Monthly Archives: June 2023

#1064: Billy Talent – Prisoners of Today

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When I got the first Billy Talent album as a Christmas gift in ’06, or somewhere around that time, I was already well-acquainted with the majority of it. After having rediscovered the group after a chance encounter online, that’s a story for another post, I spent what I assume would have been almost a year listening to 30-second samples of the tracks on there on this website called Artistdirect.com. Back in 2004/05, YouTube wasn’t existing and sites like this were the things I had to resort to to hear just a glimpse of the music I wanted to own without having to pay for it. Songs like ‘Cut the Curtains’ and ‘Lies’ for example, I remember vividly listening to those clips, wishing I could hear the full thing. The band had the music videos for their singles on their own website. ‘Line & Sinker’ and ‘Standing in the Rain’ were able to be played in full on there too.

But when it comes to ‘Prisoners of Today’… well, I can’t remember this track ever being one of those tracks that I sought out to hear the sample for. And to this day, I’m not sure why that is. So it was really like hearing a brand new song when it came ’round for its time to be played when I popped that CD into my computer for the first instance. ‘Course now it’s like water off a duck’s back whenever it arrives on shuffle in the playlist. But it was a bit of an outlier to me for quite a while. That’s enough for the me, me, personal angle. I’m trying to get you to want to listen to these songs at the end of the day. If you’re familiar with Billy Talent’s earlier work, then the song’s not so much different from what you’d expect. Overall a pummeling punk rock performance, propelled by the driving rhythm section of Jon Gallant (bass guitar) and Aaron Solonwoniuk (drums) and heightened by the fantastic guitar work of Ian D’Sa, whose playing I’ve made sure to comment on every time I’ve written a post about a song from this album. Still amazes me to this down how he’s able to play those lines so smoothly and yet with such energy and urgency.

The track concerns being unhappy with the 9 to 5, five day of work/two days of play routine that the majority of the world has to go through for all of our lives, and acts as a reminder to use our initiative and conjure up the motivation to change our ways of living and not feel like we’re being held captive by the seemingly restrictive layout of everyday life. The two verses appear to be from the points of view of two people, or maybe it’s one in both, who have these wishes they want to fulfill but are let down by their own lack of courage or general bleak outlook on life, so much so that they just don’t bother in taking the steps to pursue what they truly want. This track I believe is in a minor key, so you know automatically that there’s sort of something sad about it, but with the furious pace that everything’s delivered, I also think it gives a feeling of ‘Well, if you feel sad, then stop feeling sorry for yourself and do something, ya bum.’ Ben Kowalewicz builds up into a full-throttle scream alongside D’Sa and Gallant’s backing vocals at the rushing finish, really signifying that pent-up frustration the song suggests, and it’s a moment like that which makes me wonder why it took me so long to warm up to this one.

#1063: System of a Down – Prison Song

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Whoa. The last time I wrote about a song of System of a Down’s was eight years ago, one which marked the beginning of a bit of an hiatus on here while I interned at a music magazine for a year and completed my degree at university for another. According to my links, I’ve written about four (including ‘Hypnotize’) other songs of the band’s on here. While pre-hiatus me was very much into them, the person writing to you now isn’t as much. As much as SOAD songs can be some of the most twisting/turning, zany and intriguing pieces of music you’ll ever hear, they can tire you out hearing them over and over again. Well, at least that’s my case. There’ll be millions of you who’ll completely disagree with that statement. And that’s fine. Not to say that my musical tastes have evolved or matured ’cause there will be times when those four songs pop into my head and I’ll just start singing/vocalizing them out loud. Let’s just say if I was to start this whole thing all over again, those four songs probably wouldn’t be featured.

But. But, but, but. I’ve got a lot of love for ‘Prison Song’ right here, the opener to SOAD’s classic Toxicity album from 2001. A monster of a record. I once heard ‘Prison Song’ many, many years ago on the Yahoo! Launch internet radio service. Wanna say that was around 2005 or something. But I never got ’round to listening to Toxicity in full until about 2014, better later than never. And when I did, it was pretty much like hearing the song virtually for the first time. I, maybe like you, was also left wondering whether that very first short, sharp stab of a chord was my computer freezing right at the beginning of the song. But no, it was most likely the band messing with us into thinking that’s what happened. The band start and stop, cymbals crashing with each stomp of a guitar chord, after which each rest is filled with Serj Tankian creepily whispering “They trying to build a prison” into our ears. The song proper gets underway after the teases, and what follows is a critique of, well, the prison system of the United States. Its high incarceration rate, the war on drugs… two subjects touched upon here via a well-executed mix of strong melody and face-screwing inhale growls and screaming.

What I really appreciate on the track, and throughout the album really, is the back and forth going on between Serj Tankian and guitarist/songwriter Daron Malakian. The verses have the former delivering motor-mouth couplets for the first four measures before handing over to Malakian to deliver the “My crack, my smack, my bitch…” line (not “I smack my bitch”, by the way), alternating again to Tankian who again delivers a straight fact about the prison system of the country and finishing with Malakian growling “They tryna build a prison”, which again transitions into the chorus where Tankian repeats that phrase but powerfully yelling it at the top of his lungs. It’s a dynamic that’s not so much push and pull, but more turns you to face one person with the other waiting for their turn to grab you by the shoulders forcefully to make you face their direction. That never really lets up until the breakdown where the rhythm’s allowed to ride for a bit and I think the moment written for the audience in mind to jump to the beat before the fast pace kicks in again for the final pre-chorus and chorus. What a way to get an album started. I don’t know what it was like for a SOAD fan to wait for those three years between the band’s debut and Toxicity, but with the way ‘Prison Song’ starts the proceedings, it must have felt like they never left.

#1062: Kendrick Lamar – PRIDE.

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The last track I wrote about from Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. came almost three years ago. If you want to see the context of how I came to listen to the album and where I was when I did for the first time, go ahead and read that. My feelings on the album, another thing I touch upon in that previous post, haven’t changed much since then. The one big thing I can tell my past self is that that new Kendrick album did arrive eventually, but it was still a bit of a wait to get there. I also stated that there would be one more song from the album that I was to write about. And here it is. It’s ‘PRIDE.’, the seventh song on there and hands-down my favourite out of the 14 tracks it offers.

Now, I know that hip-hop as a genre is one in which the lyrics within any song of its kind are to be considered as the utmost important aspect to consider when writing. That may all be well and good. But when it comes to me, and I’ve said this quite a few times before, I’m not much of a lyrics guy. I’m more of a feeling person who listens to the movement of the music and how the words fit in the spaces. Melodies too, if there are to be any in there. Lamar raps about the weakness he feels he possesses while being the number one hip-hop artist on the planet, a GOAT, all the superlatives, and struggling to maintain a balance between his faith and indulging in the materialistic and lustful pleasures that come along with being such a public figure. His voice alternates between higher and lower pitches to capture the contrasts between his ideals and his actions. At least that’s what Genius says. He also brings feigning humility into question, a topic that’s addressed at the forefront on the song that follows on the album.

But what I adore most about the track is the hypnotic guitar chord progression that plays underneath it all, and the beautiful, soulful choruses that come in between. Well, I say soulful, but there’s also something just slightly creepy about them in the way they’re delivered to provide this uneasy, almost tense feeling to the proceedings. Still sounds so great, though, always a hair-raising moment on those “Maybe I wasn’t there” repetitions. These are straight up taken from a demo composed by artists Anna Wise and Steve Lacy, though it may have been made for demonstration to show Kendrick so he could incorporate his lyricism onto it. I really don’t know. But even in that short form, that’s a strong piece of music to have as a basis to build something even bigger upon. And with that, this is the last time you’ll be seeing any Kendrick Lamar in this series. Made a note to myself a while ago to stop adding songs to my phone, otherwise this would go on forever. Plus, all his songs I do have on there currently, A, all begin with previous letters of the alphabet, and B, weren’t all existing when I was covering their respective letters. But I’d say if there was a song to go out on, ‘PRIDE.’ isn’t too bad of a selection.

#1061: Soundgarden – Pretty Noose

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Wrote a post about how much I was enjoying Soundgarden’s Down on the Upside once upon a time. That came in 2018 when the whole record really caught the headspace I was in during that year. It’d been on my iTunes library for I think a couple years up until then though, a decision that stemmed from stumbling upon its opening track ‘Pretty Noose’ on YouTube one day. What year it was, I can’t remember. Why I decided to watch its music video (above), I don’t know. Was probably on a Soundgarden/Chris Cornell-related binge or something. But I’m very sure that it was from that first watch of it that I might have just struck some gold.

Chris Cornell songs are notoriously hard to sing for anyone. I’ve tried many a time. There are actual professional singers who’ll cover his written material and never come close to the original. But here on ‘Pretty Noose’, Cornell seems to take things to another level. He sings really high here. Not in a high-pitch/falsetto kind of way, but he’s delivering each word at the uppermost part of his chest and with great power too. It can even look like he finds it difficult to go through himself if you were to search live performances of the track, even from 1996. But still, he sounds too damn good while doing it on the studio version, as you probably would expect. Everything starts off with what I can only describe as this slimy guitar line that, with a string bend, collides with the introduction of the full band really coming together to start the first verse. Matt Cameron sounds like he has eight arms on the drums throughout, while the guitars and bass all follow these falling/ascending chord progressions that make up the melodic centre of the track.

When Cornell passed away in 2017, I remember seeing comments in YouTube under this video along the lines of “Oof, these lyrics, yeesh, hit so hard now” etc. etc., which sort of irked me a little because suicide really isn’t what the song is about. Clearly, the imagery is there. But the lyrics more concern a huge attraction to something that isn’t good for you and having a huge sense of regret upon obtaining that thing that seduced you so much. At least that’s what I’ve always got from it. In Cornell’s words, it’s about “an attractively packaged bad idea … something that seems great at first and then comes back to bite you.” So I guess I was never that far off.

#1060: Blur – Pressure on Julian

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I feel it’s fair to say that if ever anyone was to think of Blur’s Modern Life Is Rubbish album, its fourth track ‘Pressure on Julian’ wouldn’t be the first that would come to mind. That specific album comes at a weird space in Blur’s career. With it, they began to embark on the whole British music for British people aesthetic which would be their inspiration for their following two albums. But they also weren’t the massively popular band that they would become once that first following album arrived. Out of that ‘Life’ trilogy, as it’s become to be known as, Modern Life… has been my preferred record for the longest time, and while songs like ‘For Tomorrow’ or ‘Chemical World’ may be firm favourites among Blur fans, it’s the deeper cuts from there that have been right up my alley for up to 10 years now.

Actually, it was probably a re-listen to the album in about 2015 where a lot more of the songs clicked and I recognised the record’s strength as a whole. The one note that people may know about ‘Pressure on Julian’ is that the Julian in the title is a reference to Julian Cope, lead singer/songwriter for The Teardrop Explodes, who was also former bandmates with Blur’s manager at the time, Dave Balfe. The reference was only included because any lyrical/music reference (usually done intentionally by Damon Albarn) would drive Balfe insane. However, the song really has nothing to do with Cope, and if you were to have a read through of the song’s lyrics I couldn’t blame you if you were left clueless as to what Albarn was singing about here. I’m not even too sure myself. The ‘magical transit children’ phrase in the first verse was taken from some graffiti spotted during a photo shoot. But all in all, there’s not much coherency within those verses overall. Maybe the whole thing really was just a ploy to annoy their manager. With the “We planned it all this way” repetition in the choruses, it’s only come to me now that that is most likely what they were trying to achieve.

The song is led by this rolling drum pattern that I can only describe as sounding like a train pulling out of a station, joined by Alex James’s jumping bassline and Graham Coxon’s swirling guitar work. Albarn comes in on the vocal, harmonising with himself when the verses build in intensity with what sounds like the addition of more guitars in the mix, before falling into the short choruses that reach a climax with the elongated utterance of the song’s title. There’s also the notable instrumental middle part where the track’s tempo speeds up slightly bit by bit, increasing in tension before exploding into a finish with a climactic guitar chord and falling back into the train-type rhythm established at the song’s start. If only I were into my music theory or composition, maybe I could write this in a way that would make this much more informative to read. Hopefully, you’d be able to tell what I’m on about through listening to the song. And if not, you could at least watch Graham Coxon talking about the track himself. He did play on the track himself, when it comes down to it.