Monthly Archives: August 2019

#634: The Beatles – The Inner Light

George Harrison began work on what would be his debut solo album in late 1967. Those sessions resulted in Wonderwall Music, released a year later. He travelled to Bombay in order to work with some musicians, and back to London to record some vocals. In that time, today’s song – ‘The Inner Light’ – was recorded. It was the last of Harrison’s songs during his time in the Beatles to explore the Indian influences that had been something of a trademark for him since 1966.

There’s a lot of information on its Wikipedia page that I don’t want to regurgitate. I’ve basically come to take it as an ode to meditation. Feeling content and peace within yourself and those around you. He took a lot of the lines from the Chinese Tao Te Ching text, putting a glorious melody on the words which are backed by a strong harmonium drone and floating Indian flutes.

Upon completion, it was made B-Side to ‘Lady Madonna’ and released in March 1968 while The Beatles went to India for some Transcendental Meditation. It was the first Harrison song to appear on a single. Harrison was proud of it, Paul McCartney held it in high regard. It worked out well in the end. For the song at least – the band were never quite the same from this year onwards.

#633: Dananananaykroyd – Infinity Milk

About 10 years ago, my sister went to university. I was 14 years old, a teenager in year 10, and mother went to work every day usually. Whenever she wasn’t home, I would be in the house by myself…. Every teenager’s dream, right? There was a limitless amount of things I could do without either of them having to know. So what would I do? Stayed in and play FIFA all day. Really. I didn’t get out too much, no friends were really around my area. Weeks and weeks of that can take its toll. There was only so much of that game’s soundtrack (FIFA 09) I could take after a while, so I would usually put my iTunes library on shuffle and listen to that while I was in the game’s menu. It was during those times that today’s song randomly played and I realised how much of a belter it is.

I gave a somewhat curt backstory as to how I found out about the band in my post for ‘Black Wax’ six years ago. I just found that and laughed at how I worded that thing. But anyway, I downloaded the album and listened to it but probably didn’t pay much attention to all of the tracks apart from the aforementioned song and ‘Some Dresses’. Those were the only two I knew prior. ‘Infinity Milk’ I properly listened to when playing FIFA. It’s pretty mental. Comes out of the gate with a forceful ascending guitar riff that’s surrounded by two drum kits falling down the stairs in the left and right channels. It goes quiet with another sole guitar lick that alternates between sudden explosions of noise before ending in a call of ‘OH! MY! GOD!’ and finally going into the first verse.

Calum Gunn is the lead vocalist throughout most of the album. On here, he trades lines with the other vocalist (and then-drummer) John Baillie Jnr. Makes for very active listening. Gunn’ll say one line, Baillie will scream the next and by the end they’re both yelling until their lungs give out. The track pushes and pulls, emphatically slows down and thrashes for its choruses before speeding up again for the verses. It’s a rollercoaster. You don’t know where it’s going to go next. I don’t know what it’s about. The lyrics are very descriptive. Quite violent too. Mentions of blood, cutting out gums with knives, and murder in there. It’s hard to make sense of it. I read somewhere that it could be about losing your virginity(?) I can go with that. What matters is – this song is ferociously optimistic. You should give it a listen.