#1458: Nine Black Alps – Vampire in the Sun

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So Nine Black Alps’ third album Locked Out from the Inside was released on 5th October 2009 – 16 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

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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.

#1456: Beach House – Used to Be

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Only very recently have I found out, you’re able to gain access to your whole streaming history on Spotify, from the very first stream after you downloaded the service to the latest stream before you make the request for the data to be sent to you via email. It’s damn interesting. All the stuff I’ve been listening to since 2012, there in chronological order, even the songs I skipped or listened to in private mode. When it comes to Beach House’s Teen Dream, I went through the album first time ever from 1:17pm to 2:01pm on 31st January 2014. Never heard any Beach House before then. Puts me in a specific time and place, behind my laptop in my room during my freshers year at uni. I might have listened through Teen Dream but I don’t think I really listened through. I just needed more songs for the radio show I was hosting at the time. I also think I was using the “Best Ever Albums of 2010” list on besteveralbums.com as a guide, ’cause I apparently listened to Deerhunter’s Halcyon Digest not too long after. ‘Zebra’ and ‘Take Care’ were the ones that stood out initially, and it wasn’t until a real listen about a year later that I appreciated the album by a larger margin.

‘Used to Be’ was a track that jumped out as an immediately likable track on that second listen. The way the synth chords pulse on the offbeat, then Victoria Legrand comes in on the vocals with the keyboard mirroring the melody she sings. It’s all very light and reflective. Feels like a brisk bike ride in the park. Funny coming right after a track called ‘Walk in the Park’ on the album. There are subtle chord changes in the aforementioned rhythm synth pulses that drastically affect the song’s mood with each lyric Legrand sings, as she switches the melody up with each pass. And them when she sings the song’s title, the bass guitar comes in to add in a layer of warmth. She says the song title again, the rush comes in with the pressing cymbals which release after the chorus, and the music opens up as the rhythm breaks into its stride. It’s plain sailing from there. The track sees a narrator awaiting a person’s arrival from god-knows-where after being gone for what’s implied to be some time. The narrator wonders if this person is still the same as they were before they left, having gone through the experiences they must have encountered while away, and by the end, they’re just left waiting until that person comes back “any day now”. Sounds simple enough. But the whole thing’s wistful, melancholy, gets you into some nostalgic feelings. Beach House in a nutshell.

The version of ‘Used to Be’ you have on Teen Dream is a re-recorded take of the original that was released in 2008 as their first commercial single. The song goes some way back before 2010. I’ve known about this single version ever since I got into the track, but I just never got round to listening to it. That is, until leading up to writing this. Production sounds a little less streamlined, I guess? It is very nearly the same song, bar the fact that the ending section after the chorus’s last iteration arrives with a set of entirely different lyrics. Never thought that there may be people who swear by this original version and might not like how the Teen Dream take turned out. I feel like it would have been a bit of a gyp if they didn’t change the song in some way if it had been available for two years already. It’s definitely nice to have both available. I would say I do prefer the album version. That “coming home any day now” refrain. There’s obviously a lot less words to analyse, but there’s still so much you can unpack in the simple phrasing. A highlight for me from a very fine album.

#1455: Green Day – Uptight

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Have I talked about my Green Day obsession of 2005? I must have referred to it at some point. By that year, American Idiot had been out for a few months already. But it was seeing the music video for ‘Holiday’ one morning on MTV2 that got me properly interested in the band. I went to their website, watched all of their music videos that were available on there. Green Day became my new favourite musical group. Now that they were, I found myself researching anything and everything I could about them. This lead to me to various fansites, one in particular, GreenDayAuthority.com. Haven’t been on that site in years. It’s changed a lot. This is how I remember it. If you click on that link, you’ll see there’s a “Didja Know?” link on the left-hand side. That was my introduction starter pack. There’s a note about the band having ‘transitional songs’. I could guess what that meant ’cause I got American Idiot for my 10th birthday. They were songs that went into each other without interruption. The album introduced me to that concept. I thought it was cool. ‘Uptight’ was mentioned in that transitional songs list, going into ‘Last Ride In’. I needed to hear it somehow.

But this was 2005. Sure, file sharing places like Limewire and Soulseek were probably around. I didn’t know about them. So the only way I heard ‘Uptight’ was through a 30-second sample of it on a site called artistdirect.com, which I’m very sure has been dead for a good few years now. I believe it started right at the end of the song’s first verse and ended just before the chorus started. Fantastic. I liked what I heard, though. Billie Joe Armstrong’s vocal melody sounded nice. I’m sure that I heard the song in full not long after on another Green Day fansite, probably 2006. And yes, the sound of waves that are at the beginning of ‘Last Ride In’ do start in the very final seconds of ‘Uptight’. But it wasn’t until 2009 that I downloaded Nimrod. It was on a file sharing site – whose name I can’t remember – and I believe I downloaded the songs one-by-one. Years had passed. 21st Century Breakdown was now out, and I guess its release got me thinking about GreenDayAuthority.com and how a lot of trivia on that Didja Know page were in association with Nimrod. Seemed like an interesting album to dig into. I had Dookie, American Idiot, International Superhits! and 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours on CD. I was a year into having a YouTube channel where all I did was upload albums. Why not get a hold of another Green Day record, albeit in a considerably less legal way?

‘Uptight’ is the ninth song on Nimrod. Coming after the venomous ‘Platypus (I Hate You)’, the opening of ‘Uptight’ feels like such an alleviation in pressure. The tempo’s still quick, but it’s much less a barrage of sound. Then Billie Joe Armstrong starts singing, you hear what he’s saying, and you realise that even though the music’s nicer to the ears, the subject matter’s just as much a downer as what came before. You see, nothing’s going right for the narrator in ‘Uptight’, I don’t think the words need too much explaining, and they find themselves staying awake all night contemplating suicide. That’s the gist. How the song grabs you is by how catchy it is. The track is a very upbeat (musically) song about perhaps killing oneself, that’s for sure. It also has a very simple structure too. Two verses and the chorus that’s near repeated until the song’s end bar the instrumental break. Some people may not like that the last half of the track is essentially repetitions of the chorus. I don’t mind it at all. The melody gets stuck in your head that way. I can only think that ‘Last Ride In’ was purposefully placed afterwards to really bring a lift to the album’s proceedings, a sense of calm after the two negatively-minded tales that come before it. Album flow at its finest. Furthermore, they’ve never played the song live. It’s a shame. I imagine it’s ’cause of the depressing lyrics.

#1454: The Libertines – Up the Bracket

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So I’m sure I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m a Black man. It shouldn’t really matter all that much. But, you know, the type of music I share my thoughts on wouldn’t usually say “Black” to most people. Regardless, it’s the truth. Growing up and watching MTV2 UK in the mid-2000s, you’d wouldn’t see many, if any, Black faces on music videos. Kele Okereke of Bloc Party’s was probably the first one I saw via ‘Helicopter’. It was the only one for a while. But then the video for The Libertines’ ‘Up the Bracket’ showed up one day. It wasn’t the first of the band’s that I’d seen, but it was certainly the first I watched that featured all the members. Gary Powell was the first Black drummer I’d ever encountered. He didn’t look like he was playing the drums with much focus or precision in the video for ‘…Bracket’, and it got me wondering whether he was actually in the band or a stand-in for someone else. That’s quite messed up, I know, shows you how my 9- or 10-year old brain was conditioned. It wasn’t until I saw him again in the video for ‘Bang Bang You’re Dead’ by Dirty Pretty Things that I understood, this was an actual drummer who could actually play.

You can find that funny, you can find that truly insane. I’m somewhere in the middle thinking on it now. More towards ‘insane’, though. Despite the naive prejudice I gathered on the first viewing, it didn’t distract from the fact that the song itself sounded very nice. Doherty sings about meeting two dodgy men on Vallance Road, supposedly an allusion to the infamous Kray twins who used to live there, and telling them to fuck off by sticking two fingers up at them. Not the peace sign. And then the song focuses on two people for the choruses, a boy and a girl, who look like they’d be the perfect pair but are lost in their own little worlds. A slight change in theme, but it works somehow. The video added to the enjoyability. The band walk up an alleyway (Grove Passage in Bethnal Green, London – a mecca for Libertines fans), Pete Doherty and Carl Barât mime the words while doing so, and they all end up back at someone’s flat, performing the song in their iconic red jackets, in a party-like atmosphere while girls dance around them. Very easy watching. If there are two people who know how to mime lyrics and walk towards the camera, it’s Pete Doherty and Carl Barât. If you see videos by either of them, solo or with their other bands, that’s usually what happens.

‘Up the Bracket’ is the title track on the band’s debut album. It opens the second side, if you were to buy the record on vinyl. As much as I like ‘Up the Bracket’ as a whole, it’s the small, little details that make it an engaging listen. There’s the yell by Doherty right at the beginning, one of frustration, recorded during a moment of chaos in the studio. Barât joins in on the lower harmonies on the “See these two cold fingers” lines, those sound cool. He also plays the descending guitar line in the choruses, he for sure plays the lead guitarist role in the song. There’s that moment during the second chorus when a scratchier vocal track comes into frame, revealed to be inserted from another take of the song in the 2022 anniversary edition. The aforementioned yell is also in that same take. I didn’t know that before writing the sentence, but I’m keeping this all in. I think the oddity that puts the cap on everything is the audible ‘fuck off’ that’s said near the end of the guitar solo. That ‘fuck off’ went uncensored for years on TV. When it was about 2012 or something and I saw the video on what had turned into ‘MTV Rocks’, probably the last time I saw the video on the channel, it appeared that someone at the MTV offices had figured out there was a clear curse word in the song and censored it. I was falling out of love with MTV2/Rocks around that time, the music on rotation there just didn’t seem to as interesting as it used to be. Just that small censorship move showed me that things had really changed on that channel. Couldn’t tune into it the same way anymore.