I’m a bit tired, and a little depressed at the moment. I can try and lighten up my mood in the post, and I’ll see how I’m feeling tomorrow. I don’t want to get into it.
At least the post today features a song by my favourite band. Yep.
Around the time that I discovered the music of They Might Be Giants, the album ‘The Spine’ was their most recent release. As time has gone on, that album is known as one of the band’s least popular albums amongst fans. I like it though, it has some great tracks on it. This one is good too.
‘Au Contraire’ is sung by John Linnell, and makes references to David Bowie, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jodie Foster and Mahatma Gandhi. I don’t know what the song is about but from what I hear, the famous people I mention ask a question or state something in the verses to which the narrator doesn’t agree to, and in reply says ‘Au contraire, mon frere.’
That is basically the whole song. There is a little dual guitar solo with a little flute part at the end of it. But, yeah, that is ‘Au Contraire’ from The Spine.
The ending is also quite random too. Random voices just start saying ‘Right on’, almost like some madness mantra. This then results in a crescendo of cheers and applause, everyone is shouting ‘Right on’. Then ‘Damn Good Times’ starts. You should listen to this song and the aforementioned one together, it’s pretty cool. I have a thing for songs which segue into one another, it seems really cool to me.
In 1998 Jared Leto, known for his role as ‘Angel Face’ in Fight Club, and Harry Goldfarb in ‘Requiem for a Dream’ teamed up with his older brother Shannon. The bassist, Matt Wachter joined and the other guitarist Tomo Miličević auditioned to complete the line-up. The band released its eponymous first album in 2002, but it was the following album ‘A Beautiful Lie’ that rose the band’s popularity.
Although it was originally released in 2005, no one in England knew who they were until it was released again in 2007. ‘Attack’ was the first single, and is the opening track of the album.
My recollection of ‘Attack’ is quite hazy. I can’t remember whether I saw it in a 30 Seconds to Mars advert, or whether the music video was on MTV2 at the time. Either way, there must have been something that got me liking it otherwise I wouldn’t be typing this right now.
It’s just a really energetic song. It starts off quietly with the keyboard, but after four repeats of that melody the song explodes into life. The chorus is my favourite part of the song, filled with abrasive guitars and a passionate vocal delivered with great conviction. You get the feeling Leto really does want to attack someone, particularly when he doesn’t finish the last repeat of the phrase ‘I’ll attack’ which ends up as ‘I’ll a-WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA’.
It’s one of three songs of theirs that I have.
To summarise, 30 Seconds are alright… their just not my kind of thing. They do have good songs though. Attack is one of them.
If Arctic Monkeys were the newest and biggest thing in 2006, then Klaxons can definitely take that title for 2007.
The band was immensely hyped up during the latter stages of the former year, and arguably the one that started the ‘new rave’ genre which a whole load of otherbands were soon labelled as. That whole thing died out around 2008.
The video for ‘Atlantis to Interzone’ first appeared on MTV2 in 2006. It was released as the band’s official single in June, and it was one of the reasons why I got excited over them, and understood what is was that made the NME express so much praise about them.
The flashing lights, the use of the samples from a standard Casio keyboard that I’ve used when I was doing music in Key Stage 3 and the calm, singalong verses that are contrasted with the shouted out chorus. The video is almost seizure-inducing, especially watching it with all the lights off in the house.
But that just made it so much cooler. My sister and I watched it whenever it came on, and she loved it too. You just want to dance and bust out the robot during the verses, and then when the chorus comes just start doing whatever the fuck you want to do. It’s great stuff.
The album it’s on, ‘Myths of the Near Future’, was released in the first month of 2007, and loads of people liked it. I have it, so I can agree with them.
I made another post about The Who a few days ago, so have a look at it if you want.
In that post I mentioned that Summer 2010 was when I began to listen to The Who, and recognised them for the ball of talent that they were back in the day.
However, I had only listened to a few songs by them. In order to get a sense of what their music was about, I would have to listen to one of their albums.
But which one? Where do I start?
Now, I knew that their ‘magnum opus’ was considered to be their album ‘Who’s Next‘. It contains two of their most well known songs, and it is the one where each member had reached their peak at their positions. Together, there was no stopping them.
For me, there was something that prevented me from listening to it. I don’t why. I think it’s just because I had only heard of those two songs, and if people only liked the album for them then what was the point?
So what better way to start my Who experience…. than with their 1967 release, ‘The Who Sell Out‘? Seeing its article on Wikipedia, I saw the praise that it received (full marks by the ones listed), the whole radio concept thing amused me, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to listen to it.
It’s probably their most under-appreciated album. It is their only release where a majority of songs are not written by Pete Townshend and not only sung by Roger Daltrey. Everybody gets to sing, I have the 1995 remastered version which features ‘Jaguar’ with lead vocals by Keith, and ‘Girl’s Eyes’ which is written by him and sung with John Entwistle. It’s really one of my favourite albums.
“DUUUUUH-DUH Monday……..” is the first thing you hear when listening to ‘Armenia City in the Sky’, the first song of the album. The Who Sell Out incorporates radio adverts that were transmitted on a rogue radio station, ‘Radio London’, which would normally be broadcast from a boat in the middle of an ocean. This ‘Days of the Week’ interlude carries on until Sunday, which is when a weird backwards guitar fades in, and boom. The actual song begins.
Another unusual thing about the song is that it’s not actually written by any members of the band. In fact Pete’s chauffeur, Mr John Keen, wrote the song and is also singing it along with Roger Daltrey. Although it’s hard to make it out, seeing as there is this weird pitch shifting effect that is used on the vocals. Maybe they didn’t want people to know that someone who wasn’t in the band was singing.
Listening to it with headphones is another weird experience. You basically have Keith and John playing the rhythm section in the left channel, whilst there are these backwards trumpets and hazey backwards guitars playing in the other. That along with the lyrics, for example:
‘The sky is glass, the sea is brown, and everyone is upside down,’
makes this song one of the trippiest from the album.
I guess as it was 1967, this was supposed to a spoof of the psychedelicmaterial that was coming out, only because this is the only song on the album that uses that sort of drugged-up-on-LSD sound. The others are solid songs that don’t try to sound like it at all.
The solo is backwards too, so that screeching bird-call in the middle is still a guitar. After two repetitions of the title, the band maintain the pace and rhythm, a weird insect-sounding voices says ‘Freak out, freak out’ and the song ends with an explosion that echoes into the next radio transmission.
All in all, it’s a perfect start to a perfect album.
Today, it is Green Day again. This time, it’s the opening track from their fourth album ‘Insomniac.’I listened to ‘Armatage Shanks’ quite a while ago on one of Green Day’s fan sites. This was when I was Green Day crazy, ‘American Idiot’ was my favourite album and gradually I became more and more interested in the band.
I was probably about ten when I first heard ‘Armatage’, and I didn’t think about it so much. It wasn’t really a special song, the title is named after a company that makes bathroom sinks, man. Bathroom sinks. As a title of a song, it’s really cool though. There is something really angst and sharp about it.
Anyone who owns ‘Insomniac’ will recognise the massive difference there is between it and its predecessor ‘Dookie’. Whilst still containing two-three minutes of memorable tracks, ‘Insomniac’ took more of a darker and edgier approach. Look at the difference between the album covers, for goodnesssake. The overdubbed guitars are more distorted and crunchy, Mike Dirnt really cranks it up on his bass playing on this album, Tré is as good as ever on the drums and Billie Joe is a lot more snotty in his vocal delivery.
All of that is really summed up in this track, and as the first one on the album it sets the tone that you will hear for the next thirteen songs straight away.
Can anyone tell me what is being said in the bridge, because I still have no clue.
The Music in My Ears 