Monthly Archives: March 2024

#1108: Green Day – Reject

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Hey, look at that, another Green Day song. And so soon. Oh, and it’s from Nimrod again too. Well, that’s just swell. I couldn’t repeat how I came across it after having done that so recently. I’m at a bit of a loss here, people. What’s an introductory paragraph if I’ve already done the introduction in another recent post? I may have to write a little less for this post. And not because I don’t think this song’s any lesser than all the others on here. Merely because it’s just over two minutes in length, and it’s over as soon as you’ve blinked a couple hundred times. In the album where Green Day branched out and experimented with their sound a little, ‘Reject’ is one of the few outright punk rock tracks on there that brings things to familiar territory.

The backstory of the song’s lyrical subject matter is quite humorous. In 1996, Billie Joe Armstrong received a letter from a disgruntled mother whose son received a copy of the band’s Insomniac album for their birthday. Now, you’d ask what was she expecting? I would agree with you. It’s like someone in the family had no idea who Green Day was and got the son this present. Or the son knew exactly what music the band made and was trying to hide it. Anyway, Armstrong got this letter, thought the sentiment was stupid and wrote a reply – a lyric in ‘Reject’ is taken verbatim from it. The rest of the song’s lyrics are what I guess to be an extension of what he would have wanted to write to this parent, had he thought it was worth the ink he was writing with.

Coming right after a slower, walking-paced track on the album, ‘Reject’ makes its presence known immediately with a commanding drum fill from Tré Cool before the rest of the band launch into frame and Armstrong delivers the song’s first line. The track is fast and furious (sorry) in its delivery. The rhythm’s punchy and emphatic, I’m a fan of the open/closed hi-hat work from Cool during the verses, and those chord changes in the “You’re not my type” sections are pretty awesome too. The second verse comes along with more of the same with the second chorus following after. Dirnt takes the forefront in the breakdown with some really fast octave-jumping bass work before the band build some tension, staying on one chord for a matter of moments before finishing it all off with a strong finish. The track’s a good kick-out-the-jams moment at the time it arrives on Nimrod. Like I said, I think it’s just a reminder that the band could still deliver some good, ol’ fast punk rock if listeners were feeling their way through the changes in style that happened between the album’s songs up to that point. And it’s some good work, that’s all I can say.

#1107: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Refute

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The very-late 2010s were a busy, busy time for Stephen Malkmus. 2019 saw the release of his first, true on-his-own record in the shape of Groove Denied, an LP that was sort of half-and-half between a surprising electronic approach and the classic indie-rock that Malkmus is known for. Then just a year after came Traditional Techniques which was more rooted in a country style, something he’s also been prone to do throughout all of his work. And in the midst of that came the announcement of Pavement reuniting, which was also supposed to happen in 2020, but didn’t because of that whole COVID pandemic thing. What a bummer that time was. But this fruitful period seemed to begin with the release of his and his Jicks outfit Sparkle Hard in 2018, the band’s first after a four-year wait since Wig Out at Jagbags.

Admittedly, I have to go back to that album and get a sense of it again. It’s been a while since I last listened to it. In fact, I may not have heard it since its release date all that time ago. I’m sure I thought it was a pleasant enough listen at the very least. I’m very sure that ‘Shiggy’ was a highlight, that’s one that’s always stuck with me. You’ll find many live performances of the track on YouTube, which I usually preferred over the album recording. ‘Bike Lane’ has a cool hook to it. As I said, I have to revisit the whole project. But the track that’s stood the test of time for me, that large span of time… six years, is ‘Refute’, the penultimate effort on the album, a country-tinged one at that, that I wouldn’t be surprised if it influenced the acoustic outlook of Traditional Techniques a couple years later. I think what caught my ear immediately was the track’s chord progression, which doesn’t really change throughout bar the choruses. Malkmus’s melody in those verses follows the movement of the chords, and once I had that down it was very much smooth, smooth listening. As is the case with almost all of Malkmus’s songs for me, the guy’s one of my favourite songwriters hands-down.

‘Refute’ is a tale of two people who are falling for another person in their own respective lives. The first verse tells the story of a man who’s very much interested in this lady with ‘Southern-ish eyes’ and ‘French knee-highs’, and is raring to give things a go with her. The second, delivered with the silky vocals of Kim Gordon of the great Sonic Youth, narrates the same-sex relationship between a woman and her ‘young au-pair’, the former wooing the love interest with ‘Egon Schiele prints and french fries’. The choruses are a command to the public to ‘marry on’, to keep on loving and keep this human race going (at least I think that’s what it’s going for). But in the bridge, Gordon, like a voice from the heavens, warns us to marry on, but to be weary because ‘the world doesn’t want [us] anymore’. Really, the whole track is a poke at marriage and how it’s not all that useful in today’s society, which I guess a lot of people don’t want to hear – as Malkmus addresses in the song’s outro – but it is what it is. A little twist in the song, there. Nice. I try not to recite lyrics in these posts, feels like I’m just filling up space by doing so, but it’s nice to sometimes give an idea what you’ll get if you choose to press play on the video above. Anyway, this is a cool song, take it with you if you dig it.

#1106: Green Day – Redundant

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Green Day’s Nimrod was one of the first albums I ever thought to download to my computer. Up until about 2008/09, I was solely into getting CDs for birthdays and Christmas presents. When I did try and various individual songs from websites, I would then be reprimanded by my sister who’d wag her finger at me and tell me it was a bad thing to do. But I carried on doing it like the rebellious youth I was. In 2009, 21st Century Breakdown had just been released, a long while since American Idiot. I already owned the latter, Dookie and 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours (for some reason) in physical forms – so I guess the downloading of Nimrod was just a way of completing a mission to hear the rest of Green Day’s discography. This was before all the streaming of today, it was a much more difficult task back in those times.

I was already very familiar with Nimrod’s fourth track, though. It’s ‘Redundant’, a song that was also released as the album’s third single in its era of ’97/’98. When I was a small, small boy, going back to 2005, I thought Green Day’s ‘Holiday’ was the best song in the world. I thought Green Day was so cool. So I found their website, and all of their music videos were available to watch on there. It took a lot of buffering on Windows Media Player to get those things running smoothly. But when they worked, that was it. The gateway into Green Day had opened. I say all this to say the video for ‘Redundant’ was on the site too. I’d watch it occasionally. It wasn’t one of the videos I’d repeatedly revisit compared to those for, say, ‘Stuck with Me’, ‘Minority’ or ‘Walking Contradiction’. But I did think it was a great song still. So when coming back to it in 2009 and hearing it within the actual context of Nimrod, the memory of watching its video brought the melodies and all back to me and reminded me how finely written a song it was.

Wikipedia and Genius appear to share the same thought that the song is inspired by frontman and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong’s relationship with his wife and how things weren’t going so great within it at the time of writing. There’s no interview or any quote that backs that up, however. So, with the hope of not repeating something that might not be the case, I’ll just say the song is about a general relationship that’s lost its spark and turned into one where the day-by-day efforts feel phoned-in and forced, so much so that even saying ‘I love you’ doesn’t fill the void. Two verses, three choruses and an instrumental break is all that’s needed to express the sentiments in the track, with the three members all contributing toward a solid performance. It’s not a song of gigantic changes in dynamics or sudden changes in direction. It’s all rather mid-tempo. But I always sort of clench my fists and screw my face whenever those choruses comes in with the descending chord progression, the pummeling tom-toms and Billie Joe Armstrong’s passionate vocal. There’s just so much emotion throughout. And that’s where this song succeeds for me.

#1105: Kings of Leon – Red Morning Light

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Every once in a while I’ll write about a song on here that I have to owe to a video game for cluing me in to its existence. The majority of the time it’s been through the FIFA series, which between 2002 to about 2013 introduced me to so many artists and genres from the West to the East that really shaped my musical interests in my childhood/adolescence. FIFA 2004 was a big, big game in that regard. Heck, I have a tag dedicated to it. And today brings yet another song included in the game’s soundtrack. Before booting up the game, I know for a fact I had no idea who Kings of Leon were. But then the opening chords to ‘Red Morning Light’ started blasting out the speakers during its introduction, and that was it. A brand new song in the head of a nine-year-old kid.

Well, I don’t think it was as instant as that. I was probably marvelling more at the skill moves of Thierry Henry and Ronaldinho. But through playing the game, probably almost every weekend in 2004 (at the max, any moment I had free time), I got accustomed to hearing the track at random points when I was navigating my way through the menus. The little tag would pop up showing the song information when it started playing. “Red Morning Light” by “Kings of Leon” on the album Youth & Young Manhood. Ah, so that was the band’s name. One to remember. Like the songs from the game I’ve written about before, I eventually got to singing along to it. I at least tried. Not that I got every word correct because Caleb Followill kinda blends one word into the next and slurs and mumbles his words throughout. But the chorus was always the best part, “And I say na-na hey, hey, you’re giving all your cinnamon away-hey.” I didn’t know what it meant. Still don’t now, really. But it was good, good stuff.

So, to keep things short, ‘Red Morning Light’ was the first song by Kings of Leon that I’d ever heard, and it’s thanks to FIFA 2004. When I finally received the game as a gift, 2004 had been a thing for four months. I got it as a birthday gift, you see, even though I really wanted it the Christmas that had gone. The band had gained their big following over here in the UK, and they were probably well on their way to working on their second album. As a result, the Aha Shake Heartbreak era of the band is the one that properly introduced me to their music. The video for ‘The Bucket’ came on TV one day, and it was like, “Oh, Kings of Leon, it’s those guys.” Then they never really disappeared from that point onward. I’ve been able to listen to Manhood, and it’s not my favourite album of the band’s, I have to admit. Not that it’s bad. There are at least two of the band’s that I think are better. But for the band it all began there and with ‘Red Morning Light’ as the opening track, so I have to give it props just for that.

#1104: The Strokes – Red Light

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Just the other day I was writing about another song from this album. Ah, well. These sorts of things are expected to happen on this blog. I pretty much explained my thoughts on The Strokes’ First Impressions of Earth in the ‘Razorblade’ post, so it leaves me with little to go with when it comes to writing this first paragraph. From what I know as a faraway Strokes fan, I believe the making of this album and the touring schedule for it was a time of growing tension between the band members – the outcome being that First Impressions would be the band’s “most recent” effort for a few years as they embarked on a hiatus. All of the members went on their solo tips. And those years really had us wondering. Would the Strokes ever get back together? Well, we all know they did when Angles came around in 2011. They almost had us, though.

‘Red Light’ is the last song on First Impressions…, bringing the band’s longest album to a close with a track about, I think, falling in love (true love, at that) and all the feelings that come along with it. Obviously when you hear the phrase ‘red light’, you can either think of the traffic signal or the red-light district. I’m sure that its usage was very much tongue-in-cheek in part by Casablancas. But I’m also sure that generally the track is very sincere in its tone. Casablancas had recently got married in the beginning of 2005, and lines like “Two could be complete without the rest of the world” and the sorta cheesy “All the girls could never make me love them the way I love you” could only reflect what he could have been feeling at the time. As well as that, ‘Red Light’ seems to also be a bit of a commentary on how life is sort of boring because everything that’s had to be invented now exists and the world seems to revolve in an eternal state of indifference. His own tired attitude to being the frontman of a rock band who’s constantly gaped at seems to take its toll too. Some contrasting frames of mind going on in this tune for sure.

All this being said, I do find myself singing along to the guitar lines during the verses, or that climbing/descending bassline that occurs at points throughout the track, rather than the words themselves. They’re all written by Casablancas. How he thinks all of these things up, I don’t know. But those melodies in those are just as infectious as that of the lead vocal line. Always like a track with a good finger-clicking, swinging tempo too. The first time I ever heard ‘Red Light’ was back in 2005 when MTV2 was showing a performance of The Strokes live in the channel’s studios, an exclusive in the lead up to the release of First Impressions…. They played ‘Red Light’, and the kid who was 1 years old (this is me) thought there was something cool about the song at the time. It’s never lost its touch. But that’s just how The Strokes roll, isn’t it? Always liked how it all ends on a dull thud rather than this big finish too. So understated but somehow also very emphatic.