Category Archives: Music

#894: Jay Reatard – My Shadow

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I remember the news of Jay Reatard’s death appearing on the NME website in January 2010 and thinking, “That sucks,” and moving on to another thing. I was 14 at the time, cut me a bit of slack. What else do you do when someone that you don’t know dies? You know that he was important to many other people, so that’s always a downer. I just never listened to his music to feel very strongly about it. After that I still didn’t think to find out more about Reatard. Had too much school stuff going on. Years passed and it was suddenly late 2015, I was working at Songlines magazine, and his track ‘Oh It’s Such a Shame’ appeared in my Spotify Discover Weekly playlist. Then I realised I might have missed out on something.

Things led to another and there I was listening to Blood Visions. A thing to note about this album is that it is loud. ‘Death Is Forming’ will start playing on my phone when I’m listening on shuffle and it will make me jump from how loud that first crash cymbal is. Damn good song though. But we’re not hear to talk about that. It’s ‘My Shadow’ time. That track is the longest one on the album, only at three minutes and 18 seconds, but still has that furious, fast and powerful approach that’s consistent throughout.

One interpretation I read about this track is that it’s from the POV of a narrator afraid of their own shadow. Another stated that it was part of a whole story that runs through the album, detailing a murderer who has become obsessed with this girl who he’s determined to make his next victim. While those may or may not be true, I’m mainly focusing on those guitars and Reatard’s vocals too. He’s got that faux-British vocal thing going on that some American punk rock singers tend to use, and he’s kinda got this melodic wailing thing going throughout the verses that then change to some howling screams in the choruses. It’s good stuff.

#893: Mac DeMarco – My Old Man

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‘Twas a day in my very last semester of university when Mac DeMarco’s old record label uploaded two new songs from his then upcoming album This Old Dog on its official YouTube page. One was the album’s title track, and the other was today’s subject, the album opener, ‘My Old Man’. Having been a fan of Mac’s for almost three years at that point, we’re talking January 2017 here, there wasn’t any better news. But when I first remember hearing them, I kinda felt a bit underwhelmed. That jangly guitar was gone and was replaced by a great presence of the good ol’ acoustic. They were generally a lot calmer and restrained in their delivery. I thought they were just okay. I did however grow fonder of ‘My Old Man’ when the album was released a few months later and I decided to listen to it with proper headphones. Why I had been listening to those initial videos through my phone until is a decision I’m puzzled by, thinking about it now.

Once I used those headphones, I found that the listening experience was almost somewhat the same. Obviously, the track sounded better in the ears. But I heard the same acoustic guitars, Mac’s vocals. That was all well and good. What I wasn’t prepared for was that subtle bass with those pulsing keyboard touches that come in during the chorus. It was those elements that lifted the track to all-star status for me. It changed for me in that instant. And once that happened I was really exciting for the rest of the album that was to come. This was a new Mac DeMarco, and I for one welcomed this new direction he was going in with open arms.

And what is the track about? Something I think that a lot of guys can relate to, looking in the mirror one day and thinking, “Damn. I’m old. I’m starting to look a bit like Dad.” Though in Mac’s case, it’s not the greatest of revelations for him as his relationship with his father was far from great. There are a lot of articles about it online you can read. I’m sure there’s a section about it on his Wiki page too. Though if you’re only slightly interested in it, there is that quite sad video of his dad showing up in a parking lot before one of his shows and leaving soon afterwards. There is the theme of his dad in the song, and in many other tracks within the album for that matter, but I do think that generally the track is about reflecting on physical and mental being after living a particularly hectic lifestyle, something that Mac DeMarco could truly write about from pure experience.

#892: Weezer – My Name Is Jonas

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One of the greatest album openers to ever exist? It might just be. I’ve had a physical copy of Weezer’s Blue Album for so long now, almost all of its lyrics and guitar parts and vocal embellishments… guitar feedback, you name it, are all embedded in that thick head of mine. And that album begins with this song, one that I want to say I can remember properly hearing for the first time in 2006 on proper quadrophonic computer speakers that my uncle installed because he was a nerd about that sort of stuff, pausing and rewinding at certain parts because I was so wowed that guitars were playing different things in each speaker.

The acoustic riff, written by the band’s original guitarist who left before the album was finished, that starts everything off is all jolly and unassuming. Then Rivers Cuomo comes in with the track’s first line alongside the band proper, and from then on it’s a whole different ball game. With its 6/8 timing, the track has this huge swaying momentum – heave-hoing back and forth with that wall of crunchy guitars. And the fact that this track doesn’t have a real chorus means that there isn’t a break or change of some sort. Sure there are those parts where the guitars fade and let the acoustic riff come in, but then they launch back into the frame again. Every section seamlessly rolls into the next, culminating with that final “Yeah, yeah, yeaaaargh”. Musically, it really throws you all over the place. Pulling and pushing, lifting you up and then gently placing you down.

Sometimes I kind of forget that there are words to this track that you have to follow. The lyrics aren’t necessarily about one thing. They touch upon nostalgia, childhood… memories in general. One main point in there is when Cuomo recollects a phone call he received from his little brother who had (then) recently been in an accident at work. But there’s such an towering confidence in the delivery of these words that it’s easy to let them just wash over you. Melody’s fantastic. I remember reading somewhere that after Kurt Cobain killed himself, kids found their next musical saviours in Weezer when the Blue Album arrived. And dammit if “My Name Is Jonas” didn’t get their hopes up when they popped the album into their computers, then I don’t know what more they could have wanted.

#891: They Might Be Giants – My Man

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Mink Car, the album by They Might Be Giants, gets a bit of an unfair wrap among the band’s following. It’s seen by some to be the not so best one by a fair few. It hurts to say ‘worst’ just ’cause I don’t think the band have a bad album. There were a lot of songs the band had recorded during its making that probably should have ended up on the final tracklist, and quite a few songs that appeared on the final tracklist that probably shouldn’t have been there at all. Looking at you in particular, ‘Mr. Xcitement’. But there are some external factors about the album that kind of overshadowed its release. The major one being that it was released on September 11, 2001. No one was really thinking about the music that came out that day. And Pitchfork gave it a 2.8/10 on their website, which is just silly.

But for me, there’s a reasonable amount of tracks I enjoy on there that make it a worthy listen. ‘My Man’ is most probably my favourite one on there. Though its story is a bit depressing, told from the point of a man speaking to his body after he’s been paralyzed, the bubbly keyboards, engaging melody, and general sort of cheeriness to its delivery give it that usual TMBG mark. The track seems to never have been performed live. That may say something about how the band feels about it, I don’t know, but because the track’s located on what’s considered to be their least greatest moment I’m very sure that it doesn’t get the appreciation it’s supposed to.

The lyrics are pretty self explanatory. The first verses describe a man who’s trying to move his leg but finds that he can’t, coming to the conclusion that he’s “fallen out with his head”. Then these strident sections come in where the band falls in with these chugging violins, with another narrative voice comparing our bodies to ocean coasts with submarine cables that need to connect to other shores in order to work properly. There’s more from the man trying to come to terms with what’s happening to him, and then the doctor comes in with the wham line “There is no way to repair the break”. He won’t walk again. To be honest, it’s a sad damn song.

#890: Big Star – My Life Is Right

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This is the second post with Big Star that I’ve written in the entire history of this blog. Had I started the whole thing earlier, I would have a few more songs of theirs up. And if I did, you would have noticed that I prefer the band’s songs by Chris Bell compared to those of Alex Chilton. ‘Feel’ and ‘Don’t Lie to Me’ would have received my high praise in a few paragraphs made up of waffling sentences. And while ‘In the Street’ was a Chilton song, it’s Bell’s lead vocal on it that gives the track its grit. These three tracks are all from #1 Record, the only album of Big Star’s that Chris Bell featured on before leaving the group, and so is today’s.

‘My Life Is Right’ is another Bell-penned track, and an older song that he had performed with an previous band before joining Big Star. He was really into his Christianity. His love of the Lord was a message in quite a few of his compositions, and it’s clear in this one too. He sings about having no one to share his troubles with, until one day he was shown the way and now feels that he has purpose in life. He was lost and now he’s found. Though listening for the first time, you wouldn’t be wrong to assume that it was about a new love or a woman, something along those lines. But nope. It’s God. Or at the very least, Jesus.

And although it’s got a religious overtone to it, it’s nothing that’s preachy or overbearing. It’s a wonderful upbeat power pop tune with brilliant production and an uplifting tone. Things start off with this wandering piano with a double-tracked Bell singing the first few lines concerning loneliness and frustration, but then the bass guitar and acoustic guitars join in to mirror the change in mood with the lyrics where he then sings on how he’s been shown the way before the whole band kicks in for the huge chorus. For a track made in the early 70s, there’s a grandness and pristine sheen to every strike of the guitar and crash of the cymbals that make this track sound massive. It’s common throughout the whole album. Might just be one of my favourites of that decade.