#1461: The Velvet Underground – Venus in Furs

Leave a reply

According to my Spotify data, I listened to The Velvet Underground & Nico, first time ever, on 20th October 2012. That was near the beginning of a period in time when I was really trying to check out what was considered to be history’s classic albums, using besteveralbums.com as a guide. Rate Your Music must have been around. I’m not sure Album of the Year was a thing. Best Ever Albums came to me in a Google search, and it’s been serving me well since then. TVU&N was pretty highly ranked in that best ever albums chart at the time, from what I can remember. And again from the data, it seemed I liked the album a lot, because I went through it once more in December 2012, listened to it in patches through 2013 and ’14 too. I gained my favourite tracks from the record through those listens. I’ve previously written about ‘Sunday Morning’ and ‘There She Goes Again’, but ‘Femme Fatale’ and ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ gets double thumbs from me too. Gained more of an appreciation for those two along the way. But to round off the TVU&N coverage and The Velvet Underground as a band on the blog is the album’s fourth track – today’s subject – ‘Venus in Furs’, which I’m sure I got into on the second listen at most.

Every song on TVU&N had a Wikipedia article back in those days. They still do now. And I like to do my research about any music I end up listening to. So I clicked on the link for ‘Venus in Furs’. The page mentioned how the lyrics contain themes concerning BDSM, and lo and behold, while going through the song, I found that to be very true. Lou Reed sings about the dark mistress figure dressed in “shiny, shiny leather” who tends to their subject’s sadistic pleasures with their whip and belt. And I’m thinking, in 1967, surely no one else had even dared to write a song like it. That was the year which saw the Summer of Love. But with TVU&N, The Velvet Underground showed the dark, seedy side of society that was still lurking in the shadows while everyone was caught up in peace and free love. ‘Venus in Furs’, to me, sounded like a bit of a statement in that regard. I’ve always had a scene in my mind of the sadist crawling through a desert towards the mistress described in the song, who just happens to be giant in size. A bit like the lady in the ‘Go with the Flow’ video by Queens of the Stone Age. It’s all in slow motion too. I don’t know. To me, this song has always sounded like dry heat. I see someone sweating, looking for water when I hear this song. And I guess here, the sadist is very thirsty in their own unique way.

“Boom, chk, boom boom, chk, boom boom, chk,” and so on and so forth. That was meant to be an onomatopoeic rendition of the song’s rhythm. I like it. Very simplistic and tribal-like, very appropriate for the song’s subject matter. Makes the scene described within sound like a ritual of some kind. With Lou Reed on guitar, other guitarist Sterling Morrison handles the bass and plays following Mo Tucker’s simple drum pattern. Puts an emphasis on those bass drum strikes. Reed’s guitar has strings that are all tuned to one note, a style of tuning known as ‘Ostrich tuning’. Reed came up with the name. It sounds cool, for sure. I think the instrument in the song that steals the show is the electric viola, played throughout, by John Cale. The loudest instrument in the mix, it drones during the verses, occasionally swooping upwards sharply – Is that a glissando? I don’t know my theory. Cale will play a little solo of some sorts in the small instrumental breaks that occur. The viola feels really effective though, when the song changes key when it gets to the choruses. The viola’s droning on that one note during the verses, which are slowgoing enough as it is, that when Cale shifts to another note for the first time a minute-and-a-half in, it feels like a massive shift has happened in the song’s proceedings. It’s awesome. There should be more Velvet Underground songs on this site. What are there, six? Too little. In another universe, it’s much different.

#1460: Kings of Leon – Velvet Snow

Leave a reply

And so we’ve reached the final time a Kings of Leon song will be mentioned in this long, long list. You can click on the ‘kings of leon’ tag below and see how far my coverage of the group goes back. To get things out of the way, you’ll probably notice that any of their material from Only by the Night onwards is absent. Stuff from that album on the blog is scarce in itself. I am one of those people who think that the band weren’t the same from ‘Sex on Fire’ to the present, I just don’t go out of my way to loudly voice my opinion on the matter because nobody cares. There’s nothing to be gained by saying “I miss when Kings of Leon made this type of music,” ’cause it just is what it is now. I say that. I might have said that exactly in a prior post, but I’ve learned not to care so much now. Those first three albums though, I mean, they were pretty good, weren’t they? Youth & Young Manhood, Aha Shake Heartbreak, Because of the Times. That’s a trilogy right there. I can go down as saying Aha Shake… is my favourite out of them. The fact that I covered more songs from it than their other albums is probably a tell.

I got Aha Shake… as a gift for Christmas in 2008. It’s a story I told before. At that time, I had a YouTube channel where all I did was upload albums and songs at a time when copyright laws weren’t so stringent. That’s another thing I must have referred to in the past. Aha Shake… was one of the albums I uploaded on there, I think in four parts ’cause of the 10-minute limit YouTube used to have, so I got to know the deeper cuts from the album just through having to listen to them over and over again. I’m sure I went through the LP on iTunes or something too. Depending on what version of the album you have, ‘Velvet Snow’ is the penultimate or third-last track on Aha Shake…, the last proper burst of energy the band provide on the whole record before things slow down on following tracks ‘Rememo’ and ‘Where Nobody Knows’. It doesn’t give you any time to prepare for how it starts too. Just comes straight out of the gate with its rockabilly tempo and a guitar riff barking away on the left-hand side. It’s only made up of three notes, but the way it’s played and how it sounds, you remember it very easily.

Not saying the album has a concept or anything, but thinking about the songs on Aha Shake…, a lot of them appear to be about women. Women Caleb Followill likes, others not so much. I was thinking ‘Velvet Snow’ was the former. He was impressed by the way this girl’s getting down on a dancefloor. I thought ‘velvet snow’ referred to a graceful way of walking. But being ‘stuck in it’ doesn’t sound too good. And he subliminally refers to her as a ‘whore’ and a ‘ho’ by really punctuating the syllables in ‘snow’ and ‘floor’. Then he mentions drowning this person in the very last verse. Yeah, I don’t think Followill likes this particular character at all. But the music does a good job of hiding the negativity. Feels like a party should be going on with this playing in the background. Matthew Followill’s guitar solo in the instrumental break is a riot. There’s a style of music it reminds me of, want to say based around Latin-America for some reason. The chords and how they descend reminds me of something in that area. And I like how the intensity’s brought down for the last verse and those oohing harmonies are brought to add a sense of resolution. It’s a rather modest ending compared to how the song initially starts, I appreciate the dynamic. So thanks, Kings of Leon, for all the music. Keep doing your thing. I have my favourites. I’ll carry on listening to them.

#1459: Pixies – Velouria

Leave a reply

My personal knowledge of ‘Velouria’ by Pixies goes back a while. Again, it’s the setting of being a kid in front of the television, watching MTV2 at some hour during the day, and being exposed to the song’s video when it came up on the screen. I’ll say it was about 2005 time, that sounds about right. Pixies were a band that I’d sort of known about for a year by then. A couple of their songs played on this Internet radio service provided by a company called Launch, or LaunchCast, which I think eventually got bought out by Yahoo! I believe ‘Build High’ (the demo) and ‘Here Comes Your Man’ were the first two Pixies songs I ever heard because of it. But the video for ‘Velouria’ was most likely the first time I’d seen the four guys. Or three guys and one lady if you want to be pedantic about it. It’s 17 seconds of the bandmembers stumbling among a bunch of massive rocks stretched out for the song’s length. They weren’t fans of making music videos. Ten-year-old me liked the song there and then. I tried to download the song online. All I could find was Weezer’s cover. I got my hands on the original, eventually.

The track was released as the first single from the band’s third studio album Bossanova. That’s an album I’ve yet to listen to in full, even though I should, knowing the music I’m into. Because the depth of attachment I have to the song doesn’t go deeper than “I heard the song once as a child and really liked it,” I don’t think I’ll be gushing over it quite as much as I might have done for other songs in the past. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have any admiration for it of any kind. Black Francis/Frank Black said he didn’t like making music video ’cause “you want your imagination, you know?” And my imagination does go running when ‘Velouria’ comes on. I envision wide open spaces, panning shots of vast landscapes. Might be down to the big-sounding guitars. Might be down to how Francis sounds like he’s singing from an entirely different plane of existence. There’s also that theremin that comes in at various points, makes things sound a little spacey, which from what I’ve read is a bit of a theme running through Bossanova. I’ll get to that album one day. I might have already by the time you read this.

I’m looking through Wikipedia as I type, seeking out some background info for myself ’cause I’m really learning about it just as much as you are. According to it, we’ll say it’s based off a source even though it’s not cited, ‘Velouria’ was written as a love song based on an experience Black Francis had “with a girl associated with the Rosicrucians of Northern California.” Sounds like a strange organisation that I’m not going to look further into. I hear “love song” in ‘Velouria’. I think it’s obvious in the lyrics. The track is one of devotion to the ‘Velouria’ character, who Francis sings about wanting to hold hands with and travel through space and time. A bit of an “us against the world” thing going on, but with some abstractness to it so the schmaltziness isn’t rammed into your ears. “How does lemur skin reflect the sea?” It is a good question. The worship of Velouria culminates with Kim Deal sing-spelling out her name in the track’s final moments, surely a nod to Patti Smith’s ‘Gloria’, which – I don’t know about you – is my favourite part. Puts the cherry on top, as they say.

#1458: Nine Black Alps – Vampire in the Sun

Leave a reply

So Nine Black Alps’ third album Locked Out from the Inside was released on 5th October 2009 – 17 years ago last Monday – which is actually insane. I mean, I’ve been around and existing for the two albums the band had released before it. But when it comes to Locked Out… I vividly remember being very excited for its arrival after ‘Buy Nothing’ was released as a download, and sort of its first single, in April 2009. The song was the first sign that the pummeling, heavy but melodic hard rock that I really liked the Alps for – exhibited on debut 2005’s Everything Is – was back, after they’d gone down a softer, for lack of a better word, approach on 2007’s Love/Hate. ‘Buy Nothing’ was on repeat, I tell you. Sometime between April and October when I was probably looking for the song again, I came across the band playing what appeared to be a new song called ‘Vampire in the Sun’ live on the television station Channel M – a channel exclusive to the people of Manchester – via a YouTube video. Gonna embed that exact video below. And after hearing it, I was all in. I had a deep, deep feeling that this forthcoming album was going to be special.

Things got even better, because the album ended up being streamed exclusively on we7.com, a whole two months earlier. That’s how the site looked in December that year. So I’ve been listening to the album since August 2009. It’s crazy. Time is definitely something. I liked the whole thing there and then. Credit for changing things up on the last album, but this was the Nine Black Alps I knew. ‘Vampire in the Sun’ is Locked Out’s… opener. It’s a strong one. Opens very boldly with frontman Sam Forrest on guitar, laying down the song’s riff, before everyone else launches in to properly get things underway. The phrase ‘Vampire in the Sun’, you’ll see it and think there’s a lot of angst behind it. I know that’s what I definitely thought. Vampires, blood, Dracula, gothic, other associations. But thinking about it for the sake of this post, I think the song captures a narrator who tells themselves that they’re going to see the good in people, even though they may have done wrong in the past, and make the best out of the day no matter what happens. Very quickly though, the narrator finds themselves way out of their depth. They’re already a pessimist at heart and consider themselves a bit of a useless person, a bit like a vampire in the sun. ‘Cause they die once they’ve been exposed to sunlight and all that. It’s still very angsty actually after laying my interpretation down.

Song’s structure, pretty standard. First verse, second verse, chorus, third verse, chorus, instrumental break, chorus done to death ’til end. Still executed very nicely. My favourite part? When Forrest yells out ‘Sun’ followed by that moment of silence before the band fall into the song’s final moments. I still get chills in that silence. That exact part was what sold me when I heard the song the first time via the aforementioned live performance. I got a physical copy of Locked Out from the Inside in January 2010. Still have the CD somewhere around. I was always looking forward to whatever Nine Black Alps did after it. 2012’s Sirens came around, and what turned out to be their final album, Candy for the Clowns followed a couple years later. Sadly, I never liked those two albums as much. As a result, I sort of see Locked Out… as the last, really great album the band did. I can firmly say it’s my second favourite by them. You can probably guess which one’s on top. But as I’ve come to the realisation that this’ll be the very last time a Nine Black Alps will ever appear on this blog, I’ve got to make clear that all of the music the band did I just personally hold a great attachment to. Was just 10 years old when I came across them, thought they were cool and liked them ever since. They also used to see my posts whenever I wrote about their songs on the old Blogspot site and liked them on their Twitter page. If they were to reunite one day, with the original members too, I’d be intrigued to see what came out of it.

#1457: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Vague Space

Leave a reply

Aha! Surprise ‘V’ attack. Yeah, there were only 16 songs to write about beginning with the letter ‘U’. Wasn’t quite the marathon the ‘T’-section was. I don’t need a break after writing 16 posts. There are only 11 songs starting with ‘V’ that I have at my disposal. Might as well go straight into them. The first ‘V’ tune we’ll be looking at is ‘Vague Space’ by Stephen Malkmus (and the Jicks). The track’s from his 2001 self-titled album, his first ‘solo’ effort after Pavement’s split the previous year. I’ve noted it as my favourite solo Malkmus album in the past. Listened to it for the first time in September 2012. Returned to it in January 2014 ’cause Wig Out at Jagbags had arrived. I then listened through Stephen Malkmus on a train ride from Manchester to Coventry the following month, and I think it was that occasion that made me very familiar with the whole package. Nothing that aids musical understanding like the motion of a locomotion. By the end of 2014, the album was on regular rotation in my library, and, according to my Spotify files, ‘Vague Space’ was a song on there I repeated many, many times.

Don’t want to assume, but I don’t think ‘Vague Space’ would be one of those titles that fans would be shouting out, requesting to hear at Stephen Malkmus shows. As I write, it’s currently the eighth most-played track from his solo debut on Spotify, bettering opener ‘Black Book’, ‘Discretion Grove’ – weird ’cause it was a single, ‘Trojan Curfew’ – needs justice, and closer ‘Deado’. All very solid songs. It’s low in the pecking order, a little low on the ladder. If Malkmus did jokingly ask for requests during a live performance, I’d try and get my shout in for it if I was there. I hold ‘Vague Space’ as one of the songs from his first album that really show just how much fun he was having now that he was on his own. In the introduction, you’re greeted with a two-note melody on an organ followed by a descending scale on wah-wah pedal’d guitar. Just the back and forth between the two feels very playful in its intention immediately. Two very different elements that somehow manage to sound great when placed together. Then there’s the addition of keyboards during the verses that have been set to a steel drum preset to, I don’t know, add a little flavour or something. I’d like to think this was the thing that was being referred to when the album was originally titled Swedish Reggae before it got changed somewhere down the line.

This does however go down in a list of Stephen Malkmus songs where you do have to question, “What is this guy talking about?” I wish I could provide either the video or interview where Malkmus said – I’m paraphrasing – that he usually sees writing his lyrics as little wordplay exercises. He did say that somewhere. And I think that’s more or less the case with ‘Vague Space’ too. But even so, there’s usually still something to grip on to, at least Malkmus listeners like to think so, and that’s what always keeps them – but myself included – wanting more. So, let’s see. “Do you want to know where it stands right now / Do you really care what, when, why or how / I came to crave your spastic touch / The honest ways you move’s too much.” First verse. And then the chorus is simply “I looove to teeear you off” and the instruments rise in intensity as it’s sung. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe the whole thing is a love song in Malkmus’s own way. Some context, he moved to Portland after Pavement broke up and that’s where he met the lady he’d get married to. Craving a touch and being affected by someone’s movements. People in love experience that, right? “Tear you off”… maybe it’s referring to something a lil’ naughty. I also like to think this song has some additional importance, because a slowed down version of it arrives as a hidden moment after last track ‘Deado’. Always wanted to know why it’s there. Only SM will know.