It’s one of those days, the ones where everything just seems to continue happening even though you’re hoping that there’ll be some time soon to catch your breath; from waking up to the sound of an alarm that water was coming in the basement to everything that’s followed (Mostly related to the basement flooding, which has pretty much taken up the entire day and my brain throughout), today feels like a month of stress wrapped up into one 11-hour package (Has it really only been 11 hours since I woke up? Jeez). This can only be a karmic reaction for being so relaxed during a massage yesterday that I fell asleep; this’ll teach me for thinking that my embarrassment over falling asleep during a blooming* massage was karmic payback enough.
(* – self-censorship for both comic effect and whatever sensitive souls may be reading this.)
Despite being the “hidden track,” I’ve always been fairly convinced that “The Citizens’ Band” is one of the best songs, if not the best song, on the Super Furry Animals’ third album, Guerrilla; for one thing, it’s one of the most straightforward songs in terms of structure and production (Guerrilla felt, at times, like a reaction to the autotuning and increasing manipulation of pop music post-recording that was beginning to creep into the top 40 at the time it was released, and as a result feels at times more sterile and less warm than their other albums; I don’t know how much of that is actually there, and how much is my reading of it, mind you), and for another, lyrically it feels personal and true in a way that few other songs do, if that makes sense.
There’s a 1970s vibe to the song, for me; not just in the high notes – listen as Gruff strains at the end of the song, or during the “We all need”s in the chorus – but the flute and the shuffling drums that feel lethargic in the same way that Ringo often did. There’s something about the slightly stoned feel of the song that reminds me of “Hometown Unicorn,” the band’s first single, in a good way; it could be a song from that same era, with the slightly scruffy feel to the whole thing, the guitars simultaneously sounding like glam rock and sludge, and the most hilarious handclaps in pop music (Seriously, if you listen close, there’s just one clap every now and again, a very steady, slow pattern).
Lyrically, it feels like two songs in a way; the very specific joke about writing a song in CB radio slang (“I’m a breaker that breaks/And my handle is Goblin”) and the far more universal longing when we get to the chorus, sung with more passion – and, perhaps tellingly, more voices – as we get “Me and you/So many ways to communicate,” a lyric that always sticks in my head as weirdly and wonderfully important in ways that I can feel but not necessarily understand, but something that feels at the center of my world as I end up writing on the internet about social media for a living. So many ways to communicate, indeed; if only I could write that in the harmonies and emphasis that it deserves, that I feel every time I listen to the song.
The thing that always surprises me about “So You Want To Be A Rock and Roll Star” – at least, the original Byrds version – is the trumpet(?) that goes through the whole thing, pretty much independent of, or at odds with, the main part of the song (with appropriately Byrdsian jangly guitar, which had been in place since “I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better,” way back when, and the odd vocal that sounds so reminiscent of Harry Nilsson in the way it’s been produced). Like Love back then(I’m thinking specifically about the “Alone Again Or” use of brass, which sounds like a Mariachi band wandered into the studio while they were recording the song), there’s an almost willful counterintuitiveness about the way the brass appears here, avoiding the kind of Beatles-esque arrangement that was so prevalent in pop music at the time for something that feels more… jazzy, perhaps? But utterly random, too, not supporting (or supported by) anything around it, a thumbed nose to whatever musical convention that was going on and attempt to auralize the lyrical message of the song.
“When fun is outlawed, only outlaws will have fun.”
There’s something about that line, spoken/sung in the middle of this song and – like much of it by that point – barely audible, lost in the noise and buzz that’s grown up around everything that’s going on as the song has gone on, that speaks to the appeal of Super Furry Animals as a band. It recalls Bob Dylan’s famous line “To live outside the law, you must be honest” (from “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” I think? Google agrees, but that’s not necessarily a sign of anything other than a lot of other people agreeing to misremember these things), but plays with it, just like so much of SFA’s music is a detournment of other music and genres (Listen to this song, after all, which starts with gentle acoustic guitar finger picking before being overpowered by powerchords, ELO-esque harmonies and a more “electronica,” to use the horrible-but-apt term, feeling as we approach the bridge). And it speaks to SFA’s attitude in general, which is a knowing playfulness, a self-aware sense of what’s going on but determined attempt not to become weighed down by the darkness and heartlessness all around. It’s not “If fun is outlawed,” it’s when, but you can tell from the line (and it’s delivery) that Super Furry Animals are perfectly prepared to break whatever laws they have to, in order to stay true to themselves, and have fun.
Bernard Butler’s “Stay” is exactly the song that all of his fans wanted him to put out as his first solo record, I suspect, and also exactly the song that everyone who liked to make fun of his grandiose production were probably expecting and sharpening their barbs for in anticipation. This is in no way a subtle song although, at its heart, it is; if you can get beyond the production and arrangement, this is a very gentle, quiet thing deep down. The lyrics, especially the blunt, short chorus (“Don’t go/Stay/This time” – That’s really it, and I kind of love it for how unaffected and un-clever, if that makes sense, it is), feel like they belong to something much quieter and more intimate, and even Butler’s delivery of the lines feel more restrained than everything surrounding his voice (Although this was the first thing he’d ever released as a solo artist, singing as well as performing on guitar, and possibly the first full song lyric he’d written alone as well, so maybe there are more reasons for his restrained vocal than lyrical intent).
But the music… The song just builds wonderfully, from strummed acoustic guitar to the slowly added other instruments (piano, drums, bass, unnecessary-but-why-not wind sound effects), and then at the end of the first chorus, the electric guitar fading in with feedback that feels both out of place and just wonderfully necessary in a way that turns the song on instead of it just existing. The way that the electric guitar feels as if it’s the emotion to the whole thing, this anguish that he can’t quite get out any other way (The way it just attacks the bridge still makes me wish I knew how to play guitar, knew how to express myself in that way, this immediate wonderful difficult way). By the time the song is finishing, it’s all about the electric guitar, that’s become the purpose of the song, explaining what the song is and what it’s about much more than the vocal. Considering Butler’s past in Suede, where it felt at times he was fighting with singer Brett Anderson for the soul of the song (Just listen to “Stay Together” or “The Asphalt World” and you’ll hear what I mean), it seemed fitting and thrilling and it feels the same even now, more than a decade later.
This isn’t a great song, but it is a great performance, if that makes sense; other people could try to do this track but, because they wouldn’t have that guitar in there, it wouldn’t measure up. “Stay” might have been the first song that proved that Bernard Butler could write an entire song himself and could carry a tune if he had to, but it’s also a song that proved once and for all that he’s definitely at his best as a guitarist.
When I was a kid, there was always one tape that you count depend on being played during any lengthy family road trip: Queen’s Greatest Hits. I’m not sure quite why or how, to be honest, my family somehow decided without any discussion that that cassette was magically acceptable to everyone in the family, but it was, and we’d all listen and sing along happily whenever it was played (As opposed to the reaction when, say, Huey Lewis and The News – my father’s favorite – was suggested).
Listening to “We Will Rock You” now is a strange exercise, because the song itself is just covered in a layer of nostalgia that almost disguises what you actually hear. But what’s there is kind of fascinating, if only to consider how it became a hit, and a hit that everyone likes. Consider the structure of the song, which isn’t the traditional verse/chorus/verse as much as a chant that, all of a sudden, Brian May comes along and just ends with a ridiculously awesome guitar solo (Is Brian May “officially” awesome again yet? If not, he should be; he’s a really great guitarist). I mean… there’re no instruments in this song until almost ninety seconds into it, and then there’s just this guitarist going nuts, and then it’s just… over. This is pretty much a weird song, the kind of thing that is normally hidden away on an album for the hardcore fans only, and yet it magically became a thing and everyone knows it. Sometimes, I think that over familiarity makes us forget how truly strange that really is.
Being an old man, Panic! At The Disco’s first album pretty much passed me by without any trace; I knew the band existed, but always got them mixed up with My Chemical Romance for some reason, both bands written off as something approaching emogothpop by kids with too much money and romance for gloom (Yes, I know this is potentially unfair; sorry to those who are disappointed). But there was a mention on a website or a magazine or something prior to the band’s second album that essentially said “They’ve clearly been listening to a lot of Beatles and trying to recreate Sgt. Pepper’s,” which is the kind of thing that almost guarantees that I’ll check something out from morbid curiosity if nothing else. This song – “Nine In The Afternoon” – was the first single (and second track) on that second album, Pretty. Odd., and I remember hearing it and thinking “Oh, they’re not trying to be the Beatles, they’re trying to be Jellyfish.”
That sounds like a diss, but it shouldn’t; I love Jellyfish and their own retro sound, but there’s nothing in “Nine In The Afternoon” that really approaches either the expansive nature of, or the exploration at the heart of, their music; it’s all about nostalgia and an attempt to return to times past. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – A lot of my favorite bands, Jellyfish included, were very much concerned with the same thing – but it requires some level of songwriting beyond passable, and a dedication to production and aural fidelity, to make things sound like more than just pastiche. And this song… doesn’t really do that. This is “psychedelia” by numbers, with a song that’s not strong enough to really carry its weight as anything more. It’s enjoyable and relatively singalong, and yes, they’ve stolen a horn arrangement that feels like it should’ve come from Pepper’s, but it feels like ELO or something, an “almost-but-not-quite” running through the entire thing like a stick of rock.
Almost the entire album is like this, sadly; some kind of quasi-Rutles parody that’s agreeable but not memorable. There’s one song that I really did like off the album, although it’s barely a full song at all; the opener, “We’re So Starving” doesn’t try to sound like someone’s attempt to recreate 1967, is playful and self-aware, and altogether a lot of fun. If the entire album had sounded like that, everything would have been better.
This will never, ever happen again, I’m sure, but here’s the current list of top 10 stories on Techland:
The ones that aren’t blurred out? They’re mine. Somehow, I have four stories in the current top 10, and three of them are the top 3 currently. This is a somewhat boasting post, I know, but hopefully illustrates my point about what a weird week it’s been.
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As I said in email to someone earlier this week, this week has been crazy; I’ve had weird (and amusing) passive aggressiveness with PR folk for work things, semi-quasi job offers that I really really wanted to accept but financial and time realities prevented me from doing so, amid personal stuff and a cleanse that has kicked my ass in ways that I would never have imagined having previously done other cleanses that have seemed so much more hardcore (Seriously, on Monday I could’ve killed someone for looking at me the wrong way, I was so pissed off and unhappy). Considering how last week went, it’s possible that January is fascinatingly shaping up to be the month that tries to kill me before I make it through to what is hopefully going to be a much better Rest Of 2012. If what’s happened in the last couple weeks is an omen for how the rest of the year is going to turn out, I might just consider hibernating and starting over in 2013.
I remember, as a kid, listening to the start of this song over and over again – A Hard Day’s Night was something my parents had on vinyl, which also fascinated me as a kid – because it sounded “wrong” for some reason, but not in a bad way. Listening to it again now, I immediately understand what it is that I couldn’t work out back then: it’s the way that the “Woah-oh-” splits for the “aaaaaah” in a way you both expect (the high note) and don’t (the low), and that it’s immediately followed by a repetition, instead of some kind of climax; maybe it’s just me, but the opening feels like it should go higher, and longer or just differently. In what is otherwise a straightforward early-mid period Beatles tune, it’s an unexpected break from the norm.
Talking about the period, we’re still in the period where Beatle lyrics are far less interesting than the music they relax in, and this song is a great example (with the exception of the “please/triviality” rhyme); lots of “come on”s, cliches (“I’m gonna love her till the cows come home,” John? Really?) and misogyny (“I gotta whole lotta things to tell her/When I get home” and “I’ll love her more/Till I walk out that door/Again”), all made infinitely more palatable than it has any right to be by the rawness of the vocals (There’s a sexiness and energy there that still thrills today; I can only imagine what it felt like back then, when this was all new and somewhat alien).
Overall, “When I Get Home” is weirdly… short, perhaps, but maybe I mean weightless or empty; there’s very little here, and every time I hear it, I always feel slightly disappointed not only that it doesn’t live up to that opening – That’s the main hook, and when that part isn’t happening, you’re waiting and hoping it returns throughout the entire thing – but that it’s over so soon and without actually doing anything. It’s like a wasted opportunity more than a complete song, in a lot of ways, but that might be the kind of thing that has to happen when you’re gearing up to create new things.
