Monthly Archives: June 2020

#729: The Chemical Brothers – Let Forever Be

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‘Let Forever Be’ was released as the second single from The Chemical Brothers’ 1999 album Surrender. After taking inspiration from the Beatles’ track ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and collaborating with Oasis guitarist and songwriter Noel Gallagher on their previous track ‘Setting Sun’, a song that got to number one in the UK in ’96, the ‘brothers’ decided to do the same thing again here. It didn’t gained the same amount of commercial success but I believe it’s still one of the duo’s best singles.

While ‘Setting Sun’ relies on its pummeling drums to drive the track’s momentum ‘Let Forever Be’ relies on its bassline which mirrors Paul McCartney’s original bass from the aforementioned Beatles song, starting on the lower strings before reaching for those higher notes and carrying out some licks. Noel Gallagher continues his ‘faux-philosophical/actual nonsense’ lyricism style which, in that period of the 90s, was in its prime and worked tremendously well. His voice sounds great on here and, mixed with the psychedelic backdrop from Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons (The Chemical Brothers), it makes from some very easygoing listening.

Its music video (above), directed by Michel Gondry, gained a lot of media attention. I don’t think it’s too bad myself. I did see it a lot back in the day on the television screen though you can’t go wrong by listening to the song on its own.

#728: Radiohead – Let Down

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Ah, ‘Let Down’. A firm fan favourite from OK Computer for many a Radiohead follower. A running joke on the band’s subreddit is calling the track ‘underrated’ even though there are so many posts that declare a huge love for it. It’s a sad song with really uplifting music, which brings many listeners to wonder whether it’s meant to be happy or truly depressing. Truly, it is a track that conveys conflicting emotions. For many years, the band didn’t play it live because they found it difficult to play and then suddenly around the time A Moon Shaped Pool was out in 2016, they played it for the first time in ten years at Madison Square Garden.

I was convinced that I had heard ‘Let Down’ somewhere at some time when listening to the album for the very first time…. Was it used in an advert/commercial for something? That’s a question I’ve been wondering for ten years now. If not it’s probably just a testament to how great the melodies within the song are, because it was like I’d known that song for years I was already singing the chorus before the track fully ended. Thom Yorke, double tracked with the two vocals in your left and right ear, sings about feeling distant and despondent in a world that is failing to impress him. When he dreams of growing wings and being able to fly away from it all, he realises that that too is just a large fantasy, becoming disappointed in the process. But this is all surrounded by a twinkling glockenspiel and a wall of arpeggiated guitars – one of those which play in 5/4 time for the majority of the track.

The track also contains one of the most beloved moments in the Radiohead discography where one of Yorke’s vocals overlap one another during the climactic part of the track. I, myself, think that part is very nice – I’ve never given it much thought even if I always at least try and sing along with it. I’ve actually found Colin Greenwood’s bass on here the most overlooked component of the whole ordeal. If you pay attention to it, you’ll see it’s the melodic ground that anchors everything together.

#727: Wings – Let ’em In

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So I’d got through The Beatles catalogue very quickly around 2009/10; the only logical way was to explore the band member’s solo material. I’m not on my house computer so I’m not able to tell you which albums I went to first and who out the four I listened to the most. As if you would want to know that anyway. From what I remember, Imagine and Band on the Run were instant downloads because I’d always heard just from television that they were must-hears. All Things Must Pass followed along the way. Other songs arrived here and there, including ‘Let ’em In’, which I either heard for the first time via a live Paul McCartney performance or on we7.com where the track played randomly. It was 10 years ago; the mind’s going.

‘Let ’em In’ begins Wings at the Speed of Sound, Paul McCartney’s fifth album with his band Wings from 1976. It’s a comforting track, made to welcome the listener to the record and what’s to follow. McCartney hears people knocking on his door and ringing the doorbell, including his brother and aunt, the Everly Brothers and German professor Martin Luther, and implores everyone to let them into the house to have some good times with some glorious harmonies courtesy of himself, Linda McCartney and other members of the group. All this done with a military-style drum beat that takes over at some points of the track and some tasteful horns during the instrumental break. I enjoy how the verses are basically anchored by one note on McCartney’s piano and Jimmy McCulloch’s bass. Builds a sense of tension that way. And as you think it’s going to fade out to silence, the final two notes of the whole track suddenly jump back to normal volume to properly close it out.

It’s a real song for the family, you know? Just one saying “Hey, good to see you, come inside, we’ve been waiting for ages.” Very sweet.

#726: The Maccabees – Lego

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‘Lego’ is the penultimate track on The Maccabees’ debut album Colour It In. From what I remember, I don’t think this song was very immediate to me upon first hearing the whole album. Around that time I mostly got albums just to listen to the singles, and ‘Colour It In’ had plenty of them that were shown on MTV2 back in those days. Funnily enough, I don’t listen to those singles that much anymore.

So when did ‘Lego’ really hit? I wish I could say. But I’ve been listening to it for a long time now so it’s safe to say I think it’s still good. There’s a frantic vibe I get from it straight from the beginning with its sudden fade-in and descending guitar riffs by brothers Hugo and Felix White. I’ve always liked that Colour It In is a proper band album. There aren’t many production tricks that are incorporated into a track’s mix; it’s always about the group’s performance – two guitars, bass, drums and Orlando Weeks’ vocals (with occasional guitar from him too). It’s about as raw as the band would get before exploring different avenues in their later releases, and I’m sure it wasn’t by chance that they chose ‘Lego’ as the final ‘band’ track on their debut. (Of course ‘Toothpaste Kisses’ really closes out the album but it doesn’t rock as much).

Until now, I’ve never thought too much about what the song could mean. Someone on Genius thinks it’s about suicide. I think it’s more of a goodbye to those little moments in childhood that one can stick out when one gets a bit sentimental, like remembering to look left and right before crossing the road and screaming ‘are we there yet?’ in the car when driving to a destination. Weeks’ then trademark wailing vocals provide a tone of vulnerability to the song, keeping to a lower register during the verses before raising it in the chorus and then reaching a climactic point during the outro. That and the two guitars are my highlights of the track. It has a standard verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-finish structure to it; it feels like the track goes quite quickly. Still well worth a listen to me.

#725: Julian Casablancas – Left & Right in the Dark

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I want to say that I was the first person to get the lyrics for this song on the Internet back in 2009. If anyone remembers the website we7.com, I believe Phrazes for the Young was an exclusive on there before it was officially released a week or so later. Somehow the lyrics for every other song were up on sites already, but no one had taken the time to try and decipher ‘Left & Right in the Dark’. So I did. I listened to this song over and over again, pausing and restarting at various points in order to decipher exactly what Casablancas was singing. I think I did an alright job. I’m very sure that the lyrics I typed up (back a long time ago on letssingit.com) are the ones that are available all over the World Wide Web today. They may have been edited at some point though.

And it was through that somewhat tedious task that I got to know this track. While some may have become sick of the track if they were in my shoes, I found that Casablancas’ song was still bearable. The album was his first solo project outside of The Strokes; while that band is stemmed by 60s classic rock like The Velvet Underground, Phrazes signified an emphasis on glossy synthesizers and drum machines in debt to 80s new wave. ‘Left & Right in the Dark’ makes this apparent right out of the gate with an awesome keyboard riff that is echoed by Casablancas later on in the song.

The track sees Casablancas having almost something of an existential crisis. He reminisces on days when he was a child, when he may have wronged people, generally situations in the past where things were so real. Now they are just moments in time and Casablancas wants the listener to make the most of the time they have in the here and now. Like a lot of Stroke songs, the track is characterised by the songwriter’s classic croon, which seems to sound quite different to how it usually does in his band’s recordings. That might just be down to the mechanical sounding guitars and glossy drums that surround it though.

I listened to Phrazes for the Young fully for the first time a good decade after it initially came out. Wasn’t really for me. This is my highlight from it, still.