Monthly Archives: February 2021

#794: John Linnell – Maine

Another great one from John Linnell’s State Songs. ‘Maine’ seems like an obvious choice for single if it were placed in the hands of any other artist/band/whatever. It wasn’t in this case, and ‘Montana’ was. But ‘Maine’ is a definite ear-pleaser from the second it starts, and something of an ode to bands from the 60s like The Monkees and The Beatles.

I’ve always enjoyed ‘Maine’ just for the way it sounds. Linnell delivers his vocal very calmly over the top of it, and relaxed while these cascading piano lines support the track in 12/8 time. It’s all in triplets. But I’ll try and consider the lyrical content just for you people. It’s something of a love song, but it’s not, and it seems that the main subject is duality (‘the heaven below’, ‘the hell from above’)…. a bit like ‘Hello, Goodbye’ by the Beatles. You see, 60s. There’s also a reference to ‘Daydream Believer’ in there too.

‘Maine’ was released on State Songs in 1999, but had already been recorded five years prior. It was released in a different mix on an EP, and that version is below. It’s all the same goodness. I’ll even put the demo on here too because I like the song so much.

#793: Blur – Magpie

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Originally, ‘Magpie’ by Blur was released as a B-side on their ‘Girls & Boys’ single in 1994. Years and years later in 2012, the band released their whole discography and a few other discs of bonus stuff in a boxset commemorating the 21st anniversary of their first album, Leisure. Each of their albums received a second disc of B-side material. Parklife, the album that ‘Girls & Boys’ can be found on, included ‘Magpie’ in this new form. Just like its A-side counterpart is the main album opener, ‘Magpie’ is the introductory track to the B-side disc.

The song goes back to the days of late 1992, when the band were in the midst of recording their second album Modern Life Is Rubbish. It was worked on again during the Parklife sessions, but Damon Albarn couldn’t get some great lyrics down. In the end, he sang the words of a poem by William Blake called ‘The Poison Tree’. The chorus is made of only one original line, in which the title is sung. If you hear this track and really like, you may think, “Well, why was this left of Parklife?” I don’t have an certain answer that would please you. I would say that it would have probably sounded a bit out of place. If the song had been completed in time for Modern Life though, I think it would have been a shoo-in for the final tracklist.

There was a point in 2013/14 where I was constantly listening to this track. Dave Rowntree’s Bonham-esque drumming performance always got me hyped up. The cymbals and snare sound much louder than everything else in the mix. Plus, it’s almost a monoaural track where the instruments and vocals are all bunched up in the middle. It makes the track sound just a lot busier and messy which I’m into. The rhythm stops and starts in the verses, Alex James plays a very groovy bassline in those. Graham Coxon introduces it all with a soaring guitar riff that plays throughout. And with a minute to go, there’s this huge freakout where Rowntree just goes mad on the drums and Coxon closes things out with a wandering chord progression. It’s a definite ride. It, along with many others, showed me that Blur weren’t too bad on the B-sides either.

#792: They Might Be Giants – Madam, I Challenge You to a Duel

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Back in 2015, They Might Be Giants revived their iconic Dial-A-Song system, but delivered it in a very different way. Starting from the first week of January, the group released one new song every week. When they were done, the majority of the 52 songs were released on three albums: 2015’s Glean, Why?, and the following year’s Phone Power.

‘Madam’ was the second song in that 52-week run. It was an exciting time for a They Might Be Giants fan. I vaguely remember listening to the track on the day of its initial release thinking it was okay. It wasn’t until I gave Glean a full listen some time later that I truly appreciated it. Here’s a song in which John Flansburgh, who takes on this viewpoint of a very formal person, challenges a lady to a duel which you’re not really meant to do as a person of a high status. The band have always been good at building narrators up one way and then suddenly switching the narrative to make them look like terrible people.

This is a majorly piano-led track by the group, which is a bit rare for them. I think that’s what got to me when I originally heard it in 2015. Flansburgh sings with a breathy, kind of deep tone to his voice, which he would employ a lot of times on older albums, but I guess aging would affect your vocal range. The song just sounds good, you know? It’s like a soundtrack to a quaint ball, or something. Out of 910 songs on This Might Be a Wiki, the track is rated #488 by TMBG fans. That more or less categorises it as one of the average They songs. A bit unfair, I would say. I enjoy it a lot.

#791: Blink-182 – M+M’s

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This is a toughy. Only because I have no reason to gush over this song, I just think it’s very good. ‘M+M’s’ has been a mainstay in my music library for a long time. Some time after Christmas 2007, to be sort of exact ’cause that’s when I got Blink-182’s 2005 Greatest Hits compilation as a gift. ‘M+M’s’ is the second track on that collection. I can’t say it’s been there at major moment of my life, wasn’t the soundtrack to a specific moment in time. It’s just a damn catchy tune.

Like a lot of pop-punk tracks and Blink-182 songs in general, it’s about a boy-girl relationship. Hoppus sings about this girl he’s found that he’s got something good going with, and is determined not to mess things up. It seems that he can’t believe his luck, the way things are going for him, and the only thing now is to really seal the deal and ask her to be his girlfriend. The song contains a memorable riff by Tom DeLonge, thinking about it now he uses the same technique on some parts of ‘Dumpweed’, and the rhythm’s very tight too. Travis Barker may be the better drummer technically, but for his time in the band, original drummer Scott Raynor was a perfect fit for the song’s the band did back then.

‘M+M’s’ was Blink-182’s first ever single, released in 1995 when they were to bring out their debut album Cheshire Cat. They made a music video for it too, which you can see above. That is the censored version. The original had a scene at the end where the bandmembers and their ‘girlfriends’ have a shootout. Fake gunshot wounds and everything. That is below.

#790: Pezz (Billy Talent) – M & M

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Here it is. The return. The Music in My Ears is back with the M’s. Looking through my phone, there are a lot of fine songs to cover. Today, we start with ‘M & M’ – a track that was the first of 17 on Billy Talent’s first ever album, the one they made before they were even known as Billy Talent. For a few years, the band from Canada was called Pezz. They released an album in 1999 called Watoosh!. The group went away afterwards, changed the name and image and came back with a completely different style.

Around 2004/2005 I was really excited about Billy Talent. I was on their official website a lot of the time and trying to find where I could listen to their songs. Came across a fansite on Geocities which had a list of their rare tracks available in a very low quality and in .wmv format, and Watoosh! was on there. Only the links for ‘M & M’, ‘Fairytale’, ‘Nita’, and the cover of ‘New Orleans Is Sinking’ worked. I think that site was also where I found ‘Beach Balls’ too. If only I could remember that website’s name… As someone who discovered Billy Talent first and then found out that they made this years before, I was very surprised in the best way possible. The whole first ‘official’ Billy Talent album was perfect in my eyes as a nine-year-old. And those other songs convinced me that this was a band who couldn’t write a bad track.

‘M & M’ was inspired by the group of goth kids who used to come into the HMV store where singer Ben Kowalewicz worked back in the day and is something of an observation and a look into the minds of the kids of that subculture. It doesn’t seem to be too different from the whole emo scene of the mid-2000s. Kids still loathe their parents, they’re made fun of because of their extravagant makeup, and they have a fascination with death. Instead of the usual heavy approach that Billy Talent would be known for on their first album, Pezz take things on with, dare I say, a bit of playfulness. The group play with the tempo a bit more and add a bit of skip to their rhythms. It’s like a strange ska-punk song. And then halfway through the track takes a bit of a dramatic turn and ends in a way that you wouldn’t have guessed when it first started. That happens a lot throughout ‘Watoosh!’ I still really like that album to this day, even though the members of Billy Talent don’t acknowledge it that much.