Category Archives: Music

#864: John Lennon – Mother

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John Lennon – a complicated individual, I think it can be said. I’m not in the huge wave of people who declare him a monster every time his name is mentioned. But he did go through some shit. His mum was killed outside of his home when he was a teenager, and his dad left the family and only returned when he became famous. Those two things pretty much set him off for life. Those events are enough to mess any kid up. But being thrown into the spotlight as a member of the biggest music group in the world, I’d have to assume he had to put those events behind him somehow. It wasn’t until the Beatles split and he had all the time in the world with Yoko Ono, that his mum and dad came to the forefront of his writing. And fair to say, at that point in time (1970), John was a bit pissed off with everything.

A common thread on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band is Lennon’s feelings of being let down by the people he once looked up to when he was younger. And that album begins with the subjects from which most of his pain stemmed from: his parents. ‘Mother’ starts it all off with an ominous funeral bell that tolls slowly. In the middle of the forth toll, Lennon’s voice erupts with a wail accompanied by Ringo Starr’s drums and Klaus Voormann’s bass guitar. The first verse concerns his mother, the second his father, and the third verse sees Lennon warn the listener to not follow in his footsteps. Maybe because he had tried to hide his hurt underneath his wit for all those years, I’m not so sure myself. And god, does he sing every word so honestly. The vocal melody’s sort of all over the place in terms of the scales and leaps from one note to the other. It’s like there’s not one syllable in a word that stays on one note. Such an engaging listen, earnest and so, so real.

Then comes the “Momma, don’t go/Daddy come home” ending, which I have to say actually frightened me a bit when I heard it the first time in 2010 or so. Sounds innocent enough when Lennon first sings that. But as the song continues, that singing gradually turns into guttural screams that properly distort the microphone he’s using. He starts to play lower down on the piano during this coda too which gives the whole track a darker tone and feel. I feel like all of this is a method to make the listener feel as uncomfortable as possible, particularly those in 1970 who still wanted some good old Beatles music. I think he succeeded with this goal. A couple months back, the album was re-released in this huge package with new mixes and demos. A raw mix of the album version that removed its fade out and the echo-effect on Lennon’s vocal’s on there, and I might even like that one better.

#863: Brakes – The Most Fun

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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.

#862: Oasis – Morning Glory

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‘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

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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.

#860: Radiohead – Morning Bell

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While those strange noises at the end of ‘Idioteque’ are still ringing and begin to fade out on Radiohead’s Kid A, a drum pattern bursts into the soundscape from out of nowhere. This drum pattern signifies the start of following track ‘Morning Bell’, a song that’s a bit about divorce and a bit about mostly nothing at all. I believe it’s one of the tracks on the album where Thom Yorke put words into a hat and sorted them randomly to make a lyric. But please correct me if I’m wrong. The likelihood of that being the case is quite large.

When I heard Kid A for the first time, I don’t think I rated ‘Morning Bell’ that highly. There were three tracks on there that I was immediately hooked on to. The rest took some time. All I remember is that one day I was either on a bus or a train going somewhere, and the part where Thom Yorke sings “Release me” along with that nice bassline by Colin Greenwood just kept repeating in my head. That small part sometimes makes the whole song for me. Its first half comprises of Yorke on the keys, Greenwood and Phil Selway on drums, all playing together in 5/4 time and really locked in, and there’s a real warmth produced by the music, it feels so cozy. It subtly builds and builds. Guitars join the frame, and there’s a sudden freakout in the middle where everyone plays that ends just as quick as it starts. Then the whole song’s mood changes for its second half. Like it changes key or just changes it melodic movement. Happens so quick you don’t realise it that much. It definitely ends in a way that you wouldn’t think you were listening to the same song. Radiohead are usually really good at that sort of thing.

I hope that we see a reissue akin to the OKNOTOK release for a 20th anniversary of Kid A and Amnesiac. Honestly, I think it would have been set to go last year if everything that happened then didn’t happen. Though I believe it still could. No harm in wishing.