Monthly Archives: March 2020

#693: Radiohead – Kid A

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The title track from Radiohead’s fourth album is a strange one. At least that’s what I thought of it when I first listened to it. I’ve just grown to like it because of its unsettling nature. I was a child in 2000 so I can only imagine how people who were expecting an OK Computer Part 2 reacted when hearing Kid A upon its initial release. 2012 was when I decided to take it on. I didn’t think ‘Everything in Its Right Place’ was too out there, but ‘Kid A’ certainly takes things in another direction.

The music, written by the band’s lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, has an innocent child-like music box quality to it, which is layered upon by these soothing guitar chords that feel very warm and very comfortable. Then Thom Yorke comes in. He had some lyrics for the song that he didn’t want to sing. Instead, he spoke them into the microphone and Greenwood improvised a melody when processing the vocal through an Ondes Martenot. As a result, Yorke’s voice as a robotic tone to it that greatly contrasts with the comforting music box notes that persist throughout.

The lyrics, like many others, were assembled randomly after having been written and cut up. There aren’t many present on the track. There are six phrases throughout: “I slipped away/I slipped on a little white lie/We’ve got heads on sticks and you’ve got ventriloquists/Standing in the shadows at the end of my bed/The rats and children follow me out of town/Come on kids”. Very dark, visual and mysterious imagery on show. Clearly, there aren’t a lot of lyrics either. But the group are still able to make something grand out of very little. That’s a reoccurring theme throughout the album.

With a piercing wail, the song comes to an end and transitions into ‘The National Anthem’, which takes the unsettling tones to another level.

#692: Pavement – Kennel District

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Wowee Zowee isn’t my favourite Pavement album. Not because it’s bad. It has some of the band’s best songs on there. ‘Grounded’ being one…. ‘Grave Architecture’ another. And today’s song, ‘Kennel District’, written by Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg. The record is a hard one to get through at times because for every two perfect indie rock come these other compositions that throw the flow out of the window. And yet, that specific thing is the main reason why a lot of people consider it a classic and the most ‘Pavement’ album.

I wanted to get closer to it and so I purchased the album’s 33 1/3 book in 2018. It’s a fantastic read. I learned a lot of new things about the album and the songs on there. For example, ‘Kennel District’ was written when Kannberg had broken up with his girlfriend and was simultaneously becoming friends with a woman who was feeling trapped in her own marriage. That’s where the line ‘Can’t believe she’s married to rope’ comes from. The song title also has nothing to do with the lyrical content, and was inspired by a thought Kannberg had about New York having its own district where all dogs were kept.

One thing’s for sure. If I didn’t like the song the first time I listened to the album the whole way through, I’m very sure I did after the second listen. It’s one of the most easy-listening, digestible, perfect indie-rock cuts on there. Apparently, the band’s record label wanted to make the track a single but not without re-recording it first. The track is led by a fuzzy bass and a roaring guitar in the left channel that more or less play the same chord sequence throughout. On top of that is a weird keyboard that plays its own little riff on top of that. And with this some great music is made. It worked so well in fact that Kannberg pretty much rewrote the track and made ‘Date w/ IKEA’ for Brighten the Corners a few years later.

I don’t know. I don’t think I have much else to say about it. I admire its simplicity and its ability to still give me some chills after all this time. It was initially recorded during the sessions for Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and it didn’t make the cut, but I’ll put that version below so you can check it out and compare to the version that everybody knows.

#691: be your own PET – The Kelly Affair

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2008 is so long ago now. It’s actually a year I can barely remember. I would have been in year 8. 12 going on into teenage years. Life was pretty carefree. I was there but I don’t think I took the time to take things in.

One thing I do remember was be your own PET releasing their second album Get Awkward in March of that year. That turned out to be the band’s final album too. I had been following them since they released their ‘Damn Damn Leash’ single in 2005, so it was always good to see something new by them appear on TV or just be given to the masses in general. I believe ‘The Kelly Affair’ was the first official single from the album. I’m not sure that I cared for it that much. Thinking on it now I couldn’t say why. Jemina Pearl’s voice had a lot more power behind it. They’d also gained a new drummer after their first one left. Jonas Stein’s guitar and Nathan Vasquez’s bass playing were just as playful and riffy as they were on the debut album. But nothing too major had changed. It took me to download Get Awkward and listen to the track within the context of the album to realise that hey, ‘The Kelly Affair’ isn’t that bad. You think silly things when you’re twelve.

The track’s been in my library for so long now that I’ve never thought to research on what it’s about. From listening to the lyrics, I thought that Pearl made up this song about being in a fake band called The Carrie Nations and living in a valley where everywhere you look someone’s taking a few anti-depressants. But no. The song is just about what happens in the film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. There is a band who are called The Carrie Nations who were originally called The Kelly Affair. ‘Z-Man’ is the guy who makes himself the band’s producer. And ‘the valley’ is where all the sex and drugs happens. Maybe I’ll watch the film if be your own PET think it was good enough to write a song about.

#690: Goldhawks – Keep the Fire

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Rewind to late 2009. I was lying in bed watching Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Why that is I’m not sure, guess it was something to pass the time. He was about to interview Andre Agassi. Before that happened, a little montage played showing Agassi’s highlights as a tennis player. This exact montage actually. I thought the music that played matched the visuals perfectly and it sounded fantastic. I had to know what this song was and who it was by.

It took me months to find out. I thought it was Supergrass for a while, because the vocals sounded just like Gaz Coombes. I believe I sent an email to a Supergrass fansite asking if this was some exclusive new song the band had made. It wasn’t. Supergrass ended up splitting in 2010 anyway. So here was this great song by a new band that I could possibly get into and no one seemed to know who they were. Lyrics weren’t available online. You couldn’t download it. It took me months to find out who made this song. It started playing in football adverts and everything, it was very frustrating. It’s so long ago now I actually can’t remember how I finally found out who it was. I actually think it was on some forum somewhere after someone asked what song was playing in a particular advert. The response was more or less “The song’s called ‘Keep the Fire’ by Goldhawks’. And there it was.

The track is the third on the band’s only album Trick of Light, released in 2010. As you can assume from what I’ve read it’s the first song I ever heard by them. It was only the track’s chorus and its ending that played that night on that Jonathan Ross show, but I thought it was the best few seconds of a song I had heard in a long time. I’ve tried to describe the band’s sound in a suitable manner in a previous post. Listening to it more and more, it’s basically about trying to keep a relationship alive and flowing so thing’s don’t get so boring. Though I think its focal point is lead singer Bobby Cook’s vocals. He just sings it brilliantly. A lot of emotion, and very earnest.

A year and a bit after I initially heard the song, the band finally made a music video for it. You can see that at the top of the page. I was very disappointed in it. It definitely deserved better than what it got. They basically did a Pixies move. I definitely prefer to just listen to it and have my own visions in my head while it’s playing.

Anyway, you don’t hear much from Goldhawks now. That’s because the members no longer play together. This song’ll last forever though.

#689: Simon & Garfunkel – Keep the Customer Satisfied

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Heard Bridge over Troubled Water for the first time in 2013, I think. Not the song, but the full album. This was during a time when I was feeling down and should have been focusing on preparing for my A-Levels. But whilst studying for exams in subjects that I didn’t necessarily care for, I took the time to listen to a load of albums that are considered to be classics.

‘Keep the Customer Satisfied’ is the fourth track on Troubled Water, and is a sonically joyous song about being exhausted by the seemingly endless touring that Paul Simon experienced. The first verse is pretty self-explanatory. Simon feels good now that he’s home, and the chorus just explains that he’s just doing his job but still gets the occasional verbal abuse from people who don’t care for his music. He plays with the narrative in the second verse by singing about an altercation with a deputy sheriff who’s giving him hassle. This may or may not have happened to him in reality, though I think it’s just a scene that visualises some of the stress he felt at the time.

He and Art Garfunkel both sing the lead vocal in unison with their iconic harmonies included. The track is carried by a bass that flows all over the place, climbing and descending in scales and generally setting a driving tempo and rhythm. Things are taken to another level when that brass comes in. Initially arriving in a few short blasts, it’s in the little “whoa-oa-oa” section where those biting horns set up this astonishing wall of sound.

This has been a favourite of mine from the album for a long time now. Never hear people comment/discuss/talk about it that much. Though on an album that also has ‘The Boxer’, ‘The Only Living Boy in New York’ and its title track…. you can’t blame anyone.