Author Archives: The Music in My Ears (by Jamie Kyei)

Unknown's avatar

About The Music in My Ears (by Jamie Kyei)

Just one man who's making his way through life one day at a time writing about the songs he has on his phone. And other things at some points.

#863: Brakes – The Most Fun

1 Reply

Brighton-based band Brakes’ first album Give Blood is funny in a way. It contains songs where they suddenly end, just when you were properly getting into their rhythm, or when they’re about to hit some sort of climax. ‘The Most Fun’ is one of them. It’s only a minute and a half, made up of two chords with no choruses or bridges. More one long verse with some periods where there’s no singing for a few seconds.

Vocalist Eamon Hamilton, backed by Matt Eaton (a member of fellow Brighton band Actress Hands), harmonise about the time the gypsies came to town and gave everybody a weekend to remember. Before then, they were just country boys doing usual country boy shit, I guess. But then the gypsie came. They put up a tent, invited everyone in, and it’s fair to say judging by the track’s last few lines that they all had a great time. And after the reveal that nothing was ever the same after those nights, the song ends and the band launch right into the following track. Those first few tracks really keep the album rolling along quite swiftly.

So there’s not much else to say about this one. The first few times I heard it, I did think it sounded more like an interlude more than anything else. But then I started to appreciate the gradual swell and increasing intensity of the music underneath the lyrics, and the almost droning effect that the guitars and vocals brought when combined together. It’s also a very relatable set of lyrics. It’s a nice one. Yeah, it’s short, but it really says all it has to in its time.

The Playlist Update

Leave a reply

Hello again. So remember what I said in that other post where I unveiled the playlist for this place with great pride and a hope that a lot of people would follow it? Well, forget a lot of what is written in there.

In the weekend that just went, I realised that putting every song that I’ve written on here just isn’t that great of an idea. Plus, it slowed my Spotify app down immensely. I’m going to make it a playlist that constantly changes. Instead of all the songs being on there, one song from each letter that I covered so far (A-M) will be on there. Every… let’s say two weeks, I’ll update the list with another set of songs from each letter, and so on and so forth. Kinda like how Spotify do their Discover Weekly/Release Radar playlists. That way I can throw in some songs that I never got to write about too. Not such a bad idea is it? A lot more practical. Hopefully I’ve explained this well. If not, give it a follow and you’ll see what I mean, hardy-har-har.

Again, it’s an idea that’s under construction. But I think it should work well. So there’s the playlist below. All 13 songs on there I’ve written about on here. So have a listen, and have a read too. Why not?

#862: Oasis – Morning Glory

Leave a reply

‘Morning Glory’ is the almost-title track from Oasis’ second album. In a video commemorating the 25th anniversary of that record, Noel Gallagher admitted that he felt there were a lot of songs that sounded unfinished. A lot of them consist of just one verse that’s repeated, a pre-chorus, and the main sing-along chorus. One of those songs he may be referring to include this. In ‘Morning Glory’, the second verse is the same as the first. Every time Liam Gallagher yells ‘well’, it sounds like each iteration is longer than the previous. But one thing’s for sure, this song’s an absolute corker.

In some ways, it precedes what was to come on Be Here Now. Like that album, it begins with distant helicopter blades, radio static and guitar feedback, before launching into this massive wall of barre chords that set the track’s chord progression. Liam Gallagher’s voice on here’s possibly the best thing about it. Has that rasp behind it, but also that power. He puts his all into every line sung, straight from the gut. And again, Noel Gallagher’s lyrics contain that faux-philosophical, somewhat cheeky and nonsensical, but somehow very relatable feel that he excelled at tremendously when Oasis were really on top. I like how he tells us that ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ by the Beatles is his favourite tune. He kinda slides it in there. Not as obvious and throwaway like that ‘fool on the hill and I feel fine’ lyric from that other track.

The video’s possibly the way that I came across the track. It’s okay. The band play the song in an apartment, the angry neighbours come around and bang on the door wondering what all the noise is about. Meanwhile, the band play football and generally get up to no good. It’s probably one of the least memorable videos out of the singles from that album. Maybe it was more of an afterthought. The track was only released as a commercial single in Australia and New Zealand after all. But no matter how I feel about the video, it doesn’t stop me from turning the volume loud whenever this one comes on.

#861: Radiohead – Morning Bell/Amnesiac

Leave a reply

Now, you’re probably thinking, “Didn’t you do already do a post on this song just a few days ago?” The answer to that is yes, but also no. You see, Radiohead recorded two versions of the song ‘Morning Bell’. This one appeared a few months later, when the band released Amnesiac in 2001. To differentiate the two, the ‘Amnesiac’ was tacked on to the end of the song’s title. I think a lot of people prefer the ‘original’ that was released first on Kid A. On a lot of days, I think this version one tops it.

I won’t keep you long; it’s got the same lyrics and melody and all. But the feel is much more different. While there was some warmth to the track’s atmosphere on Kid A, the tone here is icy cold. I imagine Thom Yorke walking through a powerful blizzard miming to it. Or with a candle, stumbling around the inside of a dark and empty house. The 5/4 time is gone, replaced by standard timing, and replacing the usual rock instruments are acoustic guitars, bells, glockenspiels, and a whole lot of other things that I don’t know the name of. It’s so much spookier than the Kid A counterpart. Yorke sounds like a ghost while singing, his voice reverberates all over, and he really wails on this version too. It also doesn’t go through that melodic change, but what it does do is end with Yorke singing “Release me” over that riff by Colin Greenwood which, as I said before, is probably my favourite musical moment in both versions.

I’ll listen to both versions back to back anytime. But overall, I’m glad that this version of the song exists. One isn’t supposed to replace the other in terms of playability. And you get two totally different experiences with the same lyrics and music. I could have tacked it on to the previous post, but I think this one deserves its own.

It’s a playlist. A playlist for everybody.

1 Reply

It’s July. Stop the presses. This blog’s got a playlist.

That’s right. If you’re not up to reading all of those posts on this place, you can at least listen to the majority of them on the new Spotify playlist I’ve created. It’s still under construction. At the moment, it only covers A to B. At some point, it will have the majority of songs I’ve covered on here so far. Put it on anytime. When you’re having a shower. Mowing the lawn. Studying. On shuffle. Or even in alphabetical order if you want to truly follow the journey.

There are a lot of songs on there that I don’t listen to anymore. Some because I fell out of love with them. Others because they were more acceptable to listen to in 2013 than now. (I think it’s an unwritten rule that we don’t speak of Lostprophets anymore.) Also, Spotify just doesn’t have some songs on their platform. And there are so many artists and tracks that I listen to now that will never be on there just because I wasn’t listening to them at the time. But this playlist captures me at a point where all of the tracks mattered to me.

So give it a follow if you wish. It’s on the right hand side of every page you click on this blog, I believe. But I’ll embed down below, because what better time to do it.