Category Archives: Music

#801: Massive Attack – Man Next Door

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Landscapes of black and white and various shades. Things moving in slow motion. A creepy feeling of something waiting around the corner. Those are just some images and feelings I get when listening through Massive Attack’s Mezzanine. Apart from ‘(Exchange)’ and its instrumental counterpart ‘Exchange’ which are much more uplifting in tone, maybe ‘Teardrop’ too, there’s always a sense of uneasiness and tension throughout. For me, ‘Man Next Door’, which arrives just about in the middle of it all, really encapsulates the anxiety.

This is a cover of the 1968 track by The Paragons. It’s about having a noisy neighbour. In Massive Attack’s take, I feel as if the noise isn’t the major problem. There’s something very unpleasant about this neighbour, but we don’t know what it is. There’s no reason to think this because the lyrics are the same; again, it’s just the production on here. The minor chord progression remains the same, but Massive Attack stamp their own name on it by giving it a weighty soundscape led by echoing snares and a booming kick drum. The thick bassline leads the song’s melody, and it’s joined by these guitars here and there that play these sparse notes. A sample of The Cure’s song ’10:15 Saturday Night’ is buried in there too at various points. The tempo’s slowed right down, and reggae singer Horace Andy expresses his pain and annoyance with the neighbour with his wailing vocals.

Probably not a highlight for a lot of people who love this album, but when I heard the record for the first time I remember that ‘Man Next Door’ really grabbed my attention. It’s not a song that will have you jumping for joy. It’s a song that will have you listening for any suspicious sound when you’re alone in your house. You need that type of music sometimes.

#800: They Might Be Giants – Mammal

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Hey, it’s post number 800 of this series. That’s decent. That’s a big number. Nice that it arrives close to the 8-year anniversary of this entire blog. I’ve been doing this for so long, geez. But we keep going, no stopping this train.

‘Mammal’ is the fifth track on They Might Be Giants’ fourth album, Apollo 18. I think it’s one of the most subtle tracks by the band you’ll ever hear. It just goes along in its own way, with John Linnell’s vocal really being the main melodic point. The programmed rhythm section is very steady, and there’s an organ that fills the soundscape. John Flansburgh’s guitar lines enter here and there. All in all, there’s no instrumental aspect that would make your head spin. I think it may be because the lyrics concern a very broad topic. Life. Humans and animals, how we’re similar to one another and what not.

I’ve been listening to this podcast where two guys are talking about They Might Be Giants, album-by-album, track-by-track in great detail. It’s a good one. They covered ‘Mammal’ in an episode. In it, they talk about why John Linnell may have written a song like this. From what I gathered, it’s because the animal aspect of it is something that no one really wants to learn about, and yet here they are having to listen to a song about them. It also gets mistaken to be an educational song which sometimes annoys Linnell, but people have used the lyrics to answer exam questions in the past, so it is to a very small extent. Sort of.

#799: Tom Jones & Stereophonics – Mama Told Me Not to Come

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Um… well, I was five years old when Tom Jones & Stereophonics released their cover of Randy Newman’s ‘Mama Told Me Not to Come’ (popularised in the ’70s by Three Dog Night), and it’s just stayed in my head since then. I think it played at the end of an awards show one time. I may have seen the music video every once in a while. It was a long time ago. It’s just a solid jam.

Stereophonics were part of that ‘post-Britpop’ thing that was going on in the late ’90s in the UK and were getting their places in the charts. They are also a Welsh group. So what could be better than pairing up this current Welsh band with this fellow Welsh legend? The result works very well. Tom Jones owns it, no doubt. Stereophonics’ singer Kelly Jones doesn’t do too bad either. He’s got that gravelly tone in his voice that a lot of people like. Together, the Jones sound like they’re having a great time. The track stays very true to the Three Dog Night cover instrumentally. It’s all about the vocals here.

Looking back on it, I think this whole era was meant to be some sort of comeback to the mainstream for Tom Jones. The album that this song is on, Reload, mainly consisted of cover versions of a lot of songs alongside a star-studded list of featured artists. He covered Talking Heads’ ‘Burning Down the House’ with the Cardigans. That was reasonably successful. The one original track, ‘Sex Bomb’, was massive and I remember that being played everywhere. The album got to number one twice in the UK and became Jones’ highest selling record, so I think the aim of bringing him back to the masses worked.

#798: Supergrass – Mama & Papa

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Quite surprising to me that this is the first song from this album that I’m to do a post on. I’ve shared my interest in Supergrass a lot of times before, I thought I surely must have covered at least one track. But I haven’t, so here it is for you today. Supergrass’ self-titled album, their third, often referred to as the ‘X-Ray album’ because of its cover was released in the autumn/fall of 1999. I got it as a gift in… 2006, I wanna say. I’m really big on Supergrass. I don’t think there’s one dud in the band’s discography. X-Ray’s probably the one that I enjoy the least. Not because it’s bad. It doesn’t have the immediacy and the hooks like I Should Coco or In It for the Money. It’s a slow burner. A bit more experimental too. Though it does have some great songs on there, ‘Mama & Papa’ being one that I only really started appreciating a few months ago.

The track is the final one on the album, bringing things to a calm and kind of sad ending. Quite funny that after using a variety of instruments apart from your usual rock ensemble throughout the album, they close it out with an short and sweet acoustic number. After two false starts, it gets under way with a twinkling arpeggiated guitar chord and a misty ‘ooh’ backing vocal. Bassist Mick Quinn takes the lead vocal on here, singing about being alone in the park, looking up at the sky and missing his mum and dad. We’ve all been there. Usual singer and guitarist Gaz Coombes provides the harmonies and that aforementioned ‘ooh’ in the breaks.

On a live listening party for the album last year, Quinn guided Supergrass fans through the tracklist with quips and anecdotes about how each song was made. He didn’t say much about this one. Coombes was playing the track’s riff in the practice room and Quinn sung over the top. I was also listening during that ‘event’, and it was there that ‘Mama’ got to me. Only took 14 years.

#797: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Mama

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Eight years. Eight years I’ve been doing this series and the beat goes on. Have a read of the first one. Back to the scheduled post.

I haven’t known ‘Mama’ for as long a time as a lot of the other songs on here. I listened to Face the Truth initially in 2018 when I was at my first job at uni, and I could get away with being on Spotify for the whole day and go home without really achieving anything. It was a strange place to work at. Then as Stephen Malkmus was to release his electronic Groove Denied album in 2019, I revisited Truth again and ‘Mama’ stood out as a highlight.

Face the Truth was listed as a proper solo studio album by Stephen Malkmus, much like the 2001 album. The Jicks are still credited on the back though, and feature on many of the tracks. It’s more or less a Jicks album. I do think though, that Malkmus plays all the instruments on ‘Mama’. He did so on the Pavement song ‘AT&T’ and there’s something about both tracks bring off the same vibe. Maybe it’s the drums, I’m not sure.

In ‘Mama’, Malkmus sings about the good times of his youth. Just being a kid in the house while mum and dad were doing mum and dad stuff. It’s easygoing, very laidback. Very sunny and relaxed. It’s a nice tune. Things pick up a pace in the middle for the guitar solo and middle instrumental before slowing right down into the last verse and chorus. I also think that this was his take on Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Proud Mary’. The tracks are too close in tone for it to be a coincidence. Pavement played some CCR back in the day; I think it’s fair to say he’s a fan.