Monthly Archives: September 2021

#896: Radiohead – Myxomatosis. (Judge, Jury & Executioner.)

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‘Myxomatosis’ may very well be the very first Radiohead song I ever heard. You may think, “Why that one?” Out of all of the tracks that the band have ever made, that’s a bit out there. Well, it’s because it was on the soundtrack of FIFA 2004, a game that I played almost every weekend when I was nine years old. EA Sports were on another level with their soundtrack picks back in the day. Have to say this song stood out from the many others that accompanied it in the the game’s background music. The child that I was, I had never heard a song like it before. The riff was nasty/strange, I thought it had a bit of a swing to it (which it doesn’t – it’s in 4/4, but I had no idea what time signatures were), and the singer had this low, relaxing delivery. It was sort of hypnotizing. And after enough times I was singing along to it whenever it popped up.

Obviously, there’s a huge irony about a nine-year-old happily grooving to a track that references a fatal disease that affected rabbits, but the music sounded too good. I remember the times of trying to find this song online, but music streaming definitely wasn’t a thing (at least not to the extent it is now), so all I could ever find were lyrics. Through finding those I then discovered that FIFA had actually censored some parts of the song and had cut a large chunk of it out. It was years until I listened to the full thing, I guess when I got Hail to the Thief as a present in 2010. Six darn years later. But by that point, my appreciation for Radiohead had grown immensely. In 2021, this song still stomps. It’s intense, it pummels, gives off such a menacing aura. I don’t know what it’s about, I can’t lie. I’ve had some thoughts, and my interpretation is that it’s a very, very dark take on touring and the media. The fans are the people twitching and salivating, the narrator talks about sleeping with whoever they like and how one woman in particular ‘ate him up for breakfast’. But at the end of it all, he ends up feeling confused and like a piece of meat. These are all just guesses on my part. In recent live performances, there are some extra lyrics that Thom Yorke sings that weren’t included in the album version. A particular appearance of these are in the band’s live take of the song in their From the Basement set in 2008. Sometimes, I even prefer that to the original. I’ll link it all below.

And that is it. That’s the ‘M’ section done. The calendar for this shows that I started posting for the M’s exactly seven months ago. I actually started on January 10th, and wrote each following post almost a month in advance. As I type to you, it’s the 7th August, and I’ve just had my second COVID vaccine. Hello from the somewhat distant past. Thanks for joining on this ‘journey’. Thanks to whoever’s been reading and liking and following. Makes all of these posts worthwhile; I’m glad it’s reaching people out there. The N’s will definitely arrive. But for now… a break’s needed. Bye, bye, now, Take care of yourselves.

#895: Beach House – Myth

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I’m not the biggest follower of Beach House. I think I only got round to listening some albums of theirs initially because Pitchfork said they were very good. This would’ve been back in 2013/14 or so. Their latest record at that point was Bloom, an LP that was considered to be a tenth of a point better than the album that preceded it. Having listened to those albums for some time now, I’ve gotta say my favourite between the two is Teen Dream. I just like more songs from there. But Bloom has some highlights itself, one of those by a mile is the opener, ‘Myth’.

Like the first track that came before on Teen Dream, ‘Myth’ basically grabbed me straight away with the progression of that twinkling guitar in the intro. Everything after that was an added bonus. Victoria Legrand’s voice was just as ‘grand’ and majestic, smokey still, but with a bunch of reverb this time round. The vocal melody was striking and seemed so familiar, even though I hadn’t heard the track before. It seemed like one of those that has always been in the ether somewhere. Obviously it hadn’t, but by the end of the track I was humming along like I’d known it for years. I couldn’t sing to it; I didn’t know the lyrics. And then to round it all off comes that crying guitar sort of solo to bring it home before transitioning into the quiet keyboard riff that’s been looping since the track’s start. All comes round full circle, and it’s beautiful stuff.

Beach House have some great, great songs. They’re just in a list of those artists/bands that indieheads love that I’ve never been able to quite get into. Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem… Sufjan Stevens. Those iconic indie people, I guess. Same situation, all have great songs, but there’s just something about them all I’m not able to vibe. But you know, it doesn’t matter that much. It’s okay. You should never try and force these things. All of these songs I’ll continue to vibe to when the time is right.

#894: Jay Reatard – My Shadow

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I remember the news of Jay Reatard’s death appearing on the NME website in January 2010 and thinking, “That sucks,” and moving on to another thing. I was 14 at the time, cut me a bit of slack. What else do you do when someone that you don’t know dies? You know that he was important to many other people, so that’s always a downer. I just never listened to his music to feel very strongly about it. After that I still didn’t think to find out more about Reatard. Had too much school stuff going on. Years passed and it was suddenly late 2015, I was working at Songlines magazine, and his track ‘Oh It’s Such a Shame’ appeared in my Spotify Discover Weekly playlist. Then I realised I might have missed out on something.

Things led to another and there I was listening to Blood Visions. A thing to note about this album is that it is loud. ‘Death Is Forming’ will start playing on my phone when I’m listening on shuffle and it will make me jump from how loud that first crash cymbal is. Damn good song though. But we’re not hear to talk about that. It’s ‘My Shadow’ time. That track is the longest one on the album, only at three minutes and 18 seconds, but still has that furious, fast and powerful approach that’s consistent throughout.

One interpretation I read about this track is that it’s from the POV of a narrator afraid of their own shadow. Another stated that it was part of a whole story that runs through the album, detailing a murderer who has become obsessed with this girl who he’s determined to make his next victim. While those may or may not be true, I’m mainly focusing on those guitars and Reatard’s vocals too. He’s got that faux-British vocal thing going on that some American punk rock singers tend to use, and he’s kinda got this melodic wailing thing going throughout the verses that then change to some howling screams in the choruses. It’s good stuff.

#893: Mac DeMarco – My Old Man

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‘Twas a day in my very last semester of university when Mac DeMarco’s old record label uploaded two new songs from his then upcoming album This Old Dog on its official YouTube page. One was the album’s title track, and the other was today’s subject, the album opener, ‘My Old Man’. Having been a fan of Mac’s for almost three years at that point, we’re talking January 2017 here, there wasn’t any better news. But when I first remember hearing them, I kinda felt a bit underwhelmed. That jangly guitar was gone and was replaced by a great presence of the good ol’ acoustic. They were generally a lot calmer and restrained in their delivery. I thought they were just okay. I did however grow fonder of ‘My Old Man’ when the album was released a few months later and I decided to listen to it with proper headphones. Why I had been listening to those initial videos through my phone until is a decision I’m puzzled by, thinking about it now.

Once I used those headphones, I found that the listening experience was almost somewhat the same. Obviously, the track sounded better in the ears. But I heard the same acoustic guitars, Mac’s vocals. That was all well and good. What I wasn’t prepared for was that subtle bass with those pulsing keyboard touches that come in during the chorus. It was those elements that lifted the track to all-star status for me. It changed for me in that instant. And once that happened I was really exciting for the rest of the album that was to come. This was a new Mac DeMarco, and I for one welcomed this new direction he was going in with open arms.

And what is the track about? Something I think that a lot of guys can relate to, looking in the mirror one day and thinking, “Damn. I’m old. I’m starting to look a bit like Dad.” Though in Mac’s case, it’s not the greatest of revelations for him as his relationship with his father was far from great. There are a lot of articles about it online you can read. I’m sure there’s a section about it on his Wiki page too. Though if you’re only slightly interested in it, there is that quite sad video of his dad showing up in a parking lot before one of his shows and leaving soon afterwards. There is the theme of his dad in the song, and in many other tracks within the album for that matter, but I do think that generally the track is about reflecting on physical and mental being after living a particularly hectic lifestyle, something that Mac DeMarco could truly write about from pure experience.

#892: Weezer – My Name Is Jonas

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One of the greatest album openers to ever exist? It might just be. I’ve had a physical copy of Weezer’s Blue Album for so long now, almost all of its lyrics and guitar parts and vocal embellishments… guitar feedback, you name it, are all embedded in that thick head of mine. And that album begins with this song, one that I want to say I can remember properly hearing for the first time in 2006 on proper quadrophonic computer speakers that my uncle installed because he was a nerd about that sort of stuff, pausing and rewinding at certain parts because I was so wowed that guitars were playing different things in each speaker.

The acoustic riff, written by the band’s original guitarist who left before the album was finished, that starts everything off is all jolly and unassuming. Then Rivers Cuomo comes in with the track’s first line alongside the band proper, and from then on it’s a whole different ball game. With its 6/8 timing, the track has this huge swaying momentum – heave-hoing back and forth with that wall of crunchy guitars. And the fact that this track doesn’t have a real chorus means that there isn’t a break or change of some sort. Sure there are those parts where the guitars fade and let the acoustic riff come in, but then they launch back into the frame again. Every section seamlessly rolls into the next, culminating with that final “Yeah, yeah, yeaaaargh”. Musically, it really throws you all over the place. Pulling and pushing, lifting you up and then gently placing you down.

Sometimes I kind of forget that there are words to this track that you have to follow. The lyrics aren’t necessarily about one thing. They touch upon nostalgia, childhood… memories in general. One main point in there is when Cuomo recollects a phone call he received from his little brother who had (then) recently been in an accident at work. But there’s such an towering confidence in the delivery of these words that it’s easy to let them just wash over you. Melody’s fantastic. I remember reading somewhere that after Kurt Cobain killed himself, kids found their next musical saviours in Weezer when the Blue Album arrived. And dammit if “My Name Is Jonas” didn’t get their hopes up when they popped the album into their computers, then I don’t know what more they could have wanted.