Monthly Archives: April 2023

#1023: Blur – Peach

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This one’s a relatively new add to this long, long bunch. The track, alongside the rest of the Modern Life Is Rubbish 2012 special edition, has been in my iTunes library since 2013. But it wasn’t until a couple years ago that I properly paid attention to this particular number. I was snooping on the Blur subreddit and came across a thread which I think asked if any of the bandmembers had stated/mentioned their own personal favourite Blur songs. One response listed that guitarist Graham Coxon had once tweeted that ‘Peach’ was one of his along with a few others. Upon researching, I’ve found the tweet this was referencing. What better recommendation to give a song a shot than from the guitarist who actually played on it, right?

It hits immediately with the sharp tones of what I think of is a harmonium and a real woozy bassline, with a light acoustic guitar and percussion that certainly isn’t of the drum kit kind. So already it’s quite the oddity, but it’s intriguing from the get-go to say the least. The song’s lyrics are something I’ve haven’t quite grasped. As the songs seems to be fixating on this girl who seems kind of strange, sort of out there (“you’re always your way, you are”) but oddly attractive, I’ve come to think of it as a description of this lady being a bit of an airhead, or something of a free spirit. But I’ve also seen a few comments that really go for the dark side of things, judging by the line in the chorus where a ‘gaping hole’ in the head is mentioned and the “gun in your pocket” lyric. Supposedly, this narrator may have had their heart broken, commits suicide and literally shoots themselves, allowing the birds to feast on their brains. Two polar-opposite situations, here. Maybe this is a case that should be left unsolved.

The fact that it doesn’t sound adhere to the the usual rock band conventions is maybe a reason why it never made it onto the Modern Life… album in ’93, instead being released as a B-side on the ‘For Tomorrow’ single. Doesn’t much fit in with the British lifestyles theme that they had begun to delve into on there either. But hey, I’ve come to like it more than a few of the songs that did make the cut. It’s a mysterious dark horse of a track. Out of those three ‘Life trilogy’ albums, Modern Life… is my favourite. Covered a couple songs from it in the past. There are a few more still to come.

#1022: Animal Collective – Peacebone

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Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam was the second of the group’s that I got round to listening to. It initially took a few goes with Merriweather Post Pavilion. But when that album finally clicked, it only made sense to find out what the band was really about by listening to what else they had offer. According to 18-year-old me who wrote the post on Strawberry Jam‘s closer ‘Derek’ back in the old times, that track and today’s track ‘Peacebone’, the album’s opener, ‘left a mark’. A bit of a vague remark there. I would say that meant that it left an impression of ‘Hell yeah, I’d listen to that again any time.’ I’ve always been the guy who always likes a bit of well-executed oddness in songs, and I think when I was 18, ‘Peacebone’ was that track falling under that category that I had been waiting to listen to for my whole life up to that point.

‘Bonefish’ is the first word you hear on the album before your suddenly smacked with the splattered wall of frizzling synthesizer sounds. That seems to last forever until the ‘bonefish’ sample is repeated to mark the entry of Panda Bear’s drums, which establish the bouncy, forceful rhythm the whole song relies upon. There’s something real cartoony about this one. The bounciness, the samples that come in and out of the frame at various points. The slidiness of the guitar chords in the pre-choruses. I could imagine a child going crazy to it, despite them having no idea who Animal Collective are or what the song’s about. But it would be rather fitting, seeing as the whole album has a running theme of nostalgia and the innocence and loss of childhood running through it. Maybe it was Avey Tare’s & co’s plan all along.

Speaking of Avey Tare, his vocals are absolutely mezmerizing here. Pitchfork’s review on the album made a note highlighting his performance with his cords throughout the album. But even if you didn’t go on to listen to the rest, it’s all on show here. The chorus has him leaping from his standard chest voice to a heady falsetto, which will in turn then be wiped away with this absolutely primal screams. Nothing will prepare you for that anxiety-inducing break where he’s yelling with sheer intensity. It’s absolute insanity. And then it just goes back into what’s the final verse as if nothing happened at all. Can’t say this track is boring, that’s for sure. Almost ten years on from that first experience with it and Strawberry Jam, but I still can’t resist the urge to wig out when this track gets going.

#1021: Interpol – PDA

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Oh, God, it’s my birthday. Hooray, hooray, hooray. 28 and still going on. A lot of people never made it this far. Very sure I had mu 18th birthday post on here. Might have to check that one out, see how I was doing. Actually, I’ll skip that – 2013 was a bit of an awkward one. Clinging onto what’s left of the 20s now, but probably feeling happier now than I have been in a long while. And that’s all that matters really, right? Personal well-being and all that. Anyway, let’s move on, let’s move on.

Eagle-eyed readers out there who might have a keen interest in Interpol and what I write on here may have noticed that I once wrote about ‘NYC’, and now I’m on ‘PDA’. So you may wonder, “Well, where was the post for ‘Obstacle 1’?” Answer is, I used to like that song quite a bit. But then it lost me along the way. ‘PDA’ though, is probably my favourite song from Turn on the Bright Lights, without question. Initially, I came across it by chance when its video showed up on MTV2 many years back. I had been accustomed to at least some of the band’s work at that point. Videos for ‘Evil’, ‘Slow Hands’ and the aforementioned ‘Obstacle 1’ were usual sights to see. As a result, ‘PDA’ was like a new track to me. But with the short attention span that I had as a kid, and the fact that TV speakers never do music justice anyway, I didn’t think much of it. But give the guy a few more years of life and some good headphones, and he exposes himself to broader horizons.

This track constantly feels like its pushing itself forward, constantly striding with this driving quality, and it all begins with the very first strike of the crash cymbal. After a few measures of the bustling drum introduction, the rest of the guitars join in – and every note/chord that’s struck is hit simultaneous alongside every beat happening on the kick drum, which also adds to this building tension. I think it’s agreed amongst the indie consensus that the rhythm section is the highlight in the majority of the album’s songs, particularly Carlos Dengler’s bass playing, and, my god, is there no better example of that aspect than on this song. Many times I’m humming and “ner-ner-ner”-ing to his bass and completely disregarding everything else. He starts and stops, climbs in scales and descends again, leaps to higher octaves, and all of this done in such a fluid manner. This was all from a person who stated that he disliked playing the instrument.

But even trying to pay attention to the lyrics is kinda difficult enough. They’re hard to break down, which I don’t mind too much, though listeners might think about what Paul Banks is even trying to convey in this. The title doesn’t appear in its lyrics, but it’s understood to stand for ‘Public Display of Affection’. So there’s something about love, or the ending of it, in there somewhere, buried deep within. What I like about it most though, is the flat, deadpan delivery that only reaches a peak during the choruses. Even then, it’s not much. But it just works. Also, a big hand goes out to the amazing outro, which I didn’t get to hear that first time because the music video used the radio edit of the song.

#1020: Beach House – Pay No Mind

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God, 2018 was five years ago, how strange is that? Nothing too remarkable happened for me that year. But it was a good time to be a Beach House fan. Three years on after the surprise double release of Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars, and along came 7 – the band’s aptly-titled seventh album. The headline news behind this new album was that Sonic Boom (Peter Kember) would be producing it, the first of the band’s not to be (co-)produced by Chris Coady since Devotion in 2008. The big question, how would this move affect Beach House’s sound? The answer, not by a vast amount. Beach House sounded like Beach House as per usual. No complaints. But Kember’s production provided a difference in sonics that sets the record apart from the others within the band’s discography.

‘Pay No Mind’ is the second track on 7. After the propulsive start of ‘Dark Spring’, proceedings are slowed right down. Alex Scally’s reverb-drenched guitars are accompanied by reverb-drenched snare and kick drum, and a constant synthesizer hum to represent what would be the bassline. The production work here makes the sonic palette sound expansive and far-reaching, and so warm that it feels like I’m sinking to a huge cushion when I listen to it. Can appreciate a good song that does that. And when everything truly opens up at around 1:26 in, with those chiming piano keys. Well, that’s just a moment of euphoria right there. Victoria Legrand’s vocals are as smooth as ever, only adding to the overall consoling tone that I don’t think I’m wrong in saying the track is going for.

Terms of lyrics, in one way I think the majority of it is made of words where the syllables needed to match the rhythm of the music. Not to say that the lyrics are inconsistent or poorly written, because they aren’t. But I think there’s a definite feel of lyrics to evoke imagery rather than to provide a narrative. Where the most ‘soul-bearing’ or whatever occurs is in what I guess you would label as the chorus: “Baby at night when I look at you/Nothing in this world keeps me confused/All it takes: look in your eyes.” I mean, that’s real love-feelings isn’t it. Otherwise, I think the song’s main message is in its title. Things won’t go as you want them to go. You’ve got to do what you can to make in this world, but it takes time. Don’t work yourself up into a stress. Pay no mind. Or something to that effect.

#1019: Fall Out Boy – Pavlove

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Getting the deluxe edition of Fall Out Boy’s Folie à Deux for my 14th birthday in ’09 wasn’t what I had planned. The standard version would have been enough, but the deluxe was what I got. And alongside a couple remixes, alternative acoustic versions, and the band’s cover of Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’, came ‘Pavlove’ – another new track, left off the album for reasons that no-one apart from those in the band will ever know. Fall Out Boy fans have come to discover the track over the years, begging for it to become widely available through streaming services. It’s one of those times where I’m very grateful for that physical copy I have stored in my bedroom. I feel those fans’ frustration, though.

Really, I don’t think I even appreciated the track fully until maybe about a year later, when the track came up on shuffle in my iTunes library on the computer while I was simultaneously playing FIFA on the TV. That was what I did when there was no one at home when I was a teenager. There’s something about it that sets it apart from the other tracks that made it onto the final album. Those that did have a large, grand production behind them whereas this one seems much less so in comparison. There’s a lot of empty space occurring during the verses where Patrick Stump sings and there’s the sole guitar in the right playing its riff. But that emptiness and the tone of that guitar is something I greatly appreciate. Stump’s vocal delivery isn’t as extravagant here as some of the album cuts, but again that in itself is something I particularly enjoy. There’s no special featured guests, no gang vocals, no lengthy instrumental breakdowns. There’s a piano, some ‘We Will Rock You’-esque stomps and claps and multi-tracked Stump ‘oh-oh’ vocals. But apart from those, it’s a sleek band performance and a song that follows a simple ‘verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-end’ pattern. Maybe they wanted to develop it more, but couldn’t, and so left it off the album. I don’t know, I’m just throwing out possible answers.

As to what it’s about? The title is a combination of the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov, who discovered classical condition through his experiments with dogs, and the word ‘love’. But the title doesn’t have anything to do with what’s happening in the song. A case of a few Fall Out Boy song titles. What I theorise is that it’s a track about a cocaine addict. It’s all there in the lyrics. I don’t know about Pete Wentz’s drug habits. Could have sworn I’ve heard a story or two about him dabbling in some substances or others. But what he portrays is a narrator who’s head is blurring and chest is stirring from the cocaine consumption, who knows they could have an early death because of it, but can’t help but get right back to the habit because of the high it gives them. They describe themselves as ‘the invisible man who can’t stop staring at the mirror’. Invisible, cause of the skinniness, and ‘staring at the mirror’, the mirror they snort the lines off. And this narrator wants to make whoever’s in their company ‘as lonely as [them]’ by inviting them to join in. It’s pretty dark. Maybe that’s why it was left off too. Regardless of reasons, I’m all for this track. A deep, deep cut – let’s make it available for the people.