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Songs We Love: Quarterbacks, 'Not In Luv'

Quarterbacks, the pride of New Paltz, New York.
David Grimaldi
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Courtesy of the artist
Quarterbacks, the pride of New Paltz, New York.

Pop music's great storytellers tend to be handy with the dissolve cut — using telling turns of phrase to signal that time has passed, things have changed and we're rejoining our characters somewhere new. (Think of "Jeremy" or "Luka" or "Stan," the way their stories escalate off-screen).

Dean Engle, the songwriter behind Quarterbacks, likes to invert the formula: Rather than collapse the events of a week or year into a few minutes, his songs make dramatic episodes out of tiny moments and their tinier details. "Not in Luv" is over in just a minute and four seconds, but it's enough time for Engle to grab hold of a passing thought, check it for flaws, make peace with its contradictions and, only then, send it on its way.

Quarterbacks comes out Feb. 10 on Team Love.

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