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.

#1131: The Futureheads – Robot

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While it’s not the last song you’ll be seeing from The Futureheads on here, ‘Robot’ is definitely the last representative from the band’s 2004 debut that’ll get its own dedicated post. Me and that self-titled album go a long way back. It’s a story I told in the very first post of this series, which boils down to ‘my mum got it for me at Tesco’. I knew of ‘Decent Days and Nights’, and ‘Hounds of Love’ had probably been out as a single at that point. I can’t remember, it’s all so long ago. But when I saw that CD on the shelf, I do feel like I sort of grabbed at it without any hesitation. Whatever was in that small pea-brain of mine told me that it was an album worth having.

It was. I still have that same copy sitting on the shelf in my room. The ring holding the CD in the case is busted, and was from the day I got it, but it was the music that counted at the end of the day. If you don’t know The Futureheads, they were a part of the big post-punk revival boom that was going on in the mid-2000s. What I think set them apart from a lot of those other groups were their knack for some glorious harmonies and fantastic countermelodies, all while still delivering some chunky, raw performances. The album’s first track ‘Le Garage’ introduces all this, and it carries on in follow-up ‘Robot’. The track’s only two minutes long, but they manage to pack all the goodness in there.

The meaning behind ‘Robot’ is quite simple. It’s from the perspective of a robot, who knows what they are, what they’re programmed to do, knows how long they live for. This robot seems to be happy with this existence, in service to the human race. That is until the song’s final moments where it begins to question why it doesn’t have a mind, begins to malfunction and then stops working. At least that’s what I get from the looping riff and sudden stop that close out the track. I enjoy this one quite a bit. As the album’s second track, it keeps the momentum of the record’s opening moments rolling. It’s only two minutes long too, so nothing to dwell upon, you know? Just a few verses and choruses and then it’s done and onto the next one. I’ll always appreciate this album. Don’t think it got better than it for the band, but there are still a couple tracks from albums that followed that I can always get behind. Those are for days far from now.

#1130: Red Hot Chili Peppers – Road Trippin’

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Alongside 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ album Californication from 1999 is seen to be the cream de la cream* within the band’s discography. The album marked the first return of guitarist John Frusciante, who, after leaving the band initially in ’92, had spent nearly the rest of the decade getting as low as he could on an almighty drug binge that shockingly didn’t kill him. After coming out of rehab and having to change his approach to guitar playing, the chemistry between he, Flea, Chad Smith and Anthony Kiedis was rekindled and the “classic” lineup created what was considered by critics and fans to be a return to form after the band’s previous album One Hot Minute (which isn’t all that bad anyway.)

If you were to ask me what I thought about the album, I’d say it’s very front loaded (with four of its first eight songs being singles) and the whole second half is rather forgettable. It’s actually one of those albums in need of a remaster too because the loudness and clipping that happens on some songs is kind of ridiculous. But hey, that’s just me. Well, I say the whole half. I don’t mean it. There’s penultimate track ‘Right on Time’ which is a hectic freak-out. But the song that follows that, and closes out the entire album, is the finisher – today’s track – ‘Road Trippin’, a mainly acoustic number with no percussion accompanying, but instead an organ-generated string section that adds a sense of drama and fullness to the proceedings.

The track is an account by Anthony Kiedis of a road trip along the Pacific Coast Highway that he, Frusciante and Flea embarked on following the return of the guitarist. Drummer Chad Smith didn’t join them, hence the “two favourite allies” lyric, though that doesn’t stop people from jokingly referring to the exclusion. Like I said before, it’s unlike a lot of RHCP tracks ’cause it’s one for the acoustic guitars. Frusciante’s on one, Flea’s on an acoustic bass. Doesn’t stop them from locking in together and playing some sweet melodies that weave and play off one another. Kiedis’s lyrics, usually mocked and made a meme out of, are actually quite beautiful here, almost poetic, and Frusciante’s harmonies only heighten the feel-good sensations. It could have just been those three alone on here, and I feel it would have worked just as well. Luckily, the synthesized “strings” don’t sound so fake that you realise it’s not an actual string section. There are plenty of other songs that fail that task.

*I know it’s ‘crème de la crème’, just some dry humour.

#1129: Nick Drake – Road

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Time for another song from Pink Moon again. Have I mentioned that it’s one of my favourite albums of all-time? Would be a major misstep if I haven’t done so in any of the posts from the six songs I’ve already written about from there. Nick Drake felt let down by the music business, withdrew within himself and became heavily depressed, recorded the album in two days with just his acoustic guitar with a tiny piano overdub and left his studio output at that as sadly passed away a couple years after its release from an accidental-ish overdose of antidepressants. Despite the dark context, the album’s intentional ‘less is more’ production works wonders for the eleven tracks it holds. It also puts a strong emphasis on the impeccable guitar work by Drake, whose finger-picking style on the album is properly introduced on its third track, ‘Road’.

On the songs that precede ‘Road’, those being the title track and ‘Place to Be’, Drake plays his guitar with a lively strum. There’s an energy behind the chord changes that occur under the words he sings in both. But just as the last chord of ‘Place to Be’ fades to silence, ‘Road’ comes in with a finger-picked pattern that contrasts the low strings with the higher ones which ring out and shine like the sun on a clear winter morning. That’s right. Metaphors for you. That pattern then segues into another which focuses on a melody on the lower strings, utilising triplet timing for a brief second, before going back to the initial pattern the track began with and eventually getting to Drake’s vocal. I could actually go through a line-by-line analysis of this song. There are only four of them in there. I’d like to think Drake thought the guitar figures were too good that he didn’t have to fill the song up too much lyrically. Most likely he thought he said all that needed to be said in those few words.

The guitar work may give an idea of hope and optimism. To some anyway, most might not see that at all. But if you do get that idea, it’s to deceive you away from the actual resentment and bitterness Drake expresses in the lyric. “You can say the sun is shining if you really want to” – You can say everything fine and dandy. “I can see the moon, and it seems so clear” – I can see things for the way the way they really are. It’s not all that good. “You can take a road that takes you to the stars” – You can take a path in life that’ll bring you fame and fortune. “I can take a road that’ll see me through.” – I’m just looking to make it to the end of the day. Or something along those lines. That’s how I see it. So there’s a fine example of juxtaposition going on here between music and lyric. But it’s that juxtaposition, present here and very much throughout the album, that gives the track that edge. Plus, the melodies are great and it’s very easy to sing along to. And the sound of those guitar strings are wonderful.

#1128: Billy Talent – River Below

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Ah, the very first song I ever heard by Billy Talent. I can sort of remember it like it happened a few weeks ago. I want to say it was late 2003, but Wikipedia says the track was released as a single in the summer of 2004, so it couldn’t have been. I know I was in Year 4 at the time, so those two years check out. I was watching MTV2 as per usual, its video showed up, and I genuinely thought it was the greatest song I had ever heard. If this did happen in 2004 – which thinking about it now, it probably did – I was just about getting into rock music as a whole, spurred on by a huge liking for The Darkness. ‘River Below’ showed up on whatever day it was, the guitar riff was killer, I thought the chorus was amazing, it was unlike any other type of song I’d come across. Take into account I was either eight or nine, so cut me some slack.

The song was awesome. But because I was so young, I didn’t have the attention span to properly absorb the artist/song name when they appeared on the little banner that popped up near the end of the video. And for more than a year, I was left wondering what the name of that cool song I saw on MTV2 that one time was. “Into the river below/Running from the inferno….” – I could have sworn I typed those words into Google and nothing would ever come up. It was an itch that desperately needed to be scratched. Eventually I did find it. Someone decided to use it as the music for their Ed, Edd ‘n’ Eddy music video, which had been uploaded on a fansite dedicated to the cartoon. That show is one of the most underappreciated of its kind, by the way. The search was over. The song was just as I remembered. And that started my obsession with Billy Talent, as I went to their website, listened to the songs they allowed to be played in full on there + the music videos and found that I had a new favourite band on my hands. A strong following of the band that would last for many a year started via this very song.

And with all the personal stuff out the way, let’s put a little more focus on the subject at hand. The track’s lyrics describe a man who’s a little messed up in the head, has never been able to fit in and generally feels the world’s against him. He makes a bomb, planning to take himself out and other innocent people in the process, taking them into ‘the river below’ upon their quick and sudden deaths. It’s a nasty subject matter and a bit of a commentary/take on the same types of people who commit devastating acts of terror for news recognition, using situations like Columbine, the ’95 Oklahoma Bombing and the then-recent 2002 sniper attacks in Washington D.C. as inspiration. Like a lot of Billy Talent songs, Ian D’Sa’s guitar playing is very much the highlight throughout, playing licks and guitar phrases that sound like the work of two people. There’s a call/response dynamic going on through the verses. D’Sa and bassist John Gallant are the callers with lead vocalist Ben Kowalewicz retorting. There’s the cool pre-chorus, again with D’Sa’s unique chord progressions, and it falls into the almighty chorus, which I think is one of the best in the band’s catalogue. There are a lot of songs in this style that I used to like but wouldn’t think of listening to in these times. But 20 years on, ‘River Below’ is still one-of-a-damn kind. Just as good as I first remembered, then forgot, then found again.

#1127: Massive Attack – Risingson

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Massive Attack’s Mezzanine is an album that’s generally regarded to be a stone-cold classic. In music, yes. But especially within the trip-hop genre that the collective from Bristol practically brought into existence. The record taps into a darkness and possesses this sinister aura that I feel a lot of people couldn’t have seen coming. Blue Lines and Protection, the two albums already released by the outfit, were arguably more-relaxed and optimistic in their delivery. I say that, it might not have been such a surprise. The album’s second track ‘Risingson’ had already been released to the public as its first single, nine months before Mezzanine’s arrival, and was the sign that there was certainly something different to be expected on the LP that was on the way.

I don’t think I listened to Mezzanine in full until about 2013, when I was going through a best ever album list on a website somewhere. ‘Teardrop’ was the only song on there I was accustomed to, having seen its video multiple times on the TV. There was something effortlessly atmospheric and as I said before dark about the entire project. I downloaded it to my computer. It sat there for a while. Then I revisited it in 2018 or so, and it was then that I suddenly recognised ‘Risingson’ as a ‘new’ favourite. Its ‘toy-like people make me boy-like’ lyric was one that had been stuck in my head for years since that first time, but with that re-listen, I had a new found appreciation for the slick bass line, those reverbs on 3D’s ‘dream on’ vocals that float like dust into the either, Daddy G’s nod to ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone’ by the Kingston Trio, the ‘I Found a Reason’ Velvet Underground sample that comes in near the end. Little things like that. It was also upon research with a new-found interest in the song that I learned it also had a music video too. A cool one at that, directed by Walter Stern, where the band are in a house that’s being attacked. A lot of tension’s built where it looks like the members are in danger or are on the brink of being harmed. But it’s a happy ending as absolutely nothing happens to them.

The song’s lyrics concern the goings on in a dank nightclub, observed from the perspectives of both 3D and Daddy G in their respective verses, who particularly make notes on how people seem to change once drugs come into the picture. The former watches on with a sort of disinterest and pity, the latter wants to leave altogether. They deliver their words in talk-singing styles that seem to symbolize their numbness to the whole ordeal. And against a hypnotizing groove with contrasting melodic elements in the mix, it makes everything being described by the two vocalists sound shady and of a questionable nature. The making of Mezzanine was one that was fuelled with tension and frustration between members. Its production and the drastic sonic shift in tone was something that member Andrew “Mushroom” Vowles couldn’t get along with. So much so that he left the outfit soon after the album’s release. The trio Massive Attack was at the time became a duo. It was a six-year wait until the next album. They were never quite the same.