Category Archives: Music

#1337: Animal Collective – Taste

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“Am I really all the things that are outside of me?” is the first and last line of the song ‘Taste’ by Animal Collective. From my recollection, it was the only thing about the track I could remember after listening to Merriweather Post Pavilion for the first time in 2012 and being bewildered by the whole experience. I’ve written before about how I really had no context regarding Animal Collective before heading straight into hearing Merriweather…, how their live setup confused me, how it eventually became a favourite of mine etc. etc. It’s a story I won’t have to repeat again because ‘Taste’ marks the last time a song from the album will appear on here. But you get the idea, I once heard an album, didn’t get it, heard it again a couple more times, I began to understand it. And then I went into a whole Animal Collective phase that doesn’t need to be dug into here. What’s more important is the song at hand. So after Panda Bear opens the second half of Merriweather… with something of an ode to masturbation with ‘Guys Eyes’, Avey Tare takes things back to the more existential self-analysing route rather than a sexual one with ‘Taste’ straight after. The former merges into the latter with a sampled wind(?) of some kind before giving way to the looping, hypnotizing rhythm that anchors ‘Taste’ right up till its end.

I look at Genius, and it looks like ‘Taste’ goes way deeper than I thought it ever did. I kind of got the idea that it was about the topic of image. Being concerned by how the way we act, dress, look is perceived by other people. But then there are metaphors involving clothes in the song that adds a whole other level. What I’ve really appreciated about the song, though, is how, essentially from the first chorus onward, Panda Bear joins Tare on the vocals and sings an entirely different melody over the top. Not in a backup, harmonizing kind of way either, they really act as co-lead vocals. But, you know, you’ll see Tare’s lyrics everywhere because he is the “main” singer for this one. It’s just so fascinating how both vocalists diverge with their vocals, which then come together for the repeats of the final line as the song comes to its end. I always get lost in that moreso than the message. Not that that isn’t important. It’s kind of along the lines of, “Image is something we all think about. It’s just nature. But don’t go changing yourself to please other people.” And that’s pretty solid advice.

So, yeah, not the end of Animal Collective on here, but it’s the end for Merriweather Post Pavilion. It had its time. On some days, it’s my favourite by the group, but the majority of the time that title goes to Strawberry Jam. That is some good listening right there. Only four songs from MPP I managed to write about on here, and had the axes aligned and I’d gotten my act together, at least a couple posts for ‘Also Frightened’ and ‘Brother Sport’ would be found on this place too. Just use your imagination as to how those ones would go. I’m looking at this post for ‘Taste’ now and I’m thinking maybe I could have written a little more about it. I do think it’s a great song, but it came along as more a part of the package that MPP is rather than one I had a grand experience with that I needed to share, which you might in some other posts around the place. But I do appreciate it a lot, and really the song should do all the talking rather than these paragraphs underneath. When the group started playing ‘Taste’ live in 2007, it originally sounded very different. And you’ll find some people saying they prefer this earlier version. I’ll leave it to you.

#1336: The Strokes – Tap Out

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Man, I wish someone in the Strokes comes to a realization one of these days that there are more songs on Comedown Machine that are worth playing in a live setting. They’ve done both ‘Call It Fate, Call It Karma’ and ‘Welcome to Japan’ so little times you could count them on one hand. At the time of writing this, they were most recently performed at the Chelsea in Las Vegas. ‘One Way Trigger’, they’ve done a few times too and also in that Vegas show. But there are others on that LP that I feel so many fans would tear a limb off to witness. For me, ‘Tap Out’ is a frontrunner in that category. Whenever you have a Strokes album, the first track on there usually goes down as one of the best on there. It’s just a thing that’s known. ‘Tap Out’ has strong competition with the likes of ‘Is This It’, ‘Machu Picchu’, ‘The Adults Are Talking’, and the others which will get their posts on here so I’ve chosen not to link them. But ‘Tap Out’ holds its ground. In fact, I might even say it’s one of my favourite Strokes songs, period.

I remember how unceremoniously Comedown Machine was treated by all parties when it came around in 2013. The band, taking a media blackout stance, didn’t promote it in any way. A music video for single ‘All the Time’ was made, which has since been made unavailable on YouTube. Goes to show how they feel about that. Its cover art was giving off the impression to some that the package was more a kiss-off to the label they were on than a fully-focused project. To quite a few, actually. And critics were pretty dismissive of it too. Pitchfork had a streaming platform that let listeners hear the album a week before its official release. That platform is now gone. ‘Tap Out’ was the first thing I heard. And it seemed so strange. Here was this new Strokes album that was getting no hype at all, but here was its first track that was entrancing, groovy and had all the markings off a great Strokes song. It was different, but in a good way, and was a mark that this new album wasn’t going to be the Is This It/Room on Fire throwback that I recall people desperately wanted at the time.

To me, ‘Tap Out’ feels like Julian Casablancas reflecting on the overwhelming hype the band received at the turn of the 21st century when they were deemed the saviours of rock and roll by many a publication, a hype that’s there to a lesser extent today but still lingers, and detailing a feeling that this whole Strokes thing might have resulted in something a little more than he bargained for. Particularly being the subject to many a question from an interviewer that he can’t muster the energy to provide an answer to. But despite the annoyed sentiment that I perceive, like I said earlier, the song is a groove. Classic guitar interplay between Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond, Jr. occurs throughout. The track introduces the vocal technique of Casablancas singing in his normal voice, with a falsetto overdub over the top, which is used frequently throughout the LP. And over the years, I’ve grown a particular appreciation for what I think is the organ on the left side that comes in during the choruses. Adds a divine, floaty dimension to the song while the other bandmembers continue on with the tight rhythm. This song is tight. Tight, tight, tight. Here’s where I would paste a video of a band performing the subject song live, but for reasons I’ve stated, I can’t. But one day. One day.

#1335: Queens of the Stone Age – Tangled Up in Plaid

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Lullabies to Paralyze. An album that very much could have been Songs for the Deaf 2 very easily. But thankfully Josh Homme was very much against that idea, and made a rougher-around-the-edges collection of songs with his bandmates that all had a creepy tone linking them together. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to the whole thing myself. But what I would like to put out for certain is my notion that the run on the LP from its third song ‘Everybody Knows That You Are Insane’ to the seventh in ‘Little Sister’ is one of the greatest in the band’s entire discography. A very underestimated run, though, because of the album it’s on. It may start earlier or end later for some people. That’s just my opinion. Also in that selection of numbers is ‘Burn the Witch’, ‘In My Head’, and today’s subject of analysis: ‘Tangled Up in Plaid’ – the fourth track in the album’s listing.

I’ve always thought that ‘Tangled Up…’ could have been a single. At least to me, it has everything I’d assume makes a record label person go, “Yep, that’s one to release to the masses,” or whatever those types of people would say whenever they’re getting a single ready. The first chorus doesn’t come in until two minutes in, I guess. Not that it should matter all that much. Just that more people would know about the song as a result. The tone’s set with these plinking piano notes, snare drum strikes and haunting guitar wails, the kind of incidental music you’d hear in a film where someone’s going down a dark, haunted hallway or something. I get a musical kind of vibe from that introduction too, feels like something you’d hear on a Broadway stage. But then the guitars come in and completely negate that whole sentiment. Homme completely owns the track vocal-wise, he’s got that almost-Elvis tone going on again – singing those high chest notes, going into the ghostly falsettos and then belting out the notes again through some kind of fuzz effect for the choruses. Very enjoyable on that front.

Doing these posts gives me a chance to actually think about what these songs are about. I’m too busy singing along to them you see, I’m very much like the guy Kurt Cobain describes in ‘In Bloom’. From the chorus alone, I went ahead to think that it was sung from this overprotective narrator in a relationship, who realizes their flaws and tries to ease up on their overbearing nature. The whole “I know you gotta be free” bit. But looking into it more, it looks as if it’s the ‘other’ in this situation rather than the narrator who’s the destructive one. What I never thought before, after looking up some theories online, is how this whole song may potentially be about former bandmate Nick Oliveri, who was fired from the band before work on Lullabies… got started. Definitely puts a new perspective on things. But I’m sure I’ll enjoy the whole package all the same. It’s that swinging feel the track possesses, it takes me away every time.

#1334: Blur – Tame

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So Blur’s The Great Escape was released 30 years ago this September just gone. The anniversary will be celebrated with a special 30th anniversary edition, a reissue that, when it was first announced, was mocked and ridiculed by many a Blur fan because of the over-the-top eyesore of a cover that comes along with it. I was surprised when I heard the album was getting this treatment. Although I like it quite a bit myself, I’m a guy who prefers it over Parklife, the LP and the time surrounding it are things that even the members of Blur don’t look back on too fondly. Damon Albarn once described Escape as “messy” and having songs that would be good for a musical. But with this whole Britpop revival thing going on now – Oasis reuniting, Pulp reuniting, Suede releasing new material, Supergrass out and about – someone must have had the idea to capitalise on the occasion.

‘Tame’ isn’t on The Great Escape, but was released as a B-side on the ‘Stereotypes’ single in 1996. I lurk on the videos for the song on YouTube, and some comments go along the lines of, “Oh, this song’s so good! How didn’t this make it on the album?” Well, it’s most likely the case that it didn’t exist during the actual sessions for the album and was written and recorded after its release as B-side material, as bands would regularly do back in those days. Another thing that’s regularly agreed about the song, is how it’s sort of a precursor to the inward-looking, first-person narrative material that was to come on the band’s next album in ’97. Albarn sings about seeing two planes in the sky, game shows on the TV and his thoughts on, I’m guessing, his girlfriend’s confusion about the weather. And among all this is a chorus of the word ‘Tame’, sung repetitively in falsetto. What it has to do with the rest of the song, I still don’t know to this day.

Overall, I think it’s a song about boredom and that sometimes existential dread that comes with waking up in the morning and having to face another day. I just get that from the lyrics and the minor-keyness of everything. There’s something a little spooky about ‘Tame’, a little uncanny. Like, those erratic synths on the right-hand side. They scratch an itch, but they’re very randomly played. Albarn must have just felt like messing around on the keys to shake things up a bit. The short-tape delay effect added to the drums makes what would be a very ordinary drum break into a very effective one. And those constant “Tame” vocals are kind of weird enough, but they’re suddenly made all the more strange when at four minutes, the choice was made to switch from Albarn’s falsetto vocal to his chest vocals where he sounds like he’s almost yelling in pain. I’m a big fan of this one. The band don’t like that period of their time, but a few of their best B-sides were made during it. Too bad that with this B-side mark, they will never regularly play it live on the regular. But they did once upon a time, and you can hear that below.

#1333: Real Estate – Talking Backwards

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‘Talking Backwards’ remains the only track by Real Estate that I have on my phone, ever since I first heard the thing back in 2014. It’s not the worst pick of the bunch to have. I was there when it got its “Best New Track” review on Pitchfork in the first few weeks of 2014, a time when I was checking out that website very, very frequently to get a new music fix. Its video (above) was released on the same day as that review. I liked the song, I think, then and there. Got me all excited about that new album Atlas which was on its way in March. The month came around. Pitchfork heralded the LP with a “Best New Music” tag and an 8.8 score. I’ll say I probably wouldn’t have given it all of that if I was on the writing staff then. But ‘Talking Backwards’ still stood out as that golden gem that deserved the praise it got when it was released as the initial single.

I was thinking about this song prior to writing all this, considering the lyrics, and I built up this image in my mind that it was about a guy talking another person with that recipient just not understanding or paying attention to what the guy is saying. A sort of “lights are on, but no one’s home”, sarcastic kind of tone. So I thought that it was funny that this ridiculing message was set to this very upbeat, sunny, summery music. Makes for good juxtaposition. But then after actually doing some research, I found it’s just a general song about miscommunication in relationships. It was also based on songwriter Martin Courtney’s own hesitant feelings of having to go on a long touring schedule with the band to promote another album after becoming a newlywed. So what I’ve learned is, there’s no agenda behind the lyrics at all and they’re pretty much self-explanatory. Sincere too, and that’s usually a clincher for me.

Yeah, I wished I liked Atlas a lot more than I did when it arrived. I even revisited it, maybe a few years back during those COVID times, to see whether time would have had any effect on my reception towards the music. It didn’t. And it’s not as if I’m saying the album is bad. I think it’s just, to me, a lot of the songs sort of blended into each other, and it was only the fine, fine melody in ‘Talking Backwards’ alongside its chirpy guitar riff/refrain that made it the strong highlight in the track list. I listened to Days when Atlas was still the band’s most recently released record. It sounded like more of the same. But even as I type now, I can still recollect the chorus to ‘It’s Real’, and I haven’t listened to that tune in ages. But, you know, five years removed from that limbo time we were all in, maybe it’s time to just do a deep dive into the band and see what happens. That’s just for me, though, you can all go about your day.