Category Archives: Music

#826: Slowdive – Melon Yellow

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Summer 2015 was a bit of a transitional time for me. I had finished my second year of university and was mainly spending my time at home, but at the same time was urgently trying to find some work to do for the optional year in industry that was included in my degree. A lot of my friends had secured a year abroad for the upcoming period of uni, and obviously I wanted to graduate with them. So, I had to find something quickly. I did, and I may talked about how that went some time in the past. While I was doing those applications and waiting for any results, Pitchfork Media uploaded a documentary on Slowdive’s 1993 album Souvlaki on their YouTube channel. It was based on a record I’d never heard before, but I decided to watch it to kill some time. I suggest that you do too, it’s a good one.

Hearing the members of the band talking about how the album was made, the context it was created in, plus the in-depth commentary on some of the songs on there led me to searching out the album on Spotify. It has been one of my favourites since. It was an instant add to my iTunes library. This blog had been going on for two years by that time, so my personal highlights like ‘Alison’, ‘Here She Comes’ and ‘Altogether’ couldn’t have their posts on here. There’s another left that will have its own post, but it will be a long time from now. The album goes down as one in the trinity of classic shoegazing albums, the others being My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless and Nowhere by Ride. And it’s just so dreamy. Drenched in reverb and packed with pop songs with great hooks. It does have its darker moments though.

‘Melon Yellow’ is one of them. The bass guitar is backwards throughout creating this woozy, unbalanced feel to it all while the sudden hits on the snare echo into the distance. The lyrics don’t tell a coherent story. Seems like they’ve been put together in order to create a feeling or follow the movement of the music, which is fine I have no problems with that. There’s a lot of space in between each lyric allowing the instruments to kind of do their thing during the verses, but then all the harmonies and production trickery washes over you during the “So long, so long” choruses. Another track to get lost in. The two vocalists Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell who were in a relationship broke things off during the making of the album, and I believe this track is another of Halstead’s that just sees him feeling low and wishing things were different. It’s a common theme throughout.

#825: Blur – Mellow Song

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13 is one of my favourite albums of all time. Definitely one of my Desert Island Discs if that programme asked you to list what records you would take if you were in that situation. Even I feel exhausted after listening through the 66 minutes the thing lasts for. Could you imagine how the band members felt making this? Well, it’s documented that individually they weren’t having the greatest of times leading up to and during the making of the album. Damon Albarn had broken up with his long-term girlfriend Justine Frischmann of Elastica and was somewhat hooked on heroin, Graham Coxon was drinking and angry at the world, people were fighting, not turning up to sessions. Sounds tense. But they still came out with this masterpiece. That’s right, I said it.

‘Mellow Song’ is what it says it is. It’s a four minute break from the chaos and disorienting noise that surrounds it, even though it kicks up a bit during its instrumental outro. The first half of it has Damon Albarn singing in his dulcet tones. I think it’s capturing him in the aftermath of his break-up. All he does is spend time in bed, hungover, taking drugs, or making music. And this is him singing about it in a sort of surreal and poetic way. He plays these arpeggiated notes on the acoustic guitar that move up and down the fretboard accompanied by these twinkling/ghostly keyboards and when he sings the last “We’ll see”, the song transforms into this trippy, bass-heavy instrumental jam. Like I said, it is a nice… wouldn’t say relaxing, but it’s something you can really get lost in with the right state of mind.

The instrumental jam has a lot of musical goodness too. Coxon plays this four note pattern that repeats and repeats while Albarn plays a melodica solo. A guitar overdub where Coxon plays these random notes and bends takes over as a harpsichord suddenly appears in the right hand side. There are clips of Albarn laughing or crying (I’m not sure which) buried in there too. It all goes on and on until it all sort of fizzles out and comes to a stop with a lo-fi recording of Albarn laughing. It sounds better in the context of the whole album because the next starts suddenly right after that. 13‘s great. If only I could have written about ‘Battle’.

#824: Deftones – Mein

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Should I listen through the Deftones discography? It probably wouldn’t hurt. My knowledge on the group is limited. I know the band members names through Wiki searches, and I only know a few songs of theirs through seeing some of their music videos on MTV2 while growing up. Saturday Night Wrist was released around the time that I had started secondary school, so I remember ‘Hole in the Earth’ showing up a few times whenever I came back home or was getting ready to leave in the morning. That song’s pretty good. It was months later that ‘Mein’ followed as the album’s second single, and I distinctly remember saying to myself, “That was a weird song” after seeing its video for the first time. I was 11, it was different to anything I’d heard before.

Fourteen years have passed. During that time, I’ve been on the Internet like many a person. When I’ve listened to the song online and seen comments about it, two things are usually a common occurence. One, that fans of Deftones don’t hold Saturday Night Wrist in the highest of regards. I don’t have an opinion on that; I’ve never listened through it. And two, ‘Mein’ isn’t considered to be that good of a song by the band. Now, I probably couldn’t have an opinion that holds that much weight on that too. But seeing as this post is on here, you can probably tell that I think this track is great. I like the kind of wall of sound guitars and the chord progression in the verses matched with Chino Moreno’s vocal melody. I think the drumming on this majestic, especially during the breakdown ending. What I thought was weird all that time ago was how the verses suddenly jerk into the chorus. I also did think that how the track ended was quite strange too. And who expected Serj Tankian from System of a Down to randomly show up in the bridge? You know, this track is still weird, but I can’t say it’s a boring listen.

Below’s a video of guitarist Stephen Carpenter giving a lowdown on the song. He demonstrates the songs chords and everything.

#823: Bob Dylan – Meet Me in the Morning

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Bob Dylan does the blues on ‘Meet Me in the Morning’. The sixth number on Blood on the Tracks, the break-up album of all break-up albums (I think I read that somewhere), is in a standard AABA form that you’ll hear almost every other blues song. But it gets my head nodding every time that rhythm section kicks in. On the track, Dylan howls for his love to come back to him. He wishes to meet her at the intersection of 56th and Wabasha, gives all these poetic and wild examples of the things he’s done to prove that he’s earned her love. By the end, it seems he’s been waiting all day for her to arrive. Safe to say she doesn’t show. Guess he’s left in some pain; the way he sings the track symbolises that, I think.

It’s just that groove, man. There’s a lot of oomph behind that kick drum and the overall rhythm, but there’s also a stiffness to the delivery. It’s all hi-hat, open hi-hat and snare. Never a slam on the ride or crash cymbals. I guess this allows the different guitars and Dylan’s vocal to take over the soundscape. It’s been said that Dylan doesn’t have the greatest singing voice, but I can’t think of another track of his where he tries his hardest than on here. He reaches notes that could really surprise some people who listen to this for the first time. Reaches those higher notes with his chest and giving it a lot of gusto.

It took me a while to properly get into this track. It’s the most recent from that album that I added to my list. That was a couple years back or so. When I really sat down and listened to the record all the way through one day, ‘Morning’ suddenly stood out to me. It carries on a run of 10/10 tracks beginning with the album’s opener. None of which were written in the happiest of times for the man. Definitely my favourite album of his though.

#822: They Might Be Giants – Meet James Ensor

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‘Meet James Ensor’ is a song from They Might Be Giants’ fourth album, John Henry, from 1994. One of the few in the first bunch of tracks I ever heard from the band when I was about eight or something, it’s a song about the rise and fall of Belgian painter James Ensor. It may just be the only song in existence about the guy. And his story is told in the minute and a half that the track lasts for.

It is a very succinct story. Ensor lived with his mother and made a lot of nice paintings which impressed a lot of people and contemporaries, but as time passed his art was gradually forgotten. So this song was a nice reintroduction or introduction to the man for many a fan of the band. Admittedly, I think I may have googled Ensor’s name once or twice and that’s the extent of my research. But I’m sure a lot of people were more interested after having listening to this.

John Henry is noted for being the first TMBG album where the two Johns (Linnell and Flansburgh) were accompanied by an actual rhythm section rather than the programmed drums and bass that were the norm in the four albums before it. John Flansburgh takes the lead vocal on this one; Tony Maimone and Brian Doherty respectively take up the bass and drums. Doherty’s drumming on this is manic. When I first heard the song I wasn’t sure if those drum rolls were real, but I’m sure I saw a video of the band playing it live and it was exactly the same. They’re probably a very easy thing for drummers to do and I might have just been over-excited. They still provide this unexpected hectic energy that keeps the song moving on. Overall it’s a great tune, melody’s all there. Those drums though, just a highlight for me.