It’s true; Oasis lost “it,” whatever “it” is, somewhere between (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? and Be Here Now, and as a result, they lost much of their fanbase as well, if you consider just how popular they really were in the aftermath of that former album (If you were living in the U.K. at the time, you’ll remember that they were almost literally everywhere, and that everyone had at least one Oasis song that they loved). But I’m one of the few people who thinks that the failure made them, if not a better band, then at least a more interesting one. Every album after Be Here Now was flawed, true, but it also had more to offer in terms of variety than their big three albums, and arguably the best of what came next was better than what made the band’s reputation.
Take, as exhibit A, “Who Feels Love,” arguably one of the three or so good songs off Standing on The Shoulder of Giants; it’s a medium tempo stab at psychedelia that, on the album, has some nice parts (Who doesn’t love a little bit of backwards guitar, after all? Not to mention the bridge at 3:20, with guitars spiralling off in all directions), but the flanging/flattening of the vocals just kills it dead for me – nonetheless, it’s something different, something that isn’t the Beatles Pub Rock that was the band’s stock in trade before, despite the complete lift from “Dear Prudence” in the chord progression. Much better, though, were the live “acoustic” versions performed by half of the band – tellingly, not vocalist Liam Gallagher – in promotional appearances for the album; it becomes a different type of song, softer and more in synch audibly with the sentiment in the lyrics. Without Liam’s sneer, it’s gentler and feels more honest:
This is, in many ways, an Oasis I would’ve wanted to have seen more of, but it wasn’t to be. The closest we got was the last album, Dig Out Your Soul, which was… quasi-psychedelic, perhaps? But even it didn’t go far enough for me, and the post-split projects have both been far less satisfying than the sum of their parts. Maybe when the inevitable reunion happens…
366 Songs 028: Setting Sun
I found out, earlier this week, that the remaining members of the Beatles had threatened the Chemical Brothers with legal action over “Setting Sun”‘ s similarity to “Tomorrow Never Knows” from Revolver, only for Sony to hire various musical experts to “prove” that the two songs were different enough so as not to be legally actionable. There’s something amusing about that, in no small part because “Setting Sun” pretty much is “Tomorrow Never Knows,” or at least the younger, angrier brother of that song; I remember when the song was new, and DJs would mix the two together, and all of us Britpop fans would nod our heads and go “yes, the Beatles really did invent everything” as if that was somehow gospel fact as opposed to Brit-centric nonsense.
“Setting Sun,” though, felt like a breakthrough for the Chemical Brothers at the time, at least for me. It wasn’t their first track with a vocalist – Tim Burgess and the wonderful Beth Orton had been on the first album, Exit Planet Dust – but it was their first track that felt as if it was “a song,” with a beginning, middle and end, and enough give and take within it to work as a club track, too. There’s an organicness to “Setting Sun,” the structure of it if not the way it sounds, electronically screaming at you, that wasn’t present in their earlier work, and a playfulness, too; it’s something that works in more locations than just the dancefloor, and a sign of where they’d go on Dig Your Own Hole, the album that followed (and ended up becoming a home to this track).
But back to the Beatles; it’s not just any similarity to “Tomorrow Never Knows” and Noel Gallagher’s vocals that remind the listener of the Fab Four; the drums, if you listen to them as a loop and then separate that loop in your head to the singular beat that is looped, sounds like something Ringo would play (It actually really reminds me of his infamous “Strawberry Fields Forever” drum riff), and the… more choral vocals… (which isn’t the right way to put it, but the vocals that are sampled and used as music as opposed to Gallagher’s lead vocal) are reminiscent of the mythical “Tomorrow Never Knows” that was never made but John Lennon had imagined, with the monk chanting on the top of a hill providing the main musical accompaniment.
It’s odd to hear Noel Gallagher perform this song on his own, and give it – well, a melody, which the original purposefully doesn’t have; it becomes a gentler song, something more melancholy, which is odd to imagine. The “Setting Sun” on Dig Your Own Hole is a battle song, a call to arms for a culture war as much as “Tomorrow Never Knows” was, way back when. I love this song, as much for what it implies and brings to memory as much as what it actually is, but those two things feel very linked: It’s about being young and out of control and now, more than a decade later, it’s become that song for me in an entirely different direction.
366 Songs 027: Underground
Someone – I can’t remember who, but I suspect it may have been the girlfriend I had when Ben Folds Five, the debut album, came out – once called “Underground” a song that sounded like it should’ve been done by the Muppets, and I completely understand where they’re coming from; there’s a… jauntiness, might be a good way of putting it, or a particular perkiness to the song that feels like it should be coming from a bunch of felt-covered creatures who can open their mouths to 90 degree angles. To be honest, that’s one of the selling points of the song for me, this unstoppable enthusiasm and energy that just bowls you over and dares you not to want to sing along, even before you’ve realized that the lyrics are making fun of what, even in the late ’90s when this song came out, was called “alternative culture” (My favorite lyric may be the “It’s industrial!/So work it underground” couplet, which is punctuated by one weak metal clink and sung in high harmonies, so amazingly non-industrial and at odds with the idea of what that music wanted to be).
Considering BF5 was always dominated by the eponymous Mr. Folds – and somewhat understandably; his name was in the band’s (joke) name, and he wrote or co-wrote almost all of their material, as well as being lead singer and having his piano right up there in the mix at all times – it’s worth singing the praises of Robert Sledge and Darren Jesse, the other members of the band. They’re the ones who make “Underground” work, in a weird way; not just in their harmony/backing vocals, but with the bass and drums, grounding the song and giving the piano some weight as well as something to play off’ve. There are live versions from Ben Folds’ solo career of this song, and it’s not just that something’s missing, it’s that everything feels missing; for all the dazzle of Folds’ performance – and it is, genuinely dazzling; this was the band’s first single, and it sounded so fresh and different on the radio because it was the mid-90s! Who sounded like that then? – the song belongs to Sledge and Jesse; they may not have provided all of the Muppet-iness to the final product, but they came up with enough power to take the song beyond a one-hit-wonder thing that you smile at and never need to hear ever again.
366 Songs 026: Yen on A Carousel
I’m a big fan of the soundtracks to the various Ocean’s (Eleven/Twelve/Thirteen) movies, in large part because I was a big fan of David Holmes even before he started doing movie scores and mixes for Steven Soderbergh. But it helps that there’s a particular aesthetic that Holmes’ scores for the movies – Something poppy, but also slightly dirty (aurally, I mean, not lyrically or suggestively in any way); something that sounds like something that would come out of the late ’60s or early ’70s, and has a vaguely R&B sensibility to it – that very much lines up with what I like listening to personally. That said, one YouTube comment on a fan-made video for “Yen on A Carousel” from Ocean’s Twelve just blew my mind by pointing out how much the tune owes to the Beatles’ “Taxman” (which itself owes more than a little to the theme to the 1960s’ Batman TV show). Seriously, just listen to the bassline of this:
What’s particularly frustrating about this is that I’d never realized it before; I’d noticed that some of the “original” tracks from Holmes’ Out of Sight soundtrack are essentially versions of Isley Brothers songs that also appear on the soundtrack but never that a song from my favorite Beatles album so prominently “influenced” one of my favorite tracks from the Twelve soundtrack. Of course, now that I’ve been told, it’s all I can hear. Soon, the two will be joined in my head, and hearing one will immediately bring to mind the other, no matter what the circumstances. Such are the connections my brain makes, and never lets go of.
366 Songs 025: Daybreaker/Daybreaker (Four Tet Remix)
Is it possible to take a mental health day from a blogging deadline that you’ve set for yourself? Probably not, but that’s what I’m doing today, and instead leaving you with this example of a Four Tet remix significantly improving a song, as referenced yesterday: Beth Orton’s Daybreaker, which goes from a weird song with a strange arrangement that sounds entirely out of place with the vocal, and weirdly influenced by bad acid house music of the 1980s, to something that sounds much more enjoyable and organic to my ears.
It might be something as basic as the added echo and acoustic guitar that ground the Four Tet version for me, but, yeah… the second version is almost unimaginably better, if you ask me.
366 Songs 024: As Serious As Your Life
It’s another odd week; it feels as if January has just been odd weeks, each one with its own flavor of weirdness, either bemusing, confusing or patently overwhelming, so why should this one be any different, right? This particular week, so far, has been stuttering, stopping and starting in terms of energy and productivity, so it’s no surprise that I’ve had this song in my head for the last couple of days. Well… “song” feels like the wrong thing to write, in a way, because “song” for me feels as if it should have lyrics and singing, so… this is a tune, I guess? It’s the first Four Tet track proper that I listened to after countless times hearing a Four Tet remix of someone else’s music and thinking to myself, this is great, I should try and trac down more of this and utterly failing in my own plan. And, as an introduction to everything I like about Four Tet, it’s pretty much perfect; the mix of the organic and the digital sounds, the feel of an updated jazz sound – the simplicity of that guitar riff – that also somehow feels like some kind of comedown track you’d hear at the end of a Chemical Brothers album or something similar (especially at 1:27 in this video, where the bass and drums are suddenly looped much tighter, and become this wall of sound, or at 2:20, when the guitar appears again, reversed). But it also has the emptiness that makes me wish that Four Tet tracks had more of the emotionality and character of the tracks he’s remixed for other people; by the end of the track, you’re ready for it to be done, if that makes sense – The cleverness and playfulness has ceased to be a novelty, and you’re left wanting it to make one more evolution and turn into something that’s ultimately more interesting.
366 Songs 023: Gospel With No Lord
Even if “Gossip With No Lord” wasn’t a catchy song that makes you want to (a) shake your ass, (b) sing along or (c) smile wryly (delete as applicable), there are two parts of it that always, without fail, catch my ear and make me love the song for its slyness and self-awareness. Both parts are essentially variations on the same joke – failing to live up to the listener’s expectation of what’s coming next, in such a way that manages to make said expectations seem ridiculous and comedic – but there’s a glee and joy in the subversion as Camille does it that feels infectious and unrehearsed no matter how many times you listen to it, nonetheless. For a song that celebrates people, as opposed to higher powers that may or may not exist depending on your viewpoint, there’s something wonderfully fitting about that, I think.
366 Songs 022: See You in Heaven
Out of all the unreleased-but-leaked material that’s appeared since Elliott Smith’s death, “See You in Heaven” may be one of my favorites, but also one of the most frustrating. Unlike so much of his work, there’s something undeniably uplifting about the instrumental – And, because there are sleigh bells so high in the mix, something so Christmassy, to me at least – and there’s a dynamism to the whole thing that really appeals to me, feeling more like an off-cut from Figure 8 than the other material that he was working on before his death (I think that From A Basement On The Hill is a great album, and has some of my favorite production and arrangements of any of his work, but this just feels different, somehow). It’s unfinished nature makes it feel like a song that archaeologists can use to pick through and find the bones of his songwriting technique, to make a strange and uncomfortable metaphor; the spaces left behind are open to suspect and supposition about what could’ve gone there, what’s missing from it, and why certain choices were made. There are parts that feel very… undone (The building tension from 0:56 to 1:23 almost works, but it’s missing something), and parts that feel revelatory, things that are just lovely but you can tell would’ve been hidden more in a final version (The way the music just tumbles and lurches into the bride at 2:53, for example), and therein lies the frustration, because we’ll never know what the song was “supposed” to sound like. There is, according to Elliott Smith legend, a “finished” version of this song, with lyrics and a more completed arrangement with more overdubs, that exists somewhere, but it’s never been leaked and at this point, more than half a decade after his death, it probably never will. That’s maybe a good thing, ultimately; the unfinished nature of the “See You in Heaven” that we have allows the song to be hopeful and optimistic to those who want it to sound like that, and everything that’s not there can be created by our imaginations, giving us one last chance to interact with Smith and his weird, wonderful way of songwriting.
366 Songs 021: Move Over
Mover is one of those British bands that came and went at the same time as Britpop, but somehow seems to happen outside of it somehow, even though they fit so many criteria for inclusion (The name! The five-twentysomething-males line up! The retro appeal!); they put out two albums (Well, one in the UK; like menswear, the second was a Japan-only release, I seem to remember), and had a handful of singles with great art direction and perfectly agreeable songs, but the first two singles, “Kick The Beam” and “Move Over” was as good as they got; raucous, with a sound that felt as if they preferred the earlier Beatles to anything that’d come after Rubber Soul. There’s an R&B influence (Not modern R’n’B, but the 1950s/1960s stuff) to their sound, and that – along with the basic arrangements of their music and the female backing vocals – was probably what knocked them out of Britpop inclusion for most. But nonetheless, “Move Over” has one of the best openings to any single of the era, with the spiky riff, drums that collapse over themselves to get started and the great couplet “In the beginning, there was the word/And He said unto you, ‘Get On Your Feet'” (That space is taken in a later verse with the fun “Soon to be making all the right connections/Woman is good, man is the beast”), signs that what you’re listening to has no greater aim than making you get out of your seat and shake your butt a little. It’s a song that was made be heard live, to be sung along with (That chorus!), and to make Mover into, if not superstars, then something more popular than they actually became.
The other week, I was watching something on PBS and saw the lead singer of the band, Sam Hazeldine, in a lead role in the drama; some Googling and I discovered that he’d finally found fame as an actor, which made me as happy as it did surprised; he has some charisma, but he also has one of those voices that I’d always hoped would keep singing, putting out random things you’d find by accident that sounded permanently out of time and wonderfully timeless. Maybe one day, Mover will end up living again, who knows?
366 Songs 020: Before My Heart Attacks
“Before My Heart Attacks” has a very particular meaning for me, as a song; I remember vividly listening to this song over and over during one Christmas break when I was in art school, back home with my parents and missing my girlfriend even though everything was up in the air about us (We broke up pretty soon after I went back to school, and I remember her telling me that she’d been thinking about how we weren’t working out during this same break, something that I find both funny and sad; the mental image of me sitting at home, pining, while she’s literally on the other side of the country thinking, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can do better”), and the melancholy and bewilderness of this song seemed to fit my mood even before the last line about “waitin’ on your letter” swung in, with the strings dipping to underscore the end of the song.
It’s a pretty song, saved from potential tweeness (With lyrics like “Garbage man, oh garbage man/Why won’t you leave the street/How can this street/possibly excrete/this much trash seven days a week?” you can possibly see my concerns about tweeness) almost entirely by the arrangement, with the glorious swooping strings backing the plucked guitar and making the whole thing feel at once intimate and epic, the way that relationships do when you’re in the middle of them and things seem to be going wrong. It’s a song that makes you think that the writer, Jason Falkner (ex of Jellyfish, although that may mean little to you; it’s the entire reason I bought the album this was from – Presents Author Unknown – without listening to it, though), is almost there, and has greatness just waiting for him, but if that’s the case, he pretty much kept that greatness under wraps; “Before My Heart Attacks” and another song from the same album, “I Go Astray,” were pretty much as good as he ever got, if you ask me.