Category Archives: Music

#1279: Pavement – Starlings of the Slipstream

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‘Starlings of the Slipstream’ is the penultimate track on Pavement’s Brighten the Corners album, released back in 1997. I can’t recall if I’ve ever said on here, but usually I switch between Crooked Rain… and Terror Twilight as my go-to listen-through Pavement albums. But over the years, Brighten the Corners has been slowly creeping up and calmly nudging it’s way into pole position too. My view, you can’t go wrong with any Pavement album. I’ve enjoyed a good chunk of Brighten… for the longest time. But as I’ve revisited over the years, with the big 3-0 approaching and being 30 now, the record’s become a great comfort. Being the ‘turning 30’ album it is, I can sort of relate with Stephen Malkmus who was going through the same stage of life at the time of making the album, even with surrealism and lyrical wordplay he tends to incorporate in his songs.

‘Starlings…’ was originally known as ‘The Werewolf Song’, assumedly because of the “ah-woooo” refrains during the chorus, and was introduced as so when the band played the Tibetan Freedom Concert in 1996. They did this performance on either 15th or 16th June, and a month later, they were in a studio in North Carolina recording the music that would end of being Brighten the Corners. Somewhere in between, Stephen Malkmus found the time to get some lyrics down to set amidst the music. Or maybe even during the recording sessions he did, the band usually got the performances to tape first and he would lay down his vocals afterwards. And with the final lyrics, you get a set of words that aren’t very easy to break down and get to the nitty-gritty about. They’re vague in typical Malkmus fashion. But just the song title of ‘Starlings of the Slipstream’ is enough to bring an image my head, much like a lot of other lyrics you’ll find in the track. So maybe it’s more about the imagery in this song, rather than the meaning.

So it would be the logical move to go through this song line-by-line to try and express what imagery’s conjured up by each respective lyric. But I feel that would kind of be a waste of my time, and you probably wouldn’t want to read that either. Rather, I’ll just list the few things that stick out to me when I think about the song. Overall, the chord changes and the stopping/starting motion the music holds in the verses. Each smack of the crash cymbal with the guitar strum feels very releasing. And then those stop-starts transition into the werewolf choruses where Malkmus recites the song’s title. Those moments are quite entrancing in their own ways too. The way Malkmus intensifies his vocal on the “I put a spy-cam in a sorority” line. Didn’t need to do it, comes from out of nowhere, but always grateful that he chose to sing it that way. And I like how the track just falls into this noisy outro with two guitars wailing between notes before everything fizzles out to an end. Somewhere I read a comment that referred to ‘Starlings…’ as the song that sounds like the final track but isn’t. And while I got a laugh and did think that the comment was sort of right, it does the best job as the second-last one. Gives us that last bit of levity before ‘Fin’ really ends the album on a poignant note.

#1278: Graffiti6 – Stare into the Sun

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The only reason I know of Graffiti6’s ‘Stare into the Sun’ is because of the song’s inclusion on the soundtrack for the 2011/12 iteration of EA Sports’ FIFA series of videogames. A roundabout way of saying FIFA 12. At that time, my GCSEs were over and done with. I was now onto studying for my A-Levels. It was quite the raise in difficulty. But instead of devoting more time into researching and putting more effort into my work at home, I carried on my usual tradition of buying the yearly FIFA game and dedicating time to that instead. My original YouTube account also got taken down around this period, so I think I was a little depressed. But the FIFA soundtrack wouldn’t let me down, it hadn’t since 2002. And ‘Stare into the Sun’ was a major, major highlight from there.

In ‘Stare into the Sun’, songwriter Jamie Scott sings about looking around at all the happy couples being together in the summer sun after having recently had his heart broken himself. He’s on his own, he’s feeling low. Feeling blue, as he says in the lyrics. But he also knows that this is how life goes, and after he’s done crying, he’ll be able to see the light and have brighter days coming his way. You see where the whole ‘staring into the sun’ metaphor comes into play. The music’s all upbeat and sprightly, got these whistles/xylophones that sort of heighten the positive energy. That descending piano riff at about 20 seconds in and what closes the song out too was enough to get me interested in the first place. Overall, what you’ve got in ‘Stare into the Sun’ is one of those happy-sounding songs about a sad situation. It’s a type that I’m usually into, and when it’s done well, it’s an instant like on my end. So here I am hopefully writing an engaging overview about it.

Hearing the track repeatedly through the TV speakers, I reckoned the track was sung by an American group potentially fronted by a Black vocalist. As you can see from the music video, it is not. And the group are from London. Just saying this ’cause it’s true, not to complain or anything. Doesn’t effect how I enjoy the track in any way. This was probably one of the last tracks I came to know from a FIFA soundtrack. I got FIFA 13 the next year, and that was the edition where I suddenly realized EA Sports were barely putting in any effort into the games anymore. Plus, the soundtrack was kind of unremarkable. That was the true sign that things weren’t right. The song can be found on the group’s Colours album, which then got re-released with new artwork and an extended tracklist. ‘Stare into the Sun’ probably got the re-release treatment too, as it then got another official music video made for it. Think I prefer the one above, though. It’s all the same song.

#1277: Sigur Rós – Starálfur

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I heard Sigur Rós’ 1999 album Ágætis byrjun, the second in their discography, in late August of 2018. A time when I wasn’t feeling good at all, pretty miserable, it wasn’t the greatest period personally. But the album acted as something of an aid just because of how genuinely stunning it was. There are a lot of beautiful moments throughout, expansive, majestic, astounding, while also maintaining a warmth and intimacy about it. Listened through the loudspeakers at my old workplace and was convinced enough that I went home and downloaded it on my laptop not too long after. And the album starts off strong too, with the one-two punch of ‘Svefn-g-englar’ (really the second song after the album’s intro, but it may as well be one long thing) and the featured track for today, ‘Starálfur’.

If there are potentially any musicians out there reading this, wanting to make a song with a very nice sounding string section, I would suggest using ‘Starálfur’ as the reference. The track relies heavily on these string parts, and when a guitar dares to enter the frame, it sounds like it’s being played through a tiny, tiny speaker in a moment of stillness before the strings take over again. The song’s lyrics are in Icelandic. I’ll attempt in singing along to them, but I’m sure I’m getting the pronunciation all wrong. Translated to English, the song’s title is ‘Staring Elf’, and vocalist Jónsi Birgisson sings about going to bed after a long day and suddenly seeing this supernatural creature looking right back at him. The elf takes the shape of Jónsi’s body. He’s stunned by the whole event. The song is sped up just a little bit, so Jónsi’s vocal has a boy-ish tone as a result. I think that all adds to the spectacle of it, though. Like I said, it’s in Icelandic, so it’s not like I know all of this. I’m only able to detail the story to you through this translation I found.

Sometimes ‘heavenly’ is an adjective that’s thrown around here and there, but I wouldn’t be able to find another word that would fittingly sum ‘Starálfur’ up. It’s all about those leading strings, can’t imagine anything but clouds opening to a piercing white light whenever I hear them. Or, like, those time lapse videos where a 24-hour day is shown in 30 seconds or something. Particularly during that ending section. Which is funny because the last 50 seconds of the track are these harrowing, anxiety-inducing noises of, I think, feedback that then leads into the following song on the album. ‘Starálfur’ appears again on Ágætis byrjun, slowed down to a quarter of its original speed and named ‘Avalon’ to close the album out. And for whatever reason, the band wrote that ending melody played by the violins so that it would sound the same played backwards as it did forwards. A musical palindrome, if you will. This is a magical, magical song. Very beautiful.

#1276: Teenage Fanclub – Star Sign

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I downloaded Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque album to my old laptop in 2014. This is a thing I’ve mentioned in the previous two posts I’ve done for songs on it. I wish I could tell you why I got to downloading the album, but I really can’t remember. Usually I’d try and scrape something up just to give you some kind of context, but I would honestly have to make something up. That wouldn’t be fair. What I can recall for sure is the immediate liking I had for it. Well, I initially listened via Spotify, and as each song went into the next, it felt like it was one hit after another. This feeling was particularly prevalent during the album’s first half, which coincidentally features the three singles released for its promotion.

‘Star Sign’ closes out side A of Bandwagonesque and was released as the first single in the summer of 1991, a few months before the album’s arrival. For some reason, I always thought ‘The Concept’ would have been. It was the second single, if anyone cares. But ‘Star Sign’ is quite the song, though. Admittedly, it does take a while to properly start. The music video for it cuts the long introduction out, as you’d probably expect, consisting of guitars droning on a note that isn’t A or B-flat (somewhere in between them) for a minute and 16 seconds. But when that introduction’s over and the song truly begins, it doesn’t let up for one moment until its finishing chord. And in the 3 minutes and 40 seconds the core of ‘Star Sign’ goes on for, you’re treated to some driving, propelling power pop. Songwriter and bass guitarist Gerard Love looks bored as anything miming to the song in the video above, it’s quite funny to watch, but I think even he knows that this is a great, great number he’s got in the bag.

What the song concerns is how people get hung up on superstitions, good/bad luck omens and the like. Love brushes off these characters who place a huge importance on these kinds of things with a dry, “Big deal.” He doesn’t judge. As he says in the sort of pre-choruses, “If these things change your day.” Which I guess means, “If it works for you, then, fine.” But when it comes to his own personal opinion, whatever will be, will be. Things will change in given time, and any superstitious event isn’t going to have any effect on your life either in a positive way or a negative one. The ‘Seen it all before, seen it all before’ hook is the one I can recall getting stuck in my head that first time hearing it, and the song overall is a very easy one to sing along to. Great melody throughout, accompanied by some fine chord changes underneath and emphatic string bends by lead guitarist Raymond McGinley. It wasn’t difficult getting into this track at all.

#1275: Blur – Star Shaped

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When it comes to Blur’s ‘Star Shaped’, I have vivid memories of being in my room during my first year of university and listening to it repeatedly, air drumming to Dave Rowntree’s performance many times. The summer prior, I’d listened through the band’s whole discography and downloaded all their LPs to my laptop. According to my ‘Chemical World’ post, I did all of that in one weekend. It was a lot of music to take in. I think I revisited Modern Life Is Rubbish at some point during the first semester of uni, and ‘Star Shaped’ just jumped out as an immediate favourite. While the band were making Modern Life… they were told by their label that they didn’t have any singles on there. Damon Albarn went off and wrote ‘For Tomorrow’ in response. But listening to ‘Star Shaped’ all this time, I always thought of it as an obvious single contender.

The track is the thoughts of a narrator just doing the things he can that’ll help them get through the week. They wash with a new soap, which apparently helps keep a good mental health going. They can’t help but get to the office late, even attempting to show their face when the weather outside isn’t very good. And they have a few drinks with mates at the weekend to maintain that strong bond of friendship. The narrator works hard on keeping up appearances, but inside they know this focus on work can’t be too great in their actual development as a person. But the cheery backing vocals tell the narrator it’s all good and that the work they’re doing now will eventually pay off. They’re star shaped. They’ve got potential. A little bit of an existential crisis thing going on in this track. But you wouldn’t know it because the music’s so upbeat and packs a heck of a punch.

Gotta say, I like almost everything about this song. Damon Albarn’s got that youthful tone in his voice, which always worked wonders in that particular era of Blur, and it’s one of the few that I can think of in the band’s catalogue where he goes back and forth on the vocals with Graham Coxon, who provides the chirpy backing during the choruses. Coxon’s guitar work’s impeccable, filling in spaces with little runs and licks here and there to make things a little more engaging. Dave Rowntree’s drum performance plays a huge part in my enjoyment of the track. May not seem incredibly special to some, but they have a massive presence that provides an extra edge. And a lovely part is when things get a little quiet for the horn interlude by composer Kate St John, who also plays during the song’s floating waltz-time outro. Ah, so much to latch on to in the three-and-a-half minutes this track lasts for. One of my favourites from that whole ‘Life’ trilogy.