#1438: Kanye West ft. Mos Def, Freeway & The Boys Choir of Harlem – Two Words

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One day, in either ’04 or ’05, all was quiet in my household. I was sitting on the floor. My sister, on the sofa. MTV Base, the channel of the network that focused on R&B and hip-hop and other things “urban”, was on the television. All very unassuming. I think it was, like, the middle of the day on a random weekend. Then, all of a sudden, a video started playing on the screen, and my sister burst out the loudest “Oh, my God!” She really screamed it. I can’t even remember how I responded, but I’m thinking I must have asked “What?”. I looked at the TV, and there in its first few seconds was the video for Kanye West’s ‘Two Words’. My sis had a physical copy of The College Dropout. I remember it being played out the computer speakers during those days. But it was songs like ‘Spaceship’ and ‘School Spirit’ that I recall hearing a lot more. ‘Two Words’ was a new one to me. Clearly, it wasn’t for my sister. The video played, uncensored, every “fuck that” in the song was clearly audible. Again, it was very much afternoon time. I’m very sure the video was never played again on the channel. Maybe someone got fired for the blunder.

So that was my first experience with the track. It’s a moment that stuck with me. Even when I properly got into The College Dropout myself in about 2008, I’d always see ‘Two Words’ as the one that made my sister go crazy for a brief moment years before. It is just a bit of a banger. It’s all about that five-note melody that plays throughout each artist’s verses, mirrored by the Boys Choir in the back. Just ties everything all together. Underneath that melody, I think Kanye West, Mos Def and Freeway are meant to be utilizing a concept of making verses out the groupings of two successive words. Mos Def is the most successful at it, “United States”, “Crack smoke”, “Black folks”, “Everybody, move!”, his verse starting the track off after West’s intro. West then follows, taking some liberties with the whole two words thing and throwing in some standard lines here and there. He says at one point, “I live by two words: ‘Fuck you, pay me'” which would make you think, “Surely that’s four words, no?” I think it’s more like “Fuck you” / “Pay me”. Makes sense that way. Freeway more or less does the same in terms of liberty taking. The way he delivers, “The heat skeet, blow a reef through your car, my God” usually makes me smirk a little. It’s how he says “my Goooood”, he really sells it. Such a dramatic-sounding hip-hop track, capped off with the Boys Choir in the back, who are singing “Through your hands up high / Till they reach the sky” in the choruses, something I only found out relatively recently.

Why did Kanye West make a video for this track? That time when I first saw it, it was like, “Oh, must be the new single then.” ‘Cause singles got music videos, that’s usually how the deal went. Seemed a bit dark as a single choice, and the censorship that it would have to go through to get played on the radio wouldn’t be fun. Kanye West must have had it all sorted. But it turned out it wasn’t lined up to be a single at all. A video was made for it just because it could be, with the three rappers filmed lip-syncing their respective verses in different places. In terms of the song, it’s monumental. ‘Two Words’ is another on the album to incorporate the chipmunk-style sampling which was West’s bread and butter in those days. This time round, it’s anchored via some chopped up sections from a song called ‘Peace and Love’ by American funk group Mandrill. I actually don’t think I knew that before. It also brings such a sudden change in mood with its placement on College Dropout, appearing after two skits included in the track list for comedic relief. When that opening “Ahhhh” jumps in, it’s time to get serious again. In another world, ‘Two Words’ probably closes this album out. But in this world, Kanye West just had that much good material that he had three other album closers to follow it.

#1437: The Avalanches – Two Hearts in 3/4 Time

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It was kind of cool when there was the time when The Avalanches were this mystical group that made Since I Left You and bounced, leaving the people to wonder what happened to them. Those of you who were around when their long-awaited second album Wildflower was announced and eventually released in the summer of 2016 will know how great a feeling it was to hear new Avalanches music again. I was there, and I tell you it was a huge damn deal. A couple jams on there I still rock today. Didn’t really like We Will Always Love You all that much. It was very fine. With four years between that album and Wildflower, it was a quick turnover by Avalanches standards, but to me …Love You lacked that oomph that made the two prior so effective. It was sleek pop music. Sleek pop music by the Avalanches. But sleek pop music still, which as a genre I’m not quite into. With news, old news at this point, that the fourth album is in the works, I just hope that the oomph returns.*

I can tell you the first time I heard Since I Left You in full was on my phone, lying in bed, in between waking up and caving in to get up for the rest of the day. Years ago, I’ll say 2013 again. The fact that it was virtually one big instrumental experience split into 18 tracks without any proper lyrics meant I could just relax and let it all wash over me, didn’t have to focus too much. Songs on there I was familiar already were the obvious ones like ‘Frontier Psychiatrist’ and the title track to a lesser extent. And Pitchfork gave it a 9.5, so to the impressionable, I think, 18-year-old I was, this was a cool album to be listening to. I admire the album for all its worth, but it’s never really one I go back to for active listening. Like, it’s a great, great album, the songs constructed by all the sampling are ridiculous. But it’s all the sampling that makes the album such a dense one. It’s a dense record. And I think it needs a certain environment for the whole to truly be appreciated in. I don’t find myself in the dead of winter, darker nights, cold temperatures, thinking, “What would be great now is Since I Left You.” So that’s how I feel about that. The one track on there that does everything for me though, any time of the year, is its fourth one, ‘Two Hearts in 3/4 Time”.

‘Two Hearts…’ sort of begins in the tail-end of preceding song ‘Radio’, with the opening “Oh, can’t you hear it?” sample trickling in from there. ‘Radio’ itself contains a persistent thump that lasts throughout almost its entire duration, so to follow it up with ‘Two Hearts…’ which reveals itself as this lovely, waltz-time, almost spacey affair – once you get past the showy Cabaret samples – that makes you feel like you’re floating on air… that’s some good sequencing right there. A description of the song would just be me listing out the samples used to make the track, which doesn’t make for great reading. So I think it’d be better for you to have some active listening for yourselves while you read along. What I’ll state bluntly is, I like the use of every sample in this song. The repeating descending vocal melody is pretty. The jazzy ascending Rhodes piano, least I think that’s what it is, is astral-like. The panic-inducing ending taken from John Cale’s ‘Ghost Story’ is hectic and maybe a little frightening, but brilliantly brings in an unexpected left turn. And I also like how, before a particular section fully enters the mix, you can hear it slightly in the background of the section that precedes it. A little taste of what’s to come is subtly revealed each time. The album keeps on trucking as the song rolls right into ‘Avalanche Rock’. And if we want to go there, ‘Two Hearts…’ is in 6/8, isn’t it?

*lil’ update – At the time I wrote that, ‘Together’ and ‘Every Single Weekend’ hadn’t yet been released. I kind of heard the former, haven’t heard the latter. I’m gonna wait for the album. It’s almost here.

#1436: Taking Back Sunday – Twenty-Twenty Surgery

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Exactly 600 posts later, I’m writing about another Taking Back Sunday song from the same album. Funny how this thing works out sometimes. You go to that write-up on ‘Miami’ and I more or less give the context behind my personal association with the band’s Louder Now. ‘Twenty-Twenty Surgery’ is the sixth song on the record. It closes out the first side if you were to purchase the album on vinyl. My sister borrowed Louder Now from a friend of hers, I think mainly so she could have a copy of ‘MakeDamnSure’ for herself. If another song happened to be good, there was no complaining. I must have heard ‘Twenty-Twenty Surgery’ at a time when the album was playing out of the computer speakers, in the background while I was probably doing something else. But I really became familiar with the track when its music video (as seen above) began its circulation on MTV2 in the middle of 2006. For some reason, the track was released as a single only in the UK and Europe. It got to number 60 in the former’s singles chart.

The video is a nod to Johnny Cash’s prison concerts, particularly those of San Quentin and Folsom. It’s also one of those videos where I’m certain it has nothing to do with what’s going on in the lyrics. And what is going on in the lyrics? I’m not sure myself, I’ve never thought too deeply into them. I just enjoyed hearing the song every time it arrived on the TV screen. I liked the swapping-in-and-out of vocals between lead singer Adam Lazzara and guitarist Fred Mascherino, something that happens all throughout Louder Now. And in general, the track is one that can get itself stuck in the brain, if it’s pop-punk inclined. But looking into it, the title was initially inspired by the LASIK surgery a guy Lazzara was living with had at the time. Lazzara then looked to turning this in-joke ‘Twenty-Twenty Surgery’ phrase into something concerning hindsight. Then I look at the words, and I think it’s safe to assume there’s a relationship of some kind being depicted in it. It’s most likely at its end. So I concluding it’s an “In hindsight, this person wasn’t what I thought they were,” type deal. I didn’t need to know the meaning of it all to know I liked it. But I guess it’s good to have some sort of bearing of where the song’s coming from.

So, yeah, Louder Now. Twenty years old this year. This was the era of Taking Back Sunday I remember very clearly. To me they just sort of popped up from out of nowhere when ‘MakeDamnSure’ was making the rounds. Unbeknownst to me they had already released two albums prior. But I really got into the band during that time. Doing some searches for this post, I’ve just found out that Fred Mascherino has been playing with the band at live shows for just under a year now. And that’s great. I know that Mascherino’s presence in the lineup when he was an official member marks a time of what fans regard peak Taking Back Sunday. I also remember there was a lot of drama behind his initial departure back in the day. Very cool to see that differences between he and Lazzara were made up and they’re able to play these songs together again. I guess it would be too much to ask to get the other three members who were in the band during the Louder Now times to join them as well. You’ve got to start with baby steps, I guess.

#1435: Joy Division – Twenty Four Hours

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My appreciation for Joy Division’s ‘Twenty Four Hours’ really set in during my blank year of 2019 when I was unemployed, looking for jobs and sort of wallowing in my own misery. I think I’ve referenced this time of my life before. And whenever I wasn’t applying for vacancies and sending receipts of these applications to my sister at her request so she could judge how I was doing, I was listening to albums. My old ASUS laptop, which I used throughout uni, was at the time running low on storage because of all the music I had downloaded onto it. So I created my own task of listening through the albums I had in my iTunes library and deleting the songs I felt I wasn’t returning to all that much. Joy Division’s Closer had been in there for some time. Wish I could tell you exactly when, but that laptop is on the fritz as I also may have said before. It’s at least after 2013. But in 2019, it was the first time I’d properly gone through it in years. It’s not the kind of album I think of turning to when I spontaneously decide to listen through one. But I did, on whatever day it was, and got to thinking, “Hmm… ‘Twenty Four Hours’. I like that one,” once that song was done.

Why isn’t Closer the sort of album to go to for a casual listen? Well, for anyone not in the know, the LP was the last of Joy Division’s to be worked on before lyricist and singer Ian Curtis died by suicide. Officially the band’s final statement, or at the very least Curtis’s, and the songs within are nine different windows providing a view of how much he was suffering internally at the time. Or I won’t sensationalize it and instead say it’s from the POV of narrators who are clearly going through a trying ordeal. ‘Twenty Four Hours’, in my view, is from the perspective of “someone” who senses they are running out of time in this world. The hope they once had is now gone, only darkness looms. A search for salvation is the main objective. If it’s not found, there’s a big chance the narrator won’t be around for much longer. And I like to think the song’s title is the amount of time they’ve given themselves before their final decision. The urgency of the situation is apparent, symbolised by the sections with the rushing guitar and pounding snare drum, echoing with each strike. The drum fills during those parts never quite fall precistly on the downbeat too. Near claustrophobic, quite anxiety-inducing.

And ’cause there’s no chorus to sort of connect everything together, the track relies on the dynamic set between the quieter, rolling sections, led by Peter Hook’s melodic bass guitar, and the aforementioned propulsive sections. They say the quiet/loud contrast was firmly established by Pixies, but Joy Division seemed to be doing it just over a decade before. I’ve got to say, a lot of times, I find myself humming along to Hook’s bass line all the way throughout, missing Curtis’s words altogether. To be fair, it is a very memorable bass line. That’s nothing new when it comes to the bass lines in Joy Division songs. It’s also the very first thing in the song you hear. When it does come to Curtis’s lyrics, though, all I can say is they make up five verses based on sheer resigned acceptance. “Just for one moment, thought I’d found my way / Destiny unfolded, I watched it slip away.” That’s just half of one. Hard not to associate anything that’s depicted in the song with what would tragically follow in reality. Feels a bit trite to just say rest in peace. Even though that’s the thing you do say when someone’s died / been dead for a while, I didn’t know Ian Curtis at all. As if that had to be said. It would have been nice if he got the help he needed.

#1434: The Byrds – Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)

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Went back to the Vista computer sitting in the corner of the living room to get to the source for this track. According to the file’s properties, I downloaded The Byrds’ ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ at 12:30 in the morning, on Sunday 1st of May 2011. Just a few minutes after doing the same for their cover of ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’. It was a wild period of my life that I was behind a desktop on a Saturday night downloading music. Really, I was in the lead-up to my actual GCSE exams and going out wasn’t an option. Around that time, both songs had appeared on a radio service provided by the website we7.com, which I’ve referred to on a few occasions. I liked the two of ’em straight off the bat. When it came to ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’, I got that all-to-familiar feeling that I’d heard the song somewhere before. It’s in Forrest Gump, which I’m sure I’d seen by that point, but it was like my knowledge of the tune went much further back. This is something I’ll come back to at the end of this post.

Just over two months after completing their first album in April 1965, The Byrds were back in the studio to start work on what would become their second. Only made sense. They’d virtually created the folk rock genre, and their take on ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ had taken the world by storm. It was time to capitalise. During the sessions for this new album, they recorded an adaptation of ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ by Pete Seeger, which itself was heavily reliant on the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. The Byrds did their thing. Applied the three-way harmonies of Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and Gene Clark. Utlilised the chiming 12-string guitars. Unlike ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ where McGuinn was the only Byrd playing his instrument alongside the world-class Wrecking Crew session musicians, all five Byrds were present, correct and performing on ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ this time ’round. They completed the song. It was released as the first single from their forthcoming album, also entitled Turn! Turn! Turn!. While maybe not as much as the worldwide smash ‘Tambourine’ was, the people of America got it to number one in their country and the folk rock train of 1965 kept rolling.

I mean, I think it’s a bit of a classic, right? The Byrds would evolve in terms of the music they’d make as the ’60s went on. But in terms of establishing that folk rock sound, ‘Tambourine Man’ and ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ solidly set the template and influenced anything like it that followed. I already mentioned them in the previous paragraph, but it’s all about the vocal melodies and the jangly guitars. The combination of those result in some good aural bliss. But I also like how the song picks up in rhythm as its outro sets in and Michael Clarke becomes a little bit more busier on the drums, pulling off some fills and triplet patterns in the process. One thing I would wish for is that The Byrds did a whole Beatles discography remix thing, though. Instruments in the right ear and just vocals in the left… It’s not a stereo mix for today’s society. Oh, and, uh, years after getting to know ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ proper in 2011, I found myself watching that Simpsons episode where Bart and Lisa become newsreaders for a children’s programme. In it, Bart seeks inspiration from Kent Brockman. Brockman assists. ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ showed up, and that unlocked a memory of sitting in front of the small TV in my grandma’s room when I was maybe eight, watching the same episode while trying not to wake her up. So there you go.