Monthly Archives: July 2020

#745: Billy Talent – Line & Sinker

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After finally finding out who Billy Talent was after months and months of wondering – I had seen the video for ‘River Below’ and promptly forgotten who the band and song name was – I took it upon myself to visit the band’s official website. In that time, you had to go to some weird sites to find your favourite videos. And dodgy sites had to be accessed to get your pirated music. It wasn’t as easy as today.

Back in 2005, ‘Line & Sinker’ was one of three tracks that were available to listen to for free on Billy Talent’s homepage. That along with ‘Try Honesty’ and ‘Standing in the Rain’, I want to say. And as a ten year old, as I was then, there’s nothing that gets you pumped up and hyperactive like a man screaming in your ears alongside some fast guitars and thrashing drums. ‘Line & Sinker’ delivers these two things for a predominant part of its length, and is probably the edgiest song on the first Billy Talent album. The track looks at a narrator who’s a bit of an outcast, despises the popular kids who consider themselves great, gets picked on and feels downtrodden but still knows that they still have potential even if no one else sees it.

I’ve read some reviews or pieces that deride singer Ben Kowalewicz’s vocals for being a bit grating. I could see it. But I’ve also been listening to this track for about fifteen years now, so clearly I have no problem with it. think it perfectly fits the mood and tone in this one. And alternating with guitarist Ian D’Sa’s vocals in the chorus, it makes for some good listening. I wouldn’t call it my favourite from the album, but it’s a great cut that really keeps the energy going. Some people may also recognise this song from a scene in 2003 film Grind. Though I did have my interest in skating phase for a while, I don’t think I’ll be watching that any time soon.

#744: Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Like Acid Rain

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My friend from university suggested that I listen to Unknown Mortal Orchestra one day in an English literature lecture one day in 2017. I don’t know how we got to that topic. But at some point she asked ‘Do you listen to [the group]?’ to which I replied ‘No… heard of them though.’ You know that standard reply. She said ‘You should, I think you’d be into them.’ I took her advice on board. I went home and listened to Multi-Love not too long afterwards. I have to thank her because it was an album that I added to the library with no hesitation. This was/is a great record.

A lot of the tracks on Multi-Love are based on UMO’s songwriter Ruban Nielson’s polyamorous relationship he had with his wife and a younger Japanese woman. The others are about drug-taking, partying, and feeling overwhelmed in the position of being a musician. ‘Like Acid Rain’ concerns the drug-taking aspect. In two minutes among a funky beat and washed out guitar chords, Nielson sings about buying some opiates and hallucinogenics and then seeing some weird actions going on while under the influence.

I always find myself air-drumming to this one. The fills during the ‘la-la-la’ hooks are so off the wall and erratic and they brilliantly close out the song too. “You and I are doomed to burn like white people in the sun” is a lyric on there that I’ve slightly side-eyed too sometimes. One of those ones where I’m not sure whether it’s meant to be a little joke or not. But apart from that there’s nothing I despise about this one. It’s a track that keeps things moving swiftly in the track list.

#743: The Knife – Like a Pen

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Silent Shout is another album I found while exploring new music in those years when revising for my A-Levels would have been the more advisable option. Pitchfork had named it the best album of 2006, and seeing as that place was meant to be seen as the top critic for indie music – I thought I would give it a listen. I did. There were some songs I liked, and others that I didn’t much care for. ‘Like a Pen’ took a while for me to get into. But once I did, it’s been a mainstay on the brain since.

The track was released as a single in ’06, and came out with a music video with an edit that made the song about three minutes shorter than the album version. I much prefer it the way it is on the album. The building and the adding of layers during the introduction, as well as the lengthy instrumental outro, add so much more to the energy of the track that is missed from the video edit. I’ll put the music video down below though.

An aspect of Silent Shout that always stuck out to me was singer-songwriter Karin Dreijer’s voice. There’s a tone to it that sticks in my head. The fact that her accent heavily affects its delivery may have something to do with that feeling. And her vocal delivery mixed with the video-game like production makes for a catchy listen, although it does manage to give off this slight ominous quality that gives the track that slight edge. Genius said it’s about body anxiety, ‘with the narrator wanting to minimize their body to something visible’…. I think it’s about something a lot more personal. If you were to see the lyrics, you could take a guess.

#742: The Used – Light with a Sharpened Edge

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It’s been a while since I’ve discussed The Used on here. The last time I did was concerning the song ‘Hard to Say’ from In Love and Death. Though that is still my favourite album by the band, I removed that track from my iPhone quite a while ago. Plus there’s something about the tone of my writing before that two year break I did from here that I cringe about. Seems to me like a completely different person.

In that post I say “I don’t know how it happened, but I somehow listened to [this album]”. Thinking about it now, I remember exactly how I came across Love and Death. The video for ‘Take It Away’ was on MTV2 once upon a time and I thought it was one of the greatest songs I’d ever heard, being the teenager I was at the time. I downloaded the album not too long after. It was my go-to for a some time. Now, there are a few songs that I can’t make it through seriously. There are some tracks on the record where a lot of screaming is involved and I’m not emotionally attached to those in the same way I was in my adolescence. But some songs on there are just great and I have no problems with listening to them today. Two of them I’ve already written about. ‘Light with a Sharpened Edge’ is another.

This is my favourite track from that album. It’s that piercing guitar riff of the introduction that just gets me every time, it’s an instant hook. It’s in 6/8 (or 3/4, however you want to look at it). The strings on here are a thing of beauty. Vocalist Bert McCracken sings really nicely on top of it, easily reaching those higher notes with the natural register of his voice. Again, it’s another case where I’m not too sure what he’s singing about. Skimming through the lyrics in my head as I type, I’ll say it’s him having some sort of self-identity crisis and trying to find a place for himself in this world. And another thing I’ve always admired about this album is its production. It is an emo album to the full; there’s no two ways about it. But there are these little oddities and samples thrown into each track that make themselves apparent with each listen. Very atmospheric too. If there was another album I would compare it to – t’would be Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge by My Chemical Romance. The same themes of love and death are explored in both albums. They were released a few months apart from each other. It’s a strange coincidence. I’ve always preferred The Used’s album by a mile.

#741: Radiohead – Lift

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For a long time, ‘Lift’ by Radiohead was considered to be one of the best songs the band never released. In 1996 the band would perform it live, and it grew to be a very popular track among fans. Their take of it at Dutch festival Pinkpop that year seems to be the one where fans go ‘Yeah, that’s how the track should always be played.’ The group revisited it during a live route in 2002 when they were getting to ready to work on what became Hail to the Thief. It still never saw the light of day on any album of theirs.

That was, however, until 2017 when the band revealed that it would finally be officially released on the OK Computer 20th anniversary reissue alongside two other unreleased songs, ‘I Promise’ and ‘Man of War’ (also known as ‘Big Boots’ to many). Fans were shocked and stunned and, as you can see, very welcome to this announcement. If you care to know I felt at the time, I did feel that it was pretty cool that this was happening. It was always clear that the track was a very good song, and it was worked during the sessions for OK Computer. There probably would have been some kind of outrage if it hadn’t been included.

The big difference though is that the ‘Lift’ we got didn’t have the same energy and power that those live performances did. It was much more calmer, seemed a lot more resigned and sadder as a result. Still, I believe Thom Yorke – or at least another member of the band – said that this was the way the song should always have been played. Despite its restrained performance and almost raw mixing, it definitely still retains the anthemic quality that endeared it to so many Radiohead fans in the first place.

I lurk on the band’s subreddit, and I recall seeing a few fans who were still just a bit let down by the version that was released. So when 18 hours of the band’s sessions for OK Computer which included this other version of ‘Lift’ leaked onto the Internet last year….. well it was like a birthday and Christmas rolled into one.