"Silver Pillows"
by Thistle

He's not even the most recent literary hoax (that's you, James Frey), but bookies sure can't get enough of author JT Leroy, the ex-boy prostitute, or ex-punk mama, or ex-galactic princess, or—let's just say the rabbit hole goes pretty deep. For a mystery man, Leroy's fairly high-profile: hanging with hip celebrities, writing for Deadwood and penning songs for NYC's drama-rock trio Thistle. Fronted by Laura "Speedie" Albert (best odds in the that's-the-real-JT-Leroy sweepstakes), Thistle is strangely, surprisingly, kinda normal. "I'll be chaste/ I will be true/ I'll be poison from wishing I were you," she belts out on "Silver Pillows." Not sure what I was expecting from the hip lit subgenius, but that ain't it. Meanwhile, the music's swell in that power-poppy New Pornographers/Magnapop sorta way. So Thistle ends up putting its listeners through the same near-dilemma Leroy's readers are all twisted up about. Does it matter who wrote the words if you like them? And what if you think the words are just OK?

You can download this song at www.thistlehq.com/music.html. In most ways, however, the site is deceitful above all things.