Monthly Archives: May 2023

#1044: Super Furry Animals – The Placid Casual

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I once took on a personal task to go through Super Furry Animals’ discography in 2014. Reading around on the net and seeing comments made by the public, I got the sense that out of the British rock movement going on in the ’90s – not necessarily Britpop, but the entire scene including Radiohead, Manic Street Preachers and those sort of outside bands who didn’t fit in with that specific – SFA had one of the most solid catalogues of records out of them. Guerrilla was an album of theirs that was already well-acquainted with. But I started with the ’96 debut Fuzzy Logic, makes sense. And followed up by listening to Radiator, the band’s sophomore effort that came out a year later. It begins with a minute-and-a-half instrumental, ‘Furryvision’, a proper scene-setter, like the opening music in a TV show that plays over an opening shot of the sun rising over a sleepy town. But then ‘The Placid Casual’ follows and the floodgates fully open.

After a slick drum roll, the track and the band introduce themselves with ringing guitar notes and noticeably high-in-the-mix crash cymbals. With the incredibly trebly atmosphere going on, that whole introduction is like a wall of sirens and general chaos, probably to really announce that this was where the album was really starting, as the first track representing a full band performance. ‘Pawprint marks leave a telltale sign/There’s a furry friend loose and committing a crime’ are the song’s opening lyrics, a personal favourite couplet of mine in any song, and inspirational enough that I want to say it provided the design idea for Radiator‘s album cover. What ‘the placid casual’ is or are is never defined in the song, but taking them together results in a close enough description of a person that is calm, relaxed and unconcerned. There’s a reference to the seizing of power in Sierra Leone by Valentine Strasser in the second verse for no specific reason. Really, what I think the song comes down to is announcing that the band were back with this new album. Singer Gruff Rhys takes the perspective of the listeners, who ask what to do now that they have been freed and led into salvation by the band’s return.

What ‘the placid casual’ is/are isn’t defined in the track. Looking up the two words though, they appear to describe something/someone that is ‘calm and peaceful, and relaxed and unconcerned’. Seemed that the phrase itself had a ring to it in the SFA camp, as the band chose it to be the name of their self set-up record label. After the final iteration of the chorus, the crash cymbals slam away amidst some freaky synthesizer work and the ascending keyboard bass line, coming to a sudden stop and giving way to the following track’s introduction. Just keeps the train rolling on with barely a moment’s peace. If anyone’s wondering how the rest of my discography quest went with Super Furry Animals, I didn’t actually complete it until 2018, when I went ahead and started again from scratch. My own verdict: whole albums weren’t really for me, but the individual tracks I thought were great were faaantastic. ‘Placid Casual’ stood clear as a personal highlight.

#1043: Nick Drake – Place to Be

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Well, well, it’s Nick Drake again. Though this won’t be the last time I write about him on this website, it’ll be the last time you’ll see a track of his in this particular section. Who knew that basically a quarter of the songs on Pink Moon began with the letter ‘P’? Never would have thought about it without this, would you? Not like it’s very useful information anyway. Representing the last of the Ps from Pink Moon today is the album’s second track, ‘Place to Be’. With the preceding title track providing a more surreal, symbolic take on Drake’s outlook on life, ‘Place to Be’ is where he lays the facts down straight.

I believe this track is the last one on the album on which he uses a plectrum to play his acoustic guitar, with the rest all consisting of his intricate fingerpicking. And as a result, just like the ‘Pink Moon’ track, ‘Place to Be’ has a very driving momentum to it with Drake playing the guitar with an air of confidence and striding force. The strings ring out with a rich tone to them, and the music overall lures you in with its warmth. But on top, Drake tells the listener how he is as the man who sings to you compared to the days of yesteryear, and he’s not doing too well. The lyrics are plain to understand. When he was younger, he was ignorant to the cold, hard truth. But now he has himself hardened as a person and can see things for what they are. He used to be vibrant and bright, but now has become darker in his moods. He asks to be given a place to be, and by that I assume he means a place to just exist without any troubles. Maybe somewhere to belong. It’s left up in the air, but it taps into a feeling I’m sure is felt universally.

The third and final verse contains the most telling and hard-hitting revelation out of those listed in the previous two. Referencing his ‘Day Is Done’ track, which bear in mind was only released three years prior, he tells the listener that compared to then he was now the weakest he’s ever felt. So weak in a need for something or someone that isn’t fully disclosed. They’re just referred to as ‘you’. Maybe you is the ‘place to be’ itself. Maybe it’s a loved one. I’ve seen interpretations that suggest that ‘you’ is death. Any way you look at it though, it’s a sad affair. But instead of making it too melodramatic, he transferred his energy into an beautiful earnest acoustic performance. It does make you wonder how things changed so much for the worse for him in that relatively short amount of time.

#1042: Gorillaz – Pirate Jet

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Man, 2010. What a time to be alive, eh? Although I was alive in 2000, 2010 was the first proper year where I was aware that a change in the decades was happening. I thought it was something of a huge occasion. We were all quite deep into the 21st century. After all the shit that went down in the 2000s, 14-year-old me at least was feeling optimistic about the world for the times that were to come. Looking back on it in 2023, fair to say the decade had its highs and lows. One of them being the return of Gorillaz in 2010, with the release of Plastic Beach, five years on from Demon Days. Just when they needed them most, they returned.

That album’s been out for 13 years this month. While that does feel like ages ago, I do have the very clear memory of downloading it when it leaked online a few days before official release and listening to the whole thing in full. There were a lot of music downloading websites online in those days that wouldn’t survive a week in these times. If only I were on the home computer, I’d be able to tell you the exact date I did. Monitor’s busted though. Power on button just won’t click when you press it. One thing’s for sure was that the album was a hit with me from that day. Each song just seemed to be one banger after the next. An emotional rollercoaster with a ton of variety in each track. No track on there was bad. Though now there may be some established tracks that have been labelled as the ‘not so good’ ones – looking at ‘Glitter Freeze’ and unfortunately ‘Sweepstakes’ (which I also got tired of after a while, but was probably one of my favorites on there for a looong time – you can’t deny they’re at the very least interesting. Demon Days is widely regarded to be the classic. It will always be Plastic Beach for me.

And so, after this almost hour-long experience filled to the brim with guest vocalists and instrumental twists and turns, the one and only Damon Albarn (or 2D if you really want to get into it) takes the lead to close it all out with ‘Pirate Jet’, a track that I could only describe as this groovy pub-like singalong. The lyrics consist of only one verse that’s sung twice, kind of making a sarcastic joking point on how everything’s great while humanity is wasting water and using all these excessive amounts of plastic for no good reason. The album had a bit of an environmental theme going on throughout, don’t know if you knew. A vocoder-effected vocal sings the title phrase from the very start of the song too, setting the swinging rhythm that sets the bed for frizzy synthesizer chords, soulful backing ‘ooh’ harmonies and these little tinkling bells that are actually the last instruments you hear on the record as all of the others slowly fade out. Definitely has an ‘ending credits song’ feel to it. I couldn’t picture a greater note for the album to go out on.

#1041: Bloc Party – Pioneers

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Only a minor point, but this track is labelled both ‘Pioneers’ or ‘The Pioneers’ depending on what issue of Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm you have. When the animated music video was getting its airtime on MTV2 back in the day, it was always shown as the former and that’s how I’ve always come to recognise. It’s probably not a note to even think about for more than a millisecond. But there are some people out there who would. Either way you look at it, it would still be the song talked about today, here and now.

I can sort of remember being alive and kicking in the Silent Alarm era. ‘Helicopter’ was the first track of the band’s that I witnessed I think in 2004, check out the post on that for more information, and then ‘Banquet’ came around some time after. Then eventually ‘Pioneers’ was released, and it was another great representative in the string of great singles that Bloc Party were coming out with at the time. Being nine years old going on ten, fair to say I wasn’t in the know of how well-acclaimed the whole album was by fans and critics alike. Thus the album wasn’t something I requested, for reasons I’m not really sure of, thinking about it now. But at the very least I knew that their singles were always good.

Kele Okereke sings in a range that I can only try to reach and does so from the moment he begins the first verse, never letting up until the calming bridge. If only the vocal melody wasn’t so catchy and memorable, it would put my cords under a lot less stress. Same applies to Matt Tong’s pounding drums, which never fully divert from the same tom-tom based pattern for the majority of the song. The title of the song doesn’t appear in the lyrics, but they very much intend to capture thoughts, feelings, beliefs and ideas that people may hold when setting out on an adventure, testing out a new theory or invention, heck, writing a new song. The lyrics detail the number of possibilities that can be taken into consideration, with the reassuring message that all you need is time to figure things out. They recount the overwhelming sensations that one can feel just by setting out on these creative endeavours. It’s a song of optimism and a sense of pride that as life goes on, these ambitious types will always be out there trying to follow in the footsteps of the great minds who have scratched their names into the fabric of time. There’s also a use of the phrase ‘so here we are’, which happens to be the title of another track from the same album. But that’s for another day.

#1040: Weezer – Pink Triangle

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So today’s track is number 1040 is this long series, but really it should be more. There have been a few occasions where I’ve missed some songs out and have had to hastily slot some paragraphs for them in larger posts in order to represent them. One thing’s for sure is that this should be #1041, because only a few weeks ago I realised I missed out Weezer’s ‘No Other One’ from the listings. I actually really like that song too, and I feel like I said to myself that I would go back to it at the time. But I didn’t, and now we’re in this situation. To keep things simple, it’s a great number – one about being with a lady who’s no good for you, but don’t want to leave because of the fear of being alone for the rest of your life. Big thumbs up from me.

‘Pink Triangle’, like ‘No Other One’ – also on Weezer’s Pinkerton, is another track on the album detailing a moment in River Cuomo’s desperate search for true love while being a ’90s rockstar and having a tremendously painful procedure on his leg. In the song, he thinks he’s found the perfect match. Finally, someone he sees spending his days with the kids, the white picket fence and the pets. It all seems too good to be true. And it is, as to his chagrin, the lady’s a lesbian. With this information, Cuomo’s lyrics recount the inner turmoil he goes through upon this earth-shattering realisation. Now, I know that Pinkerton contains some lines in there that would probably be categorised as problematic in these times. They most likely always have been. But Rivers Cuomo in 1996 was a person who needed a hug and was clearly very frustrated. It wasn’t something that people at the time were ready for, but it was as real as it gets and for that you gotta give him some respect.

Like all the other songs on the album, the track is a raw and hard-hitting performance on all fronts. What initially starts off with this almost Christmas-like introduction with softly-played guitars playing the opening riff suddenly pummels into the verses with the introduction of Patrick Wilson’s drums, Matt Sharp’s bass guitar and Cuomo’s vocal. Cuomo would never be as expressive in his vocal delivery past this album, though the melody within the verses is realtively simple, he’s really belting them out with some grit and melismatic turns occurring here and there. It’s pretty passionate stuff. Gotta give a shout-out to the slide guitar that arrives in the mix at points. And a big plus to the dueling guitars solo in the break. The chord progression underneath it would be used as the basis for ‘Do You Wanna Get High’ 20 years later, if you didn’t know. Always enjoyed how it transitions into the following track too. Two very complete songs, but hearing them both together is a whole other level.