Monthly Archives: August 2019

#639: John Linnell – Iowa

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You ever heard a carousel organ and thought that its music could be made funky in any way shape or form? Well that’s what kind of occurs in this song. ‘Iowa’ by John Linnell is one of many on his sole solo album State Songs to feature that instrument, and here set’s the track’s tempo with a bouncy introduction that jumps back and forth between high and low notes and carries on the momentum with its infectious rhythm.

‘Iowa’ sees Linnell personify the American state as a witch, forming a silhouette on the moon, flying around on a broom with accompanying conical hat and black cat. All the things you think of when you picture a witch in your mind. Why he chose to write about a witch and associate Iowa with it is anyone’s guess, though it’s definitely one of the most entertaining tracks on there just for that very reason.

I’ve noticed that the song’s production isn’t very busy. Apart from the carousel organ, you’ll hear some echoed clicking percussion along with Linnell’s voice which he keeps in the lower register. It’s all very mild and quite calming to listen to but still very catchy at the same time. It’s just one of those songs where everything you hear is perfectly placed. Nothing too extra and not too sparse. It’s just right. Even the solo from the handheld vacuum cleaner works surprisingly well. One thing is guaranteed from a John Linnell song, you’ll always have a vocal melody that will stick in your mind once upon listen or creep up on you at your unawares. This one did the trick.

#638: OK Go – Invincible

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‘Invincible’ opens OK Go’s second album Oh No, released in 2005. The track itself was released as a single in 2006 and was accompanied by its music video (above) where the band plays whilst various items and objects explode in a split screen.

I haven’t listened to that album in full in a while. For a brief period in 2006, I was really into OK Go. I had only seen the videos for ‘A Million Ways’ and ‘Do What You Want’ at that time. But I was convinced that they were my new favourite band. I just wanted to watch their videos on repeat. YouTube was just about starting at the time, but the video for ‘Invincible’ was online. The tune and video was what pushed me over. I had to get the album for myself. And I did. It’s gathering dust on the shelf in my room.

The album reminds me of those years. But I still enjoy ‘Invincible’ now as much as I did then. It’s a three and a half minute track with some chunky, clunky guitar riffs that are something of a staple throughout the whole record. That may be in part due to the work of Swedish producer Tore Johansson, who had helped Franz Ferdinand create some riffs of their own on their self-titled album in 2004. Damian Kulash, Jr. comes in with a silky lead vocal, interrupted by piercing slides up the guitar neck, singing about a superhero-type figure who is able to defeat enemies with his high-temperature atom-smashing laser vision. It’s a weird one to open an album with subject-wise but after what was a clean and very power-pop influenced debut album, ‘Invincible’ is most certainly a great way to show the audience the direction the band was going into.

#637: Super Furry Animals – The International Language of Screaming

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Super Furry Animals are known to have one of the most solid discographies for a British rock group. In about late 2014 I made it a goal to go through it from their debut Fuzzy Logic to whatever their most recent album was at the time. I only made it to their second album. Guerrilla I had already listened to years prior. I gave up on that task very quickly. But now I knew three albums by SFA. Radiator is the band’s second album, released in 1997, and is where you can find today’s song tucked in near the beginning of the record.

If you’ve listened to Radiator from front to back, you’ll know that the track follows ‘The Placid Casual’ which is very keyboard-led, Gruff Rhy’s vocals are packed in the middle and the drums crash with a vengeance. On ‘Screaming’ almost all the instruments are packed in the centre, with Rhy’s vocals separated in the left and right with very open guitars. It makes a great contrast, and is a great one-two punch at the start of the album.

‘The International Language of Screaming’ was released as the album’s second single way back when. It lasts for only two minutes and fifteen seconds but is packed with a lot of elements that make it very enjoyable and hard to forget. The main vocal melody almost never changes throughout the thing, and I’ve also like how it rises and rises before dropping down again and returning back to its beginning again. There are these weird wailing/cooing noises that I’ve only began to hear that surround all the music. But at the base of it are these overdriven guitars that lead the track along. I feel this track is just about boredom with life. Becoming stagnant at some point and needing to way to break out of the funk. Singer Gruff Rhys finds that the best way to do this is by screaming, which he obliges to do as the final choruses repeat and the song finishes with a soundscape of swirling electronic noises.

#636: Nine Black Alps – Intermission

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‘Intermission’ is the second of two mainly acoustic numbers on Nine Black Alps’ debut Everything Is from 2005. An album that is a proper onslaught of heavy guitars, thrashing drums and Sam Forrest’s growling vocals, ‘Intermission’ and fellow acoustic track ‘Behind Your Eyes’ arrive at points when the momentum has to be brought down a little before picking back up with a rapid change on the next song.

Because I was so into the intensity of the other ten tracks, it took me a while to get into ‘Intermission’. Anything with an acoustic guitar in I just switched off for. This was when I was eleven. But it didn’t take long to realise how good a song it was. The only track on the album not to be recorded in a proper studio – it was instead recorded in Sam Forrest’s flat in Manchester – ‘Intermission’ is a real downer. The main refrain or hook or whatever you want to call it is led by forlorn slide guitars that weep in both headphones. Like a lot of other songs on the album, the lyrics evokes imagery of war and weaponry with a cynical twist to them. ‘Intermission’ is very much anti-war. It details people who carelessly laugh at it when the misery is going down.

The album could easily have ended here. But the band reel you back in again with a raging closer. That’s for another time.

#635: Feeder – Insomnia

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‘Insomnia’ was initially released on Feeder’s second album Yesterday Went Too Soon in 1999, gaining further promotion as the record’s second single in the same year. I was four at the time. It was years later, seven to be exact, when I heard the song for the first time on the band’s singles compilation – aptly named The Singles.

There’s nothing much to try and pick apart here. The song is about Grant Nicholas trying to cope with insomnia by drinking himself to sleeping and taking pills. Throughout, he lists ways in which he tries to get some sleep: reading magazines, counting sheep, daydreaming of the days when he was young and didn’t have to care about many things. It’s simple stuff. It’s very pop punk in its delivery. A lot of power chords and forceful drums to boot, but a straight up catchy melody that’s memorable and easy to the ear.

Think I made it clear once upon a time that Feeder had a lot of great singles. There are more to come in the future. On this blog, I mean. They have released some stuff recently though.