over feeling. It could also be that I just like nothing more than a good rhyme, and again this seems to have been eschewed on paper in favour of a variety of other devices that my untrained eyes simply do not respond to.

More broadly, I think it's also the subject matter. There is in a way a lack of pretentiousness in rock poetry, simply in its quotidian selection of topics. I'd certainly agree that elevating the everyday experience as something greater than it is would be a mistake. But a remarkably large spectrum of thought and feeling is to be found within these songs. I'm probably well beyond being able to better myself in knowledge of enough of the antiquities and history to fully appreciate the verse that is set in that style. Perhaps that would be a far more enriching experience, and are far more enriching life. But I'll deal with the life I've got.