A fleshy, floppy-haired, occasionally peach-fuzzed goofball singing about DC Comics and chocolate milkshakes, Art Brut’s Eddie Argos looks like nothing so much as a towel-clad pudgeball lip-synching into a hairbrush while the school bus honks outside. The band’s first single was contagious in its giddy sense of possibility: You can actually become the people you grew up listening to. All you have to do is… form a band. It was a mission statement, and the band made a joyful noise as if to prove their point, but to really understand why being in a band gives Art Brut such a rush, you should listen to “Emily Kane.”

“I was your boyfriend when we were 15 / It’s the happiest that I’ve ever been.” The first words immediately locate the speaker in a position of adulthood, looking back; even more than most pop songs, “Emily Kane”—a serenade to the eponymous long-lost love—is immediately an ode to adolescent yearning.

Argos self-deprecatingly plays up his childishness (“Even though we didn’t understand / How to do much more than just hold hands”) while supporting his account with specific, familiar observational detail (“If memory serves, we’re still on a break”). His longing is plaintive—“I don’t even know where she lives”—and then parodic: “I’ve not seen her in 10 years… nine months… three weeks… four days… six hours… 13 minutes… five seconds.”

All of which reveals Argos, despite his shambling persona and goofy perspective (“There’s a beast in my soul that can’t be tamed / I’m still in love with Emily Kane”), as a master wordsmith. But despite his facility with form, he’s guileless as a teenager when it comes to content. It’s apparently quite autobiographical. Live, Argos used to relate anecdotes about the current status of his relationship with the song’s muse. And the ironic distance seems to stab at him: “I can’t get over my old flame.”

I think this aching nostalgia explains, perhaps paradoxically, quite a bit of Art Brut’s excitement over pop music.

Even three albums into Art Brut’s career, Argos is still writing songs proclaiming “Those… are… the records I like!” (on third album Art Brut vs. Satan’s “Slap Dash for No Cash”) and screaming about his newfound love of the Replacements. To date, Art Brut has recorded songs called “The Passenger” (not an Iggy Pop cover), “Twist and Shout” (not an Isley Brothers cover), “Pump Up the Volume” (not a MARRS cover), “People in Love” (not a 10cc cover), “I Will Survive” (not a Gloria Gaynor cover), “Jealous Guy” (not a John Lennon cover), and “Blame It on the Trains” (not a Milli Vanilli cover).

The guys in Art Brut are fans, is the point. And that’s why the key lyric and most poignant moment in “Emily Kane” sees Argos telling his long-lost teen love: “I hope this song finds you fame / I want school kids on buses singing your name.” Immortality, as he can conceive it, is to become exactly like the subjects of the songs—other people’s songs—he sang along to when they were together. Crossing over from fan to artist is a fan’s idea of immortality; Argos maintains a fan’s perspective on the other side of the divide. As happy as he is to have formed a band, he misses looking up to them too, like he did when he and Emily Kane were a couple of 15-year-olds—and this nostalgia is only appropriate for a guy who, after all, makes songs that we’ll sing along to in our youth, and remember fondly forever after, as perfect three-minute time machines.

Watch: Art Brut, “Emily Kane” [at youtube.com]