Category Archives: Music

#1175: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Senator

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I became acquainted with Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks’ Mirror Traffic properly during my first year of university. How could I be so sure? Well, the year was 2013. I’d been into Pavement for years up to that point, and the Jicks’ material was the logical step to hear more stuff by the guy who usually wrote the Pavement songs. It was announced that the new album by Stephen Malkmus and the band, which turned out to be Wig Out at Jagbags, was to be released in the first month of 2014. Might have even been the first or second week of January. So it made sense to listen to the most recent album at that point, just for preparation.

It’s not my favourite Malkmus and Jicks album, I must admit. But there are a select number of songs on it that go up there as some of Malkmus’s best work, in my eyes. A couple more from the album are to come in this series. But today, the focus goes to the third song on Mirror Traffic, ‘Senator’, which was also released as a single, alongside a neat video featuring Jack Black and other recognisable faces. Something’s telling me I may have been aware of the song before properly listening to it in the context of the album. I want to say there was an article I read making light of the fact that the “What the Senator wants is a blow job” lyric had to be changed to “What the Senator wants is a snow job” for the radio edit.

‘Senator’ appears to be a track concerning the USA’s attitudes concerning the environment. And he sort of implies that the USA, particularly the people in power, aren’t really focusing enough attention on taking care of it. Instead, what the office representative wants put into action is a blow job. And in the middle, there’s a little bit where Malkmus reminisces about smoking weed with a friend of his back in the day, narrowly being avoided by the cops. How it all ties together, I don’t know, but it somehow works and is all good stuff to listen to. It’s marked by this start and stop motion, alternating between Malkmus’s sole vocal and the whole band coming together. Some nice little descending guitar scales pop in, and a solo at the end brings everything home. A very complete track, I think.

#1174: Reel Big Fish – Sell Out

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Well, looks like this here’s another song that I have to thank the good people at EA Sports for. A long, long time ago I came into the possession of FIFA 2000 for the PC. As to how I did, I’m not so sure. But I want to say it was through my cousin. This happened such a long time ago that I can’t remember what age I was when I was usually playing it. Judging by the year, I’d assume I was four or five. But I also remember redownloading the game again some years later. What matters is, it had some decent tunes on there. One of them I’ve written about in the past. But then there were other bangers like Apollo 440’s ‘Stop the Rock’ and Robbie Williams’s ‘It’s Only Us’, which was specifically made for the game. They were good. But ‘Sell Out’ by Reel Big Fish was one of the couple that really left made its mark on me as the youngster I was.

First of all, I think it was all about that horn section. You would be navigating the game’s menus, choosing what team you wanted to play with, what weather you wanted to play in, what mode you wanted etc. etc. And amongst all that came those horns playing the catchy melody, which also acts as the song’s whole chorus pretty much. So I was always humming along to that. And I want to say that after a while I was singing along to the words too. There would have been a few mumbles on my part to account for the lyrics I hadn’t quite got. But if it had me even doing that, then it would most likely be a song that I wouldn’t forget for a while. So what’s the song about? The song’s narrator gets the offer of a lifetime. A chance to sign for a record label that gets them of their dead-end fast-food job. The narrator’s girlfriend warns them to think about it. The narrator signs it with no hesitation. He’s under the record company’s control. He could end up not being paid at all. If things go wrong, he can’t go back to his old job as he’s already quit. But the narrator has the utmost faith that things will be all right because the label said so.

This song’s considered to be the band’s signature tune, but it acts as a both a blessing and a curse in some ways for them. It was the only single of Reel Big Fish’s to make it in the charts, and there was a bit of a one-hit wonder situation that came along with it for a while. I’ve never gone out of my way to listen to a full Reel Big Fish album. Not because I think they don’t have better songs than ‘Sell Out’, but more because I like ska music in small amounts. But anyone can tell me an album that’s worth a go and I’ll be right on it. Maybe the only ever Reel Big Fish tune I’ve heard was their cover of the Toot & the Maytals song, ‘Monkey Man’. Think that showed up on Kerrang! or something one day. That is a bunch of fun, I gotta say, though it’s no something I’d probably seek out to listen to. ‘Sell Out’, though. That’s one for the ages.

#1173: Supergrass – Seen the Light

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My old TV, provided by Virgin Media, had this feature where you could go into its guide and select a variety of music videos if ever you wanted to watch them. It was pretty cool. Television hadn’t yet got to the point where you could easily hook up your laptop right up to the big CRT screen. And if it had, I couldn’t anyway because I didn’t have a laptop. But it was neat to be able to watch whatever music video that tickled your fancy, in very, good quality, and in full screen without a problem of adverts or buffering and all the like. And it was through that that I came to know ‘Seen the Light’, a track from Supergrass’s 2002 album Life on Other Planets, which was also released as a single in early 2003.

As you’ll see above, the video doesn’t feature a physical presence of the band in any way. They must have been out on tour promoting the album or something. But is instead a clip consisting of followers going crazy over their apparent leaders, whether it be the congregation in a church or rabid fans at what appears to be a Fabian show. The video’s also made so it looks like various characters within it are miming the lyrics to the song. It’s a weird one, but also quite funny. And I guess it all ties in with the song’s lyrical matter too, which concerns the moment of joy and rapture that has been felt among the people now that their eyes have ‘seen the light’. What that light is isn’t really specified. But what matters is that there’s a sense of happiness and freedom, now that it’s been found.

I’m sure I’ve made some statement in the past referring to how this specific album by Supergrass is where they really wore their glam-rock influences on their sleeves. It’s apparent throughout the whole record, and ‘Seen the Light’ is one prime example. The way Gaz Coombes enunciates his lyrics (“Now that our eyyyyes have seeeeen the liiight, uuuuuuh”) the general tone behind the music. It’s a clear Marc Bolan/T.Rex tribute. Not that I’m complaining though. The whole track is a feel-good affair filled with very humorous moments, like the freaky/weirded out guitar(?) solo, a ‘baa’ from a sheep that makes a random appearance and an Elvis Presley impersonation, again by Coombes, that caps the whole track off. Fair to say, I think the group were in very high spirits when they were recording this.

#1172: 1990s – See You at the Lights

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1990s. A band I’d be surprised anyone would know. If you were to comment and say, “Hey, don’t be so sure”, then, nice. You’re one of the few. I couldn’t say I have much of an opinion on the band though. First time I’d heard of them was back in 2007 or something. That was the ripe time for indie bands in the UK, those mid-2000s. And watching MTV2 in those days, there was always something new around the corner. 1990s showed up occasionally on the channel with the video, ‘You’re Supposed to Be My Friend’. That tune, I thought, was all right. What struck me was how both old and young the band looked, all at the same time. Then a few months down the line, the video for ‘See You at the Lights’ came round and the song became an instant hit to me. Lot of time was spent trying to figure out the usual time slot that the video was usually shown in. But then YouTube became available and I could watch/listen anytime I wanted.

It all begins with that beginning wordless hook. If that doesn’t get you singing along, then there’s not much point listening to the rest of the song. It always come back to it. But when it doesn’t, the song concerns a narrator who’s going out with a lady and basically has nothing to say but good things about her. She could be the one. He sees the light in her. This time in the relationship appears to be taking place around Christmas time too, hence the references to snow, stepping into the ‘white’ and the obviously clue, the mention of a Christmas tree. I’ve always liked the general tone of the music in this too. I’ve always envisioned a busy city centre at nighttime with all these bright lights everywhere when I hear this song, which I think the song is going for. It all comes from the lyrics, brings about a lot of vivid imagery.

The music video in itself is very endearing too. It’s an animated one. Quite dated in today’s world. It looked quite dated back in 2007 too. But there’s no denying it’s a bit of fun to watch. It features an animated version of the band, sitting on the ledge of a giant building in Glasgow, staring at the moon and lip-syncing to the song. With each verse, they get up to slightly different antics, from bobbing to the music in the first verse to singer Jackie McKeown jumping onto the drummer’s heard during the last one. It’s all pretty simple stuff, but has a lot of charm. I never really followed up with 1990s after this, though. I do know that you can find this song the album Cookies, and they released another record a couple years after. If you happen to like both of them, I’m glad I could be of service.

#1171: They Might Be Giants – See the Constellation

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Apollo 18‘s one of my favourites out of the first four They Might Be Giants albums, which consisted of just John Flansburgh and John Linnell backed by a synthesized rhythm section while the two handled their respective guitar and accordion. It’s got a real rocking feel throughout, with the usual fake drums and bass sounding much less so than they did in albums before. Plus, the theme of space is very much reinforced by the packaging, the LP’s title and a few of the songs on there. Makes it feel quite complete in that regard.

‘See the Constellation’ is one of those numbers that lean into the whole space theme the album has going for itself and might just be one of the harder, pepped-up rockers the band have in their whole discography. Quite psychedelic too. Starting off with a guitar riff paying homage to The Monkees’ ‘Pleasant Valley Sunday’, the track soldiers on with a smacking snare drum punctuated by chopped up samples of Dee Dee Ramone doing count-ins for Ramones songs. Tremolo’d guitars come in during instrumental breaks, there are these twangy synth sitar strums that arrive in the mix too. The psychedelia is laid on thick. But it works tremendously well.

Lyrically, there’s not a lot of fat to chew, but the imagery’s very nice. The first verse is directly inspired by a promotional photo of an artist who was on the same label as the Giants at the time. The second is a short snippet of a memory of the narrator trying to look up at the sky past the city lights. And the third and final verse seems to come from the constellation itself, the guy made of dots and lines, the figure to whom which the whole song is dedicated. John Flansburgh signs off with the psychedelic question, “Can you hear what I see in the sky?” And after a moment of calm, with Dee Dee Ramone still chirping at the back, the track blasts off with an explosive instrumental coda that trails off into the night. This is a very fun one. And there’s more to come from this album in the future.