Monthly Archives: February 2022

#911: John Linnell – New Hampshire

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What struck me about John Linnell’s ‘New Hampshire’ when I first heard it coming to a decade ago, was how grand it sounded. From the start it gave me this image of a huge parade going through town with a marching band, floats, balloons, the lot, and that’s always persisted to this day. All of the music was performed via an arrangement that was then cut out on paper and inserted into the carousel organ in Glen Echo Park, Maryland. The video linked doesn’t show the track itself playing through that carousel, but just gives an example of how it works. The instrument is one that is used predominantly in Linnell’s State Songs album, but it’s this track that he imagined to be the ‘big tour de force’, incorporating the drums and glockenspiels that the Echo Park carousel provided. It’s the soundtrack to a grand day out. So it’s a bit of a whiplash when the lyrics describe a character who’s something of a loner and not really liked by anyone.

The track starts off with the narrator looking through a window into a party or some sort of social gathering, only let in by a polite but startled attendee, who is then very much rejected by the people they come into contact with. Linnell really lays it on thick that this character is someone that we shouldn’t like. They’re a gatecrashing parasite, they’re morose, a downer, broken-hearted. At most, they’re “very interesting.” Any stroke of luck they may have had in the past just so happened inadvertently. Very negative pronouns and adjectives abound. So it’s a huge ironic twist to have this person described to the sounds of twinkling glockenspiels, strident organ chords and a somewhat classical-influenced melody. It’s something that probably wouldn’t work if anyone else tried it, but it’s John Linnell, so there’s always a high probability that it will whenever he pursues that approach.

And so, the main message of this track is “No one likes New Hampshire man.” That’s pretty much it. It’s a dramatic march dedicated to an intolerable person. Though I’ve recently come to think that Linnell’s also sneakily singing “No one likes New Hampshire, man.” I wouldn’t put it past him, makes for a nice double meaning. Moments that stand out to me… that part during the second “Woman wonders…” section where it the track turns into a bit of a waltz? And when those clarinets come in right at the end mirroring the ‘No one likes New Hampshire man” line, before the track goes out on these slightly out of time chord strikes. Ends it all on this big “hurrah”. I really dig this live performance of the track with Linnell playing it on the accordion. Why not just watch the whole thing too, it’s one of only a couple Linnell solo 1999 shows you can find at the moment.

#910: Joy Division – New Dawn Fades

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Some may say this track is the quintessential Joy Division moment. The one that summed up everything the band was about and stood for. They have their popular ones, the songs that everyone know like ‘She’s Lost Control’ and ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ goes without saying. But for those senses of insecurity, intensity, ambience, sadness with a sudden power, it’s ‘New Dawn Fades’ that tops the bill.

It slowly lures the listener in bit by bit, starting with Stephen Morris’ drum pattern that’s then joined by Peter Hook’s descending four-note bassline that barely changes throughout the entire duration. Bernard Sumner comes in with a sharp introductory guitar solo, very grimy in its tone as it moves amidst Hook’s bass and Morris’s drum fills. It’s all so sparse, everything reverberates in the spaces. And after a minute and 20 seconds, Ian Curtis creeps into frame with his vocals. Now, before listening to Unknown Pleasures for the first time, would have been years ago at this point, I’m fairly certain the only song I’d ever heard by the band was ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. Going into it, I was expecting tracks that more or less followed the same formula of mid-tempo guitar rock where the lead vocals were barely above a murmur or whisper. Curtis yelling on ‘Disorder’ and ‘Day of the Lords’ were mindblowing to me because they were so unexpected. So when he really lets it out in his final verse completely wiped out. It’s such a climactic ending, and a powerful way to close out the album’s first half.

As for the song’s meaning, well, sort of knowing from far away what Curtis was going through in the Joy Division times, I think he’s writing from a point of view where he’s essentially a spirit looking at him living his life from a distance and not being immensely disappointed with what he sees. The dissociation allows him to enjoy some things just that little bit more, change of speed, style and all that, but then he sees himself and everything closes in again. It’s a bit basic to say, but it is depressing. Just thinking about how it all ended for Ian Curtis, it just brings in a lot of sadness. But his words and the music always provide that powerful light.

#909: Muse – New Born

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Muse’s ‘New Born’ starts off the band’s 2001 album Origin of Symmetry. I’ve always seen it as something of a “Welcome to the 21st century” moment, and I believe that’s meant to be reflected in the way that it transitions from the soft piano-based into the mega-crunchy guitar riff properly introduces the track and the overall sound of the rest of the tracks that follow. The riffs throughout this six minute wonder are quite spectacular. There’s the aforementioned riff that gets things going, there’s Chris Wolstenholme’s bass riff that occurs throughout the verses… Matt Bellamy’s guitar solo’s pretty out there too. On a whole the band are firing on all cylinders, it’s a huge ball of energy.

Matthew Bellamy’s vocal style is one that’s lost if effect on me as the years have gone on, but there are still some Muse tracks where it just suits perfectly with all the melodies and rhythms that are happening around it. ‘New Born’ is another one of them, in my opinion. How he changes it around to match the tone of each respective section… It subtly builds and builds from the verse up to that final line in the chorus with the falsetto, and it’s extremely effective when that falsetto turns into a scream and segues into the track’s closing instrumental section. Goosebumps every time that happens. Some could be cynical and say something like the whole “technology is taking over and humanity is suffering because of it” subject was already done by Radiohead a few years earlier, arguably in a better way, but whatever it’s just another take on it from another band at the end of the day.

Last year the band released a remixed and remastered version of Origin of Symmetry to coincide with the 20th anniversary of its release. The new mix of ‘New Born’ revealed some details that were really buried in that original 2001 mix. Like those ‘aah-aah’ backing vocals during the choruses? Did you know those were there, because I certainly didn’t. It also generally took away a lot of the compression present in the original mix, so it sounds very open and somewhat wider in comparison. If that makes any sense. I may still prefer the original release though. But I’ll link the new mix below, so you can make up your own mind.

#908: The Velvet Underground – New Age

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This is a very recent addition to the phone playlist. The Velvet Underground’s Loaded has been on my laptop’s iTunes library since about 2013. It’s not my favourite album of the band’s, but moments from tracks on there like ‘Who Loves the Sun’, ‘Sweet Jane’ and ‘Oh! Sweet Nuthin” have always popped in my head from time to time. But sometime around September/October time, something inside was telling me to revisit ‘New Age’. And so I did. And apart from the glorious ending, I still wasn’t very interested. Clearly that opinion changed. It’s now the song I most go to from that record.

Like all the other songs on Loaded, ‘New Age’ was written by Lou Reed. But it’s also one of the four on there sung by fellow band member Doug Yule, who would be encouraged by Reed to take the lead vocal from time to time. Something interesting about Reed’s writing here is how he shifts the narrative perspective from verse to the next. The first sees him recounting a conversation between a “fat blonde actress” and her fan with a mix of third and first person point of view. The next has him saying “You’re over the hill and you’re looking for love”. Who’s you? The listener? Maybe he’s writing about himself. And the ‘I’ll come running to you…’ sections cover the first person straight up. Alongside his writing, the chord changes progress in a way that they never quite resolve fully. They rise and fall, climb and then lose a step, so you’re waiting for that moment when that big release happens. And it does with the almighty ‘It’s the beginning of a new age’ chorus that’s repeated until a guitar solo comes in and closes the song out. Listening to it on vinyl, it’s the last song on the first side before you’d have to turn the record over. It’s a great way to go out.

Doug Yule does a fine job on the vocals here. He’s not the greatest singer, but like on the aforementioned ‘Who Loves the Sun’ or ‘Candy Says’ from the previous album he does well enough that I couldn’t imagine how Lou Reed would sound if he sung them himself. The rhyming of ‘Robert Mitchum’ and ‘catch him’ isn’t too great to my ears, but that’s by no means his fault. He just had to sing what was written down. For whatever reason, the ending was somewhat butchered on the official 1970 release. It was edited in a way that backing vocals come in early, repeat, cymbals come in where they shouldn’t… You can hear out kind of awkward it is. Quite strange that it’s labelled as the “Full Length Version” when it really isn’t. Luckily, a re-release of the album back in 2015 included the track at its fullest, which I hope you would have heard by now ’cause it’s only up there.