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

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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.

#1258: Pavement – Speak, See, Remember

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According to the old family computer, I downloaded Pavement’s Terror Twilight on 8th June 2012. That specific date marked 13 years to the day it had been available to the public since its release in 1999. I remember there being some hope that an extended reissue of the album would be released that year too. That didn’t happen, and instead Pavement fans had to wait 10 more years for that package to come through. ‘Speak, See, Remember’ is the ninth track on the album. It’s the least popular on there, looking at the Spotify numbers. But in my case, it was one of the “deep” cuts of the record that I got into nearly immediately. Was a number that frequently played on those bus journeys to school back in the day.

I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but a lot of Pavement songs (more specifically songs by Stephen Malkmus) contain melodies that more or less follow those played by the main guitar in the mix. And ‘Speak, See, Remember’ is no different. In various interviews, Malmus mentions that he doesn’t focus so much on the lyrical content of his work, seeing it more as exercise in wordplay and the like. So I’ve just come to think that he had the music ready and just wrote whatever sounded good at the time. But it’s not like the words in this track don’t make sense or aren’t worthy to look into. If I were to offer my suggestion… sounds to me like it’s about a man working an office job, having to go through usual office conversation, which then turns into a commentary on urbanisation and capitalisation at the end. Bit of a shift in topic to match the shift in music that happens with a minute-and-a-half left to go, when the band really get to rocking and culminates in this descending-scale guitar breakdown.

The song initially starts out as, what I’ve always thought of, one that you’d hear in some kind of underground, smooth jazzy kind of night club. The tempo has a swing to it that you want to click your fingers to every time the snare hits. There are those little piano chords that arrive once in a while. And Malkmus as ever provides a laidback but still endearing vocal. The track contains what I think is the second usage of a “Remember/December” rhyme in a Pavement song after being used initially in ‘Gold Soundz’. Thought that was kind of interesting. I’ve always wondered if that “Do it, do it, do it” uttered by Malkmus was inspired by Lindsey Buckingham doing the same in Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Second Hand News’. And also, the album title comes directly from this song too. Without it, we may have had the album Farewell Horizontal on our hands. Doesn’t have the same ring to it.

#1257: Kanye West ft. GLC & Consequence – Spaceship

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‘Spaceship’ is another song from Kanye West’s The College Dropout that I found myself having to listen to on a frequent basis back in ’04. It’s a story I’ve told in a few of the other songs from the album here: My sister got the album as a present, she played it on the computer, my computer had these nice but unnecessary speakers my uncle set up. The song played; I’d be lying around somewhere nearby. And I think my sister would spontaneously start singing the chorus at random points too. So she was a fan. Big into The College Dropout. Me, it took a few years to catch up. I was well in my long-lasting rock phase. Back in 2004, I was probably listening to The Darkness or something. That was a good year to be a fan of that band.

I caught up, though and got to appreciate ‘Spaceship’ for the song it was/is, which is one listing the struggles of the three performing artists who were sick of working in their dead-end jobs and looking for any kind of escape that would help them to achieve the great things they know their destined for. In the first verse, West details his less-than-pleasant experiences from working at the mall, his disdain for the manager, and his self-belief that the work he was putting into his beat-making would save him in due time. GLC makes clear his own conflict about having to portray a clean-cut image for his peers while also being a man in the streets who usually has to carry a piece for his own protection. Consequence tells a story of one of his co-workers seeing but not recognizing him in a Busta Rhymes music video, and makes note that however soul-sucking his job might be, he’s putting in the grind until things truly take off for him. All of this over a beat made via chopping up Marvin Gaye’s track, ‘Distant Lover’. A hypnotizing bass line, I could listen to that by itself all day.

The track was very, very close to being a single from The College Dropout. Had a music video made for it and everything. But by the time it was to have been released, West was well underway working on what was to be his second album. So plans were shelved. He also didn’t like the video all that much. The general public didn’t know about its existence until 2009, when GLC posted it on his blog. And in 2020, West posted it on his website to commemorate the announce of his fashion brand’s partnership deal with The Gap. He’d made his peace with the video at that point. In another world, with a ‘single’ status, I guess a lot more people would know about the song. But people in the know, know, and we can all take some pride in that. Oh, and a big mention has to go to the vocal harmonies by singer Tony williams during the choruses. Those, from what I remember hearing, were a very last-minute addition. A very, very nice addition, gotta add.

#1256: Sly & the Family Stone – Spaced Cowboy

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A personal practice of mine is to have my phone playing music while I’m getting changed after having a shower in the morning. Feels strange to get ready in silence, or not to have at least some noise in the background for that kind of thing. A strange way to start this post you’d think, but it’s relevant, I swear. One time, I opened Spotify and left my Discover Weekly playlist running while I was sorting out my business when my ears pricked up at the sound of a singer yodelling over what was seemingly a straight-up soul/funk song. And that was a combination I don’t think I’d ever experienced in my years of living. This was back in 2020, very sure lockdown was well underway at the time, and I needed something to be excited about. This thing came in the form of this unusual song.

I wanna say the first time I heard it, I sort of let it slide and forgot to check what the song was called. But then it appeared in the playlist again not too long after, so I took it as a sign. The song was ‘Spaced Cowboy’ by Sly & the Family Stone, from the 1971 album There’s a Riot Goin’ On. Some would say a classic. I liked it a lot when I heard it fully some years ago. But when it came to ‘Spaced Cowboy’ by itself, I became addicted to it for a while. Think there was a timespan during 2020 where I was listening to it every day, and it probably would have racked up more “official” listens if I didn’t sometimes switch my status to private on the streaming service. I wouldn’t blame you if you listened and thought maybe it’s all a bit much on my part. I still enjoy the track a lot, I don’t know what to say.

There’s a Riot… is an album that bandleader Sly Stone recorded mostly by himself, either in the studio he built for himself at the Record Plant in New York City or in his home studio, in the loft of his Bel Air mansion. He used drum machines that he would then record real drums on top of, and a lot of the instrumental work is his own too. And there’s no other track on the record that represents that whole aesthetic than ‘Spaced Cowboy’. What the song is also about is anyone’s guess. If anything, I think the words were more or less written to fit around the yodelling, which really shouldn’t work in a genre like this but somehow sound perfect all the same. The bass line provides a fantastic groove. Stone’s vocal performance is effortlessly laidback, so much so that he stumbles on a word for a brief moment and corpses during another. The harmonica solo is also a very nice touch. A smooth blend of sounds that are good for the ears. I’ll take whatever’s going.

#1255: They Might Be Giants – Space Suit

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If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you’ll have noticed the Giants’ stuff being a frequent occurrence here. I like their music a lot, to put it simply. 1992 marked the year that John Linnell and John Flansburgh had been playing together as the band known as They Might Be Giants for a decade. And in the same year they released Apollo 18, the second under their major-label contract with Elektra and their first self-produced record. Out of the first four albums which saw the two Johns performing everything except the rhythm section, Apollo 18 is the one sounding the most like a full rock band playing together. A bit of a precursor to what would arrive on their next album, when they actually did become a full rock band. But to cap Flansburgh and Linnell’s studio material as a duo off, they close out Apollo 18 with ‘Space Suit’, a reworking of the very first song the two made together when they created the band in 1982.

Things get a little bit hectic nearing the end of the album. One of the most notable moments on it comes in the ‘Fingertips’ suite, a collection of 21 little snippets of choruses and musical segments inspired by the jingles that play in the background of infomercials. That suite ends with the minute-long ‘I Walk Along Darkened Corridors’, which is played out to be the dramatic closer of the piece with Linnell putting on a faux-operatic voice alongside an emphatic “organ” and clarinets. But then ‘Space Suit’ comes along to properly end things in the form of a swinging, suitably spacey, 6/8-time instrumental, emphasising the ‘one man on guitar, one man on accordion’ setup the band originated with all those years prior.

John Flansburgh once had a guitar teacher in the early ’80s named Jack DeSalvo, who taught him a bunch of chords to use whenever convenient. With the chords he learned, Flansburgh went on to write ‘Space Suit’, but with its jazzy origins, it was originally titled ‘I’ll Remember 3rd Street’. The recording of the ‘3rd Street’ demo can be heard below. Much, much different from how it would turn out some years later. I can simply describe ‘Space Suit’ as an instrumental that consists of two parts, the one that has that ascending scale and the other containing the main melody, played by John Linnell’s accordion for the first time and then accompanied by Flansburgh’s vocals (buried deep in the mix) second time round. Makes it sound like the accordion itself is singing. Really enjoy when those cymbal crashes pack an extra punch about 40 seconds in. Put these all together, makes for some good listening.

#1254: Nine Black Alps – Southern Cross

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Nine Black Alps’ Everything Is is an album that I don’t think is known by a great number of people. But those of us who know recognise it’s really a very good one. Released in 2005 in the midst of the whole post-punk revival thing where bands like Bloc Party and The Futureheads were thriving, just to name a couple, the heaviness and angst Nine Black Alps presented in their music and throughout Everything Is immediately made critics mention Nirvana in their reviews. That might be an obvious comparison to some people. I’ve never really been able to see it. Maybe I’m just kidding myself. I’ve come to think the band were too different to the happening scene of the time, so the only way people would get prospective listeners to become interested would be to stick ‘Nirvana’ in their pieces and see where it went from there.

Whatever conclusions you draw for the album are all yours to keep. You can share them too, I wouldn’t mind. I’m pretty confident in my thoughts on it. On this site, you’ll see I’ve written about every other track from Everything Is. After this, there’s only one more left and that’s the full house. And again, people who know this album will know what song it is. But the focus today is on the album’s final track, ‘Southern Cross’. When I heard it the first time, I thought it wouldn’t have worked if it was anywhere else in the sequencing. I would have only been 12 years old at the time, but in the 12-year-old way I picked up on the sense of closure that’s brought about by the music and the lyrical sentiment. The song duration also mirrors that of album opener ‘Get Your Guns’, which is most likely a big coincidental happening, but I take interest in little things like that.

‘Southern Cross’ seems to be about the disappointment in being let down by “friends” and being taken advantage of. The struggle the song’s narrator feels in trying to take things on by themselves and ultimately failing leaves them in a state of helplessness, the song’s main refrain being a pained cry of “So what do I do?” A bit of a downer, sure. But it’s somewhat overridden by the emphatic guitars and general performance of the band, framed around the ascending/descending guitar riff that begins the song and also appears in between the first chorus and second verse. I dig how the bass guitar appears to be the loudest instrument you can hear during those riffy parts, cuts through the mix like a knife. And when you expect the melody to follow the route it has taken in the previous choruses, singer Sam Forrest raises it unexpectedly for the last one. With a firm crash, the song ends and the guitars ring out for a good 20 seconds, feeding back into a void of silence. It’s a great way to end a great album.