#1427: The Rolling Stones – Tumbling Dice

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I’m looking at all the songs left to go, and I’m seeing too, this will be the last Rolling Stones dedication in the series. Was gonna happen sometime. Only written about four other Rolling Stones numbers on here though, which may surprise some and others maybe not so much. For me, while being able to recognise the legendary band for what they are, their whole catalogue’s never done too much for me. As you can deduce, only a few tracks here and there scratch the itch when it comes to this guy. The band’s stuff is a little too indebted to the blues and soul. ‘Least a very big majority of it. And Mick Jagger’s voice ain’t bad, Keith Richards and the musicians of the band who came and went along the ways are all great at their jobs. I’d just rather listen to the original blues and soul artists who came before ’em. So not a big love for the Stones on my end, but an appreciation for them exists. I do really like the tunes by them that I’ve written about before. And who knows, maybe I will suddenly become a massive fan. You’ll just never know about it.

I’ve been going through the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die book, listening to the albums within from the front page to the year I’m at now (1988), since 2017. Not a surprise, Exile on Main St. was listed in 1972. I’d known about the album’s wide recognition as the Stones’ peak, the double-album culmination in the golden run beginning with Beggars Banquet in 1968. I heard Exile… the first time through in 2012. ‘Rocks Off’ was the jam that stood out. And I would have heard ‘Tumbling Dice’ then, but I guess it didn’t leave much of a mark. I had the album playing in the background one time when I was working reception in my first proper office job during 2018. ‘Tumbling Dice’ played again, and there was a little something to it. But to address my initial point, it was 2021 when Exile… showed up in the 1001… book. ‘Tumbling Dice’ came round on the tracklist, and I was probably singing along to it by the second chorus. It’s weird how these things go. I’m going to put it down to an increase in age and an actual focus on the music. Yeah, actually focusing on a song will bring out the best parts of it… It’s not that weird at all, actually. The track was the lead single from Exile on Main St., released a month or so before the LP came along, and I get it. Once its groove gets going, all you have to do is slide back, nod your head to it, and you’ve got the track’s entire philosophy down.

Mick Jagger is spitting the lyrics at you with passion alongside the chugging rhythm. Without the lyrics, I wouldn’t be surprised if “Honey” and “Baby” were the only words you’d be able to make out on first listen. Maybe the “Roll me / Call me the tumbling dice” chorus, if you’re perceptive. And that would mostly be thanks to the backing vocalists who join in. But find the lyrics and you’ll see it’s a song about Jagger singing about all the women that are trying to get his attention and want to have relations with him. He doesn’t mind, but he can’t spend to long with them ’cause he’s usually got some other place he has to be being Mick Jagger and everything. It’s all underpinned by metaphors concerning gambling and casino games. Reminds me of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Crosstown Traffic’, but, you know, the metaphor’s completely different. My actual favourite little element is the guitar runs in the back that play during the choruses. It’s nice that those repeat on and on as during the song’s coda until the music eventually fades out. So yeah, enough about The Rolling Stones on here, with a song about a need of having somewhere else to be and not sticking around. Couldn’t be more suitable.

#1426: Feeder – Tumble and Fall

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So here’s the final, final time a Feeder song will be in this series. They’ve been around since the first calendar year the blog existed, a time when I was doing a post a day, publishing one once I’d finished it without any effort to proofread. How those times have changed. Growing up in the 2000s, you were bound to see a music video by Feeder somewhere on those dedicated channels. Kerrang!, MTV2, VH2… The list could go on. And the songs those videos were made for tended to be really good. I’ve come to see Feeder as something like the Welsh Foo Fighters. You don’t have to be a huge fan of either group, but you’ll hear ‘Just a Day’ or ‘The Pretender’ out in the wild and immediately think, “Oh, I know that song.” Both have made considered-to-be-classics among their respected fanbases. In Feeder’s case, it’s probably Comfort in Sound. Then there’s The Colour and the Shape. Both bands have had their tragedies when it comes to their drummers. And generally, for me, the singles across the two’s discographies are usually the best songs they’ve done. It’s all a little too similar.

‘Tumble and Fall’ was a single. It was released as the first one from Feeder’s fifth album, Pushing the Senses, two weeks before the album’s arrival in January 2005. That whole era of the band was one I missed completely. During that time, I would have been at my peak of Green Day worship, watching Homestar Runner and Weebl and Bob on the side. When Feeder’s The Singles compilation came out in May 2006 and I got it the Christmas that year, ‘Tumble and Fall’, being the single it was, was on there. But I was looking forward more to hearing ‘Buck Rogers’ and ‘Burn the Bridges’ whenever I wanted to. Oh, and ‘Shatter’. All great songs. It was years later that I saw the video for ‘Tumble and Fall’, again on one of those music television channels. Songwriter and guitarist Grant Nicholas once said the tune is a love song and the ups and downs of life, life in general and how you deal with it. I feel like it’s a love song, though not in the regular way you’d probably think.

You see, Nicholas’s close friend and original drummer of the band Jon Lee passed away in January 2002. The loss was the impetus for the creation of the album Comfort in Sound, which was released later that year. I think ‘Tumble and Fall’ sees Nicholas still trying to come to terms with the fact Lee was gone, even in 2004, presumably when the song was written and recorded. “Life’s not the same since that day you went way / I recall, like the drops of summer rain that fell on me / Come back to me.” That whole bridge, really sad. Understandably, Nicholas wishes Lee was still around. And then there are the clear allusions to suicide in the music video, which only reinforced my interpretation of the song. All in all, I think the feeling of the song is summed up in those resigned, “Yeah, yeah, yeahs” that occur throughout the song. Sometimes that’s all it comes down to if you’d have to describe how life’s going, just brush it off, “yeah, yeah, yeah.” ‘Tumble and Fall’ is a slow burner, but it’s got a lot of weight to it. Really makes you feel. I was on a train home from somewhere, 2019 time, was staring out the window while the rain was pouring with this song playing in my ears… It really hit me there, I gotta say.

#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.