#1425: Steriogram – Tsunami

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I haven’t written about anything by Steriogram for a long time. Last time I did, I gave some context regarding the band but very little about my overall experience with them. And that’s what I feel you readers like to hear about. Very sure the first song by the group I heard was ‘Walkie Talkie Man’. It’s probably the only track of theirs a majority of people would know because of its inclusion those old iPod dancing silhouette adverts back in the day. I never saw those. I saw its music video on MTV2. I really liked it. And I have vague memories of going on the Steriogram website, trying to watch it and coming across the video for ‘Tsunami’ in the process. This is all in 2004 and I guess I would have been nine. Forgive me if the recollection’s a little hazy. What I know for sure is, when it comes to ‘Tsunami’, after seeing its music video in poor quality on Windows Media Player, I didn’t listen to it in full again until I got Steriogram’s Schmack! album for Christmas in 2007.

If this is your first time hearing Steriogram, to sum up, they were a band from New Zealand who provided their own take on that good old genre of rap rock. Much more punkier though and marked by the dynamic between guitarist Brad Carter providing the earnest, from-the-heart singing vocals and the wackier, animated rapping by co-vocalist Tyson Kennedy. Usually how it goes on Schmack!, Kennedy will rap the verses before Carter will bring it home with the dulcet tones on the choruses with Kennedy ad-libbing in between. That’s pretty much how it goes on ‘Tsunami’ too. They do both sing in unison, mirroring the opening guitar riff, at various points. I feel like there’s something a little juvenile about that riff. Like, its melody reminds me of that of a playground taunt for some reason. But it really falls into place when the rhythm section gets going and the first chorus suddenly comes in without warning. The way those surrounding guitars all pop into the frame when Carter sings the title for the first time… Feels like a wave, it all washes over you. Bit like a tsunam… You get it.

I think the song’s music video very much depicts the lyrical subject matter. The narrator seems to have just been broken up with. The girl has walked away. The narrator is left with their own company and a heart split in two. They’re not feeling too great. And what I’m thinking is the tsunami as mentioned in the song is depression. In the devastating aftermath of the breaking-up, the narrator sees this ominous wave of emotion coming over the horizon, and all they can do is sit and wait until it really hits. But then, thinking about it, Kennedy seems to be rapping from a point of view where the relationship isn’t quite yet over, but the signs that it soon will be are obvious. You can probably tell, I haven’t got it quite pinned down. But I do enjoy the song a lot. Must admit, it’s Carter’s vocals during the melodic choruses and the bridge that strike a chord with me rather than Kennedy’s rapping. But that’s usually how I am even with straight-up rap music in general. If there’s a melody in there somewhere, those are where my ears are always going to pay attention.

#1424: R.E.M. – Try Not to Breathe

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I’ve got two more songs by R.E.M. left to write about after this one. I’ll leave it to you to figure out what those are. But I can give a clue. They both begin with ‘W’. But as for any from the band’s Automatic for the People, this is it. ‘Try Not to Breathe’, the last of the representatives, even though I only started with ‘Man on the Moon’ relatively recently. ‘Find the River’ would definitely have had one if I properly knew about it. Automatic… It’s a pretty good album, isn’t it? I downloaded it way back in maybe 2013 or something, just ’cause I saw somewhere that it was considered to be one of the best albums ever. It might actually have been on BestEverAlbums.com. But it wasn’t until 2018 that I embarked a full R.E.M. discography discovery, going from Murmur to Collapse into Now in two weeks while I was at work. Got to Automatic… day, played it loud through the stereo system (it was just me in the office) and really heard it in a way I hadn’t before. ‘Try Not to Breathe’ was one track in particular that really stood out on that listen.

To preface everything I’m about to say, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe dissect the song in its dedicated episode on the Song Exploder podcast. They talk about elements in the production that I’ve never picked up on myself, as well as its origin and inspiration. So you can listen to the guys who wrote the thing. But I’m gonna write this without listening to that, so excuse me if I repeat anything in it. In my experience, one thing in particular that’s always stuck out to me on ‘Try Not to Breathe’ is Michael Stipe’s vocal. And you might say, well, duh, his vocal’s the highlight in a lot of R.E.M. songs. But it’s this one where it just sounds good, you know? It’s a heavy topic he’s covering too. The track’s from the point of view of an elderly person who’s ready to die, reached the point where they’ve realized their time on earth is done, and doesn’t want to be a burden to the people looking after them in their last days. Okay, I did a sneak listen of the podcast. It’s about Stipe’s grandmother. ‘Cause of this, you’d think he’d take on a minor-key, downbeat kind of vocal melody and delivery. It’s the complete opposite. It’s upbeat, a bit sprightly, skips along the waltzing tempo established by the musicianship of Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry. Gotta love a 3/4-time tune. Or is it 6/8…

I’d like to point out that this the first instance on the album where Stipe sings a drawn out “Oh” over the music, as he does during the bridge. He does this in ‘The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite’ and ‘Sweetness Follows’, and each time those vocalizations sound so right to the ear. Is it also right to say that Automatic… is the last album to feature the Stipe-Mills-Berry countermelodies that were such a notable feature on their earlier albums? They’re definitely the notable feature on ‘Try Not to Breathe’, rounding the song out, with Stipe singing the lead vocal, Mills with the higher, soaring countermelody on the right, and Berry on the left with the tinnier “I have seen things you will never see” lyric. A happy-sounding song about death, it somehow lifts the spirits of the album’s proceedings after ‘Drive’, which doesn’t start the album off in the brightest of ways. Further thinking about album flow, there’s something so satisfying about the intro of ‘Sidewinder’ coming in after ‘Try Not to Breathe”s end. It’s like the former resolves the final chord the latter fades out on. Automatic… is R.E.M.’s biggest album, so I think it’s hard to say anything on there is underlooked. But compared to numbers like ‘Everybody Hurts’ or ‘Man on the Moon’, ‘Try Not to Breathe’ sort of is. And you’ve got to hear it.

#1423: Billy Talent – Try Honesty

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Got a lot of memories when it comes to this song right here. They’re mainly made up of the times when I was trying to watch the video for ‘Try Honesty’ through Billy Talent’s website, on an XP computer with a primitive broadband connection in the autumn of 2005. It was at that time I found the band again, having seen the video for ‘River Below’ on the TV maybe a year earlier and then immediately forgetting the group’s name, and went to their website. On there were the music videos for their singles up to that point, available to watch, want to say either through Quicktime or Windows Media Player. Well, I had the latter, and I might be embellishing what I’m about to state, but even with the slower Internet connection I had, I really think a good portion of the video for ‘Try Honesty’ played without any buffering. Though, maybe I just want that to be the case. There were those very lucky days that the whole thing played from front to back. But one thing was for sure, here was a new favourite band, and here was a new favourite song. Hadn’t heard another one like it at 10 years of age.

It’s been a while since I’ve watched that video. Really transports me back looking at it again. Still get that sudden rush when the chorus comes in for the first time like I did all those years ago, seeing Ben Kowalewicz losing limb control behind the microphone. I think it’s the dynamics that occur throughout ‘Try Honesty’ that got me so excited about the track back then, even if I wouldn’t have known what ‘dynamics’ were or what they referred to. The introduction itself pushes and pulls, slowing down before picking up again and repeating. The downbeat verses have a slow, funeral dirge-like feel to them, carried by only two chords guitarist Ian D’Sa switches between. These are contrasted with the juggernaut choruses, heightened by the call-and-response vocal dynamic between Kowalewicz, D’Sa and bass guitarist Jon Gallant. Like, Kowalewicz does the call, the other two bark back the response. You get it. And then there’s the heavy breakdown with all the screaming where, nearing its end, the tension builds and builds before giving way to D’Sa’s riff from the very beginning. It’s like a ray of sunshine out of the dark clouds, not unlike how it’s depicted in the music video. It’s a very suitable metaphor.

And honestly, I’ve never stopped to think on what this song’s about. I’ve been enjoying the music too much all this time. And the vocal delivery. But it’s worth a shot now. I’m looking over the lyrics, and to put a very simple take on it, I think the narrator depicted in this song doesn’t seem to be having a good time living in the world. Finds it hard to have trust in others. It’s [their] fault, the narrator’s insane. It’s [their] well of lies that have run dry. The narrator quotes the ‘Forgive me, Father’ phrase as if in a confession, but negates it with “Why should you bother?” as if to say there’s no point in the Lord even trying to forgive because it would be worthless. Plus, the narrator flat-out asks to be run over in the chorus, and then reversed over for good measure. Sounds to me like a good old song about self-loathing. But it thoroughly transcends the “Mum, it’s not just a phase” notion that a lot of songs made around that time, or existing in the same kind of genre, fall so heavily into. Billy Talent wasn’t a phase for me. Maybe I listen to them a little less at this point in time, admittedly. But give me those first two albums, and I’ll crank them up to eleven right now.

#1422: Big Star – Try Again

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So it appears that every time I’ve written about a Big Star or Big Star-adjacent number on the blog, Chris Bell has been at the forefront of all of them. When he and Alex Chilton were the songwriting duo behind the band’s #1 Record debut, released in 1972, it was the songs by the latter that seemed to get the most praise from critics. That, and the fact that hardly anyone knew the album existed because of extremely poor distribution, frustrated Bell, and he left the band not too long after. I got round to listening to #1 Record in early 2017, about February time, I remember it well, just in my room in the student house during my final year at university. It was dark outside, even though it was early evening, ’cause it was wintertime. I found it was the songs sung by Chris Bell that I gravitated towards. Chilton had a kind of wilting nature in his vocals, Bell had more of the attitude. Tracks like ‘Don’t Lie to Me’ and ‘Feel’? Oh, I was all over those from listen one.

But with ‘Try Again’, I think that one took a little more time. Thing with #1 Record is, after ‘My Life Is Right’, the songs take on a sadder, reflective, dominantly acoustic tone until the album’s end. ‘Try Again’ is Bell’s entry in this little section of the LP. I think it was during COVID-lockdown time when I heard the song again and just found it devastating to listen to. Sure I might have cried to it. So of course it was an instant add to the series. The song is plainly about perseverance. Trying to continue on even when it gets to that point where it feels easier to give up and end it all. The track’s made up of only two verses, both in which Bell earnestly talks to the Lord – he was an ardent Christian, this stuff is real – telling Him that he’s doing what he can to get through the day, though he has his difficulties. Despite this, he resolves his statements by simply saying he’ll try again, which is then followed by a weeping slide-guitar solo surrounded by ringing acoustic guitar chords. It’s sad, but he’s finding a solution at least.

I think it’s fair to say, Chris Bell was probably listening to a lot of George Harrison when writing this song. Particularly All Things Must Pass. Makes sense, as at the time, that would have been the big Harrison album available for purchase. Very sure the starting chords of ‘Try Again’ are the exact same as those that open ‘Isn’t It a Pity’. But not just that. Everything from the chord changes, to the slide-guitar playing, to the addresses to ‘Lord’ throughout, right out of the Harrison playbook. Bell and Chilton didn’t hide that they were massive Beatles fans anyway, so it’s not such a big deal. It is probably the most obvious Beatles nod on the album, though. Interesting to note too that ‘Try Again’ was a leftover from one of Chris Bell’s earlier bands Rock City. The band eventually morphed into Big Star, but were around during the late ’60s, which potentially places Bell at 18 or 19 when he wrote the song. I don’t know about you, but I did not have the emotional depth to write something like this at that age. No way. So damn, all credit to him. It’s beautiful stuff.

#1421: Datarock – True Stories

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As, I don’t know… controversial (?) a company EA Sports may be, I’ve got to thank whoever was in charge of the music team during those mid- to late-2000s because their game soundtracks were on a another level. I was a FIFA player in those times, something I’ve mentioned before, and the playlists they had on the games introduced me to a lot of bands, artists and songs that I would never have known about. They played a big part in the formation of my musical interests, for sure. Datarock were one of those groups. In FIFA 08, their song ‘Fa-Fa-Fa’ was among those playing in the background as I navigated the menus. I liked that one, remember singing along to it many a time. And whoever was on the playlist selection team must have been a fan, because a year later Datarock were part of the soundtrack in FIFA 09 with ‘True Stories’. It was a completely new song, hadn’t been released officially anywhere else and was seemingly a FIFA exclusive.

I liked this one too. Still do now, but you get what I mean. It was an earlier version of the track where the band hadn’t yet written an entirely new second verse, so they just repeated the first again. And the words were easy to remember. “Born under punches / Crosseyed and painless / Slippery people / I’m not in love. Really liked how the melody rises with each line until they reach the peak with “I’m not in love”. Very fun to sing. “Houses in motion / Road to nowhere / Once in a lifetime / I’m not in loooooove”. Good times. Then it gets all disco-ey during the belted-out choruses. The track’s a lot of fun. I can’t remember exactly when it happened. But I was listening one day and thought, “Hmm. ‘Road to Nowhere’, ‘Once in a Lifetime’… Those are songs by Talking Heads… Maybe…” So I went onto Letssingit.com, my lyrics site of choice back then, searched up Talking Heads, went through their song list, and there was my answer. The lyrics to ‘True Stories’ were made entirely of song titles by Talking Heads. The song itself named after a Talking Heads album. The part where Datarock sing ‘Burning down the house’ was censored on FIFA. Probably because they didn’t want arson promotion on their game. But this revelation made me appreciate the song even more. It didn’t really have any meaning. It’s just a massive Talking Heads tribute in dance-punk form. I think the only unique words in the lyrics are “‘Cause”, “Are”, and “Hey”.

So it was a good part of a year that I was sitting around and playing FIFA 09 whenever time permitted. Before I knew it, 2008 was over, we were now in the year 2009, and FIFA 10 was the new game in the series. Of course I got that too. And wouldn’t you know it, Datarock were in the game’s soundtrack again with ‘Give It Up’. Their third consecutive appearance. By the time of FIFA 10‘s, the duo had released their new, second album Red. ‘True Stories’ is on there as the third track, a little different from the version that was on FIFA 09. In its album form, the song sounds like it had a newly recorded bass line and re-recorded vocals. But the main thing was that it now had a new second verse, obviously consisting of more Talking Heads song titles, including ‘Psycho Killer’, ‘Television Man’, ‘Seen and Not Seen’ and others. This album version got the music video treatment, of which you can see above. And that’s really all I have on Datarock. A liking of football brought me to them, I got to know some great songs in return. All I could ask for.