Category Archives: Music

#1125: Ween – Right to the ways and the rules of the world

Leave a reply

Maybe the best way to listen to The Pod is through the way its broken up on its vinyl releases. Split up into four sides, having the time to digest one of those at a time with some breaks in between would probably allow a new listener to at least digest the 15-20 minutes that each side of vinyl provides. I didn’t do this. When I was fully on my Ween exploration in 2015, I dove headfirst into the album on Spotify and listened to it the whole way through. All 76 minutes. That first time was a slog. I don’t know if you know, but the album is known for having extremely shitty production, even though a lot of the songs are classics. At least to us Ween fans, anyway. ‘Right to the ways and the rules of the world’ is only the seventh track on there. On that first listen, it felt like I’d been listening to the album for much longer than when the song arrived. And it also felt like it went on for a lot more than the mere five minutes it lasts for.

Now of course I’m used to it all. The track is a slow, slow one though. Coming after the little non-song of ‘Pollo Asado’ (a very popular one for Ween people), ‘Right…’ is what I believe to be a mimic of those old, melodramatic ’70s progressive rock songs by bands who would write about things like folklore or traditions of the past… myths and legends and the like. Gene and Dean Ween take on this melodramatic route, singing about nothing but a bunch of silliness – brilliant imagery though, gotta be said – all of which is crowned by the aloof harmonies that recite the song’s title phrase. “Monsters that trinkle like cats in the night/The cosmic conceiver continues his plight.” Those are just the first couple of lines.

The screeching organ that blares throughout is the melodic linchpin throughout the song, really hammering home that sort of medieval type of sound that I think the song’s going for. Something of a vocal chameleon, Gene Ween puts in another captivating performance. Increasing in intensity throughout, it culminates in the final verse where he lets out a shriek and then falls into a fit of laughter as the instrumental continues. Some people may argue that the song takes some momentum out of the album’s proceedings. Whatever “momentum” that may be, going through this album can feel like being in a state of purgatory sometimes. It’s just as essential as any other track on there, I feel. The production is so murky, you could almost choke on it. But the song at the core of it stands strong.

#1124: Supergrass – Richard III

Leave a reply

The music video for this track is another where I think it’s just too perfect with the song. Watching it on MTV2 was how I was first introduced to ‘Richard III’. It was sometime in 2005, ’round Autumn time, I want to say. I would have been ten, so bear this all in mind. I knew who Supergrass were, mainly because ‘Alright’ was the usual video that was played anywhere. This in fact may have been the first time I’d seen another Supergrass video other than that one. I could tell that ‘Alright’ was an older song, just by the way its video looked. But I genuinely thought this was a new song that may have been released maybe a year two before. I honestly couldn’t tell. Turned out the song had been out for almost 10 years at that point. Fooled me, it didn’t look dated in thee slightest. Even today, it still looks brilliant. One of my favourite music videos ever.

The song, though, is pretty flippin’ great too. ‘Richard III’ was released as the second single from Supergrass’s second album In It for the Money in 1997. (One of my favourite albums of all time, here. A lot of “favourites” going on in this post.) ‘Going Out’ was that record’s first single, but had been released more than a year before in the first month of 1996. As a result, ‘Richard III’ was the track that properly marked the oncoming arrival of a new album and a new sound from the trio. They were fiercer, more menacing. They were rocking out. This is all nicely reflected in the video too. The three members play in this green dimly-lit room and play giving each other dirty looks and looking as if they can’t stand each other. Bassist Mick Quinn tries to run out, drummer Danny Goffey pulls him back in. Running water drops onto an electric wire and lightning bolts shoot around the place while the band go through the last chorus. Very cinematic stuff going on there.

Like quite a few other Supergrass songs, I couldn’t really tell you what it’s about because the band would usually write the lyrics as an afterthought to the music. Even the ‘Richard III’ title came about due to the threatening sound of the music rather than anything in the words. There’s no concrete theme, and reading the lyrics, you might think “…What?” “I know you wanna try and get away/But it’s the hardest thing you’ll ever low(?)” There’s not much depth to latch on to. All I know is within the context of the music and how they’re sung/harmonised by Gaz Coombes and Mick Quinn, the lyrics sound fantastic. The whole song’s a ball of energy. Gets the blood pumping. Never letting up really until the instrumental outro which fades out with a hazy wall of hammered-on/pulled-off guitar chords into silence. Makes me want to hear the track just that one more time when that silence comes.

#1123: They Might Be Giants – Rhythm Section Want Ad

Leave a reply

They Might Be Giants’ first album from 1986 is my personal favourite by the band. It’s not like the debut is where they peaked and everything else that followed paled in comparison. It’s just that the record very much shows the two Johns at their most eccentric, kind of brash and unapologetically unconventional, before they dialled things down a bit and went for a more warmer tone on their sophomore effort. The most avid TMBG fan will tell you that even though the first album is great, its second half may just get a bit too strange for its own good. I’m all for it, though. Tracks like ‘Chess Piece Face’, ‘I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die‘ and ‘The Day’, as unique as they are, wouldn’t be ones to bust out at the social gathering. You’ll get to the album’s last track and you’ll think, “Well, after all that, how could this record possibly close out?” It does so with one of the band’s greatest songs in their whole discography.

Before co-founding TMBG, John Linnell performed as a keyboard player in a short-lived new wave band The Mundanes. You can see him here, usually in the peripheral area when the camera is focusing on the guitarists or lead singer Marsha Armitage. Linnell left that band to form a new one with his good friend John Flansburgh, and with this exciting new venture was inspired to write a lyric acting as something of a mission statement. According to Linnell’s former bandmate John Andrews (another John), Linnell spontaneously started singing it one day while they were working together – not too long after forming TMBG. So here the Giants were, a new band for the 1980s, a musical duo consisting of an accordion player and a guitar player, no drummer, no bassist. But surely no band could be a band without a rhythm section, right? Well, no. And Linnell and Flansburgh were here to show you how it could be done.

Alongside the mission statement aspect of the song, the lyric reads as a big tribute to the ’80s in general, albeit with some witty remarks on how artists and musicians would usually get the short end of the stick. Like how poets and their fans will come together across the street from a corporate office where the real ‘pros’ are working.But Linnell says tells us to forget about ‘the man’, shouting out MDC and Menudo, Eurythmics (who, as it says in the lyric, someone thought the two Johns must be into – that wasn’t the case), general bands with girl lead singers… It’s a call out to the styles of the era, where people could use hats as megaphones, or have hairstyles made of bones. Seems like anything could be done in the ’80s. And now here were They Might Be Giants, a new band to add to the melting pot. Linnell embarks on a rapid-fire vocal delivery, matching the bustling/blistering pace of the music and making for one of his most engaging vocal takes. Expressive as ever, each lyric he provides appears to possess a different melody, rising and falling constantly before leaping to a height for the title mentions and eventually culminating in the track’s final word. It’s such a damn fun song. A damn fun song to close out a damn fun album. It couldn’t have gone any better.

#1122: Soundgarden – Rhinosaur

Leave a reply

Would have been an exciting time to be a Soundgarden fan in 1996, right? I’ll hold my breath for any answers. But I see it this way. Superunknown and a song like ‘Black Hole Sun’ brought the band some deserved critical and commercial success in ’94. Must have gained a lot of fans just through them. Then ’95 comes around, they start recording a new album. And in the new year that new album’s first single is released. ‘Pretty Noose’ from the upcoming album, Down on the Upside. Fans let that song soak in. The band was back, new song, hooray, hooray. Then the album arrives a month and a bit later. With ‘Pretty Noose’ being its opener and a track that people were well-accustomed to, the wait for new-new music was officially over with the track that would follow it in the track list.

The feedback and fading guitar chords at the end of ‘Pretty Noose’ just begin to get out of earshot before things are woken up again with the sudden drum roll and guitar riff that opens up ‘Rhinosaur’, the second track from Down on the Upside. Fans of the band will know that when it came to the songwriting duties, though people would look to Chris Cornell as the frontman and main face, all four members could very much bring forward any ideas that could then be worked on. In this case, the music for ‘Rhinosaur’ was written by drummer Matt Cameron, who also attempted to do vocals on it (according to this little interview the band did for promo) but found they were so “awful” that he was pleased when Cornell came along to take over. I mean, if you want someone to do vocals for your song, you could have a lot worse choices than Chris Cornell.

The song consists of the ascending and descending scales, each guitar in the frame playing the same sequence of notes in unison, as Matt Cameron keeps a steady beat – 3/4 time for those counting out there – and Cornell sings from the perspective of someone or something who feels at their most powerful when in the bleakest of situations. I’ve always especially enjoyed the rhythm of the song. It’s in 3/4 as I said before, but the way the guitar riffs rise and fall in this sort of cycle always gets my head moving in all sorts of directions. The start/stop dynamic of the chords during the chorus, where the timing shifts from 3/4 to 4/4, always get a screw-face from me. And then, in a sudden turn of events, things go into double-time for the instrumental break where Kim Thayil wilds out for his guitar solo before the band cascade into the final chorus and bring proceedings to a close. If first-time Upside were already happy with ‘Pretty Noose’, I think ‘Rhinosaur’ only solidified their faith that another superb album was in their hands.

#1121: Madvillain – Rhinestone Cowboy

Leave a reply

Well, look at that. I’m 29. Hooray? Such an ugly number. May as well be 30, am I right? Time just keeps going on. Same as it ever was. When I started this whole thing in 2013, I never really thought I’d be doing this blog 11 years later. Don’t think I ever put any sort of timing reference onto it. I’m too deep into the alphabet now, there’d be no point in stopping. Still so many good songs to write about. Writing on here keeps me focused. So thanks to anyone who reads these.

Anyway, today’s song is ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ – the final song on the Madlib and MF DOOM collaboration album Madvillainy. The album is one that I initially heard years and years ago, say 2012 or ’13, but it was probably only a couple of years ago after revisiting it again that the track stood out. I tell you, listening to music at ages 17/18 compared to ages 26/27 is a totally different ball game. My focus went straight to the instrumental, a sped-up sample of ‘Mariana Mariana’ by Brazilian singer-songwriter Maria Bethânia, which became an earworm almost instantly. I’d be singing that at random points during the day, including the sweeping string part that abruptly comes in before the vocal. And you readers out there might be thinking, “What are you talking about the sample for? The rapping’s the best part, ya dummy.” It’s true. ‘Rhinestone’ acts as a kind of victory lap for the album, or an encore, suitably represented by the sampled applause that persists throughout the song’s entirety.

With his trademark hefty vocal, DOOM delivers two fantastic verses. Lines roll into the next with effortless ease, brimming with humour, internal rhyme schemes, braggadocio, and niche references that when pieced all together make for the most engaging of listens. “Got more soul than a sock with a hole.” How’d that rhyme not been made at any point before then? The track is something of an account into the making of the Madvillainy album too. The first verse mentions his and Madlib’s goal of setting the hip-hop game on fire with their collaboration. The former would wake up, write his lines in a few hours, deliver them and sleep again. Like the track’s first verse, an unfinished version of the album was leaked, much to the duo’s frustration. And like the second, they came back to properly complete it in a form that left people standing on their feet in appreciation. By subtly bringing the listener in to the lore of the ‘Villains’, it’s such a slick way to close out the entire project.