Monthly Archives: May 2023

#1039: Nick Drake – Pink Moon

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We’ve arrived. I’ve done many a post for a number of other songs on Nick Drake’s Pink Moon album. I’m sure that in the majority of them, I’ve mentioned that it’s one of my personal favourites ever. If I was to do one of those cheesy “need to know these albums to understand me” type of things, I’d have to say Pink Moon slots itself strongly into the list. It’s hit me that I would have been listening to the album for just over ten years at this point, and my god, it’s been one of my go-to listens in times of stress, recoveries from nights out, those cold winter mornings/evenings. So awesome how an album you come across pretty casually can become something you treasure and come to know like the back of your hand.

The record begins with its great title track, the two-minute wonder welcoming the listener into its world. Being 17 when I first heard it, the main thing that caught my ear was Drake’s singing style. Unlike almost every other person who put some volume into their vocals, Drake was singing what sounded like was barely above a whisper. Like he was sighing melodically. Wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. But it was that unique quality that made me listen to the whole thing again a second time, which is where everything clicked. Instead of focusing on just the vocal, I was listening to the charging acoustic guitar, how the chord progression moves underneath that vocal and alternates between the low strings and the higher ones. Plus, how that acoustic guitar just sounded so warm and the strings seemed to reverberate with a glistening richness. And then that lone piano comes in at about a minute in, the only other instrument to appear on the whole album apart from Drake’s guitar, just making the track that little more prettier than it had any right to be.

So why does the moon have to be pink? Why’s the pink moon so important? Well, for a while I was thinking that it was just a pretty, surreal image that Nick Drake was singing about. Something that he made up or had a dream about and was inspired enough to write a song about. After really thinking about it though, the pink moon is possibly a reference to the dark-red colour the actual moon takes during a lunar eclipse, when the Moon moves into the Earth’s shadow. Going on to know about Drake’s ordeal with depression, it hit that the pink moon is a metaphor for exactly that. He’s saying it’s written on the walls, it’s obvious, darkness is coming. He also just happened to set this message to some very beautiful music, so there’s a huge juxtaposition going on. It continues throughout the rest of the album. But it’s such a brilliantly warm and undertstated way to start off the proceedings.

#1038: R.E.M. – Pilgrimage

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Another R.E.M. song, and another one from Murmur too. On the few posts I’ve covered for the tracks from this album, I’ve gushed about how it’s one of my favourites, what it is that made me like it so much and how it happened. It’s a story that you may want me to get over. But I’ll just put a different spin on how I usually tell it. December 2017 I was going through the album for the second time after hearing it years prior and forgetting about it. Opener ‘Radio Free Europe’ set things at a high bar – now I recognise it as being one of the best first songs on an album that I know. ‘Pilgrimage’ is the track that follows and, with my expectations lifted to great heights, I didn’t want to be disappointed not to have that 1-2 punch effect that the opening two tracks of an album can have.

I remember really listening to the verses, analysing which direction the track was going to take, because they’re very unassuming. They’re carried by an infectious melodic riff simultaneously played on the bass, piano and vibraphone. Michael Stipe sings these short, sharp lyrical phrases with tons of space in between. The verses were just fine. But then there’s the sudden rise in mood with the arrival of the pre-chorus in which Stipe announces the pilgrimage has gained momentum, which in turns opens up into the first of many soaring choruses that occur throughout the album. Just as soon as it gets going, it returns back to the more closed-in feeling for the second verse. It’s not long after that the chorus arrives again, but this time Mike Mills and Bill Berry join in on vocal harmonies to add a whole other dimension to the proceedings. By this point, I think I was sold on the track. Might have even been singing along to it too. I was so into it that I was totally caught off-guard by that unexpected double-take of the riff at the end that sounds like a production error. Fair to say, the track did complete that 1-2 combo that I was hoping for.

Get the goosebumps to this day when I listen to this track. Truly, those three-way harmonies between Stipe, Mills and Berry alongside the strident chord progression within the choruses just make for such a glorious piece of music. Again, the lyrics here are meant to conjure up interpretation rather than telling it to you straight. In my opinion, on the one hand I have a feeling that the words were written to mirror the movement of the music. I mean, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the words “the pilgrimage has gained momentum” are sung just as the the backing instruments do the same. On the other hand, I want to say there’s probably something religious in there that could be taken into account. Pilgrimages, speaking in tongues… usually things you may associates with church and the like. I’m leaning more towards that first hand though.

#1037: Pink Floyd – Pigs (Three Different Ones)

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Ah, Animals. I’ll tell you now, my favourite Pink Floyd album. I can remember the day I downloaded it and heard the whole thing for the first time. It was Halloween 2010, and the 1990 Roald Dahl Witches film was on the TV. Channel 5, to be exact. I was 15 years old. At the time ‘Pigs on the Wing Part One’ passed me by too quickly, and I don’t think I had devloped the bandwidth to pay attention to the almost-18 minute song of ‘Dogs’ just yet. The first track on the album that caught my ear immediately though was today’s entry. At 11-and-a-half minutes in length, ‘Pigs (Three Different Ones)’ was just about in my comfort zone, and was the track that would pop into my head as I would be on the bus ride home from school.

Man, where do I even start? Animals‘s pissed off tone has already been established in the 20 or so minutes that come before ‘Three Different Ones’ starts. This track only further emphasises it. The three verses on here represent a different ‘pig’, with the first covering a general businessman, the second is widely agreed to be about former Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher, and the third explicitly calls out conservative activist Mary Whitehouse, who would dedicate a lot of her time campaigning against anything liberal. The verse isn’t about the White House in Washington D.C., as many thought for a while. Roger Waters chastises them all with the memorable, highly quotable refrain, “Ha-ha, charade you are”. You might ask, “If there are only three verses, why’s it 11 minutes long?” Well, in between the second and third verse comes a lengthy instrumental break that builds and builds, featuring heavy use of a talk box to mimic the sound of pigs during a guitar solo.

This song is fantastic. The groove that drags it along is undeniable. The use of every instrument present here is essential to the music, even down to the damn cowbell that appears in the mix between the verses. David Gilmour’s bass guitar performance is killer. Taking over from Roger Waters, who takes the rhythm guitar role here, Gilmour pulls off some melodic licks and scales that makes the track rip even harder than it does. Animals is noted for being the album in which Roger Waters’s grip on the band’s direction really began to take hold. It’s also the Pink Floyd album where I think he really came into his own as a vocalist. He’s not known for being the greatest singer ever. He’s probably the third best singer in the ‘classic’ line-up of the band. But even I try to copy the tone he gets on those ‘really a cryyy-hyyYYYYYyyy’s and the ‘charade you are’s every time I hear this one. A vocal take driven by seething resentment, for sure. Always a welcome time when this song pops up on shuffle.

#1036: The Beatles – Piggies

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Here it is. Everybody’s favourite George Harrison song from the White Album. Only kidding. I’m quite sure that ‘Piggies’ brings about some polarizing opinions. Some may think it’s fine. Others will probably turn to you and say they can’t stand the thing. If you were to ask me, I would gladly listen to this track a hell of a lot more than ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, which would be something of sacrilege to many, many people. I’ve just never been able to get into it. I mean, it’s all right. A bit melodramatic for me. The Anthology 3 version’s beautiful though. If Lennon and McCartney got their solo acoustic songs on the double album, then ‘Gently Weeps’ should definitely have been Harrison’s time to shine.

But anyway. ‘Piggies’, yes. The track’s another one of Harrison’s spiteful compositions made in order to make a commentary on an aspect of society. He first did it with ‘Taxman’ in 1966. While that was a satirical comment on, well, how much money was taken from him through taxes, ‘Piggies’ arrives as a biting piece on the rich in general. Harrison paints a picture of a world wherever everyone exists as pigs. The little (poorer) piggies are scrounging around, trying to make ends meet. The bigger (rich) piggies are ignorant to what goes on ‘below’ them as they strut around in their ‘starched white shirts’, and what Harrison suggests is that these bigger piggies need a smack to make them see sense.

Is the imagery a bit too on the nose and obvious? I mean, I guess so. But you couldn’t say that the musical shifts and the melodies aren’t interesting at the very least. The track goes with a great baroque and regal approach, led by a grand string arrangement courtesy of the main man George Martin and a harpsichord – which also has its own little solo – played by engineer Chris Thomas. It’s a track littered with totally unexpected moments. The movement and key change from those opening verses to the “In their sties…” middle part should have no right sounding as good as they do. There’s that little riff that plays after the “They don’t care what goes on around” lyric, which always sounds good to my ears. And for whatever reason, just when you think the song’s finished, Harrison comes in with a monotone ‘One more time’ before the strings blare out this rousing flourish to properly finish it off. I’ve come so used to it I can more or less say the phrase at the exact time Harrison says it. But it would certainly leave some people scratching their heads.

#1035: Good Shoes – The Photos on My Wall

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Well, this’ll be the last song by Good Shoes I cover on here. It’s been fun. I’ve written about only two others. But they’re worthwhile to check out. Of course they are, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered to express my great thoughts about them. Out of these three, ‘The Photos on My Wall’ is the one that I have the least of a personal attachment to. It was the second single to be released from the band’s 2007 debut album Think Before You Speak, the album title also taken from a lyric within the song, but I don’t think I properly listened to it in full until years later. Think it may have been used in an Inbetweeners episode or something. Hearing the song in that context made me want to search it out, and upon that revisit, it became an instant add to the library.

Here’s another case where I’ve heard the track for so long, but never thought to take time out to what the lyrics are going on about. So here it is, my first analysis into them. Well, I’ll say that I think the narrator here expresses a similar view to the one in fellow Good Shoes song ‘Never Meant to Hurt You’. They’re both prone to saying things without thinking, hurting their significant other in the process. Though while the narrator shows at least some remorse in ‘Never Meant…’, the voice in ‘Photos’ knows their shortcomings, but isn’t willing to do anything to improve themselves. Though then again, when Rhys Jones sings ‘I think I could do better/So arrogant’, maybe that’s him saying he could be a better person, realising that he can be a bit full of himself. All this time I thought he was saying he could do better as in finding someone more suitable to be in a relationship with. Though I guess there could be the intentional double-meaning… You see? You get me started on lyrics and I’ll never stop. Thoughts just pour out of me.

The track’s under two minutes. Perky and upbeat in its delivery. I believe the riff that opens the track was what I heard on the Inbetweeners. Or at least some show similar to that that would be showing on Channel 4. Wherever it was, it reminded me that the song did exist and that maybe I should check it out because it sounded so damn catchy. By that point, Good Shoes would have just released their second album No Hope, No Future. Maybe that title was an omen of some sorts because the band broke up after its release. Another one of those countless indie rock bands of the ’00s falling by the wayside. A shame. But they did make some great tunes.