Category Archives: Music

#1020: Beach House – Pay No Mind

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God, 2018 was five years ago, how strange is that? Nothing too remarkable happened for me that year. But it was a good time to be a Beach House fan. Three years on after the surprise double release of Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars, and along came 7 – the band’s aptly-titled seventh album. The headline news behind this new album was that Sonic Boom (Peter Kember) would be producing it, the first of the band’s not to be (co-)produced by Chris Coady since Devotion in 2008. The big question, how would this move affect Beach House’s sound? The answer, not by a vast amount. Beach House sounded like Beach House as per usual. No complaints. But Kember’s production provided a difference in sonics that sets the record apart from the others within the band’s discography.

‘Pay No Mind’ is the second track on 7. After the propulsive start of ‘Dark Spring’, proceedings are slowed right down. Alex Scally’s reverb-drenched guitars are accompanied by reverb-drenched snare and kick drum, and a constant synthesizer hum to represent what would be the bassline. The production work here makes the sonic palette sound expansive and far-reaching, and so warm that it feels like I’m sinking to a huge cushion when I listen to it. Can appreciate a good song that does that. And when everything truly opens up at around 1:26 in, with those chiming piano keys. Well, that’s just a moment of euphoria right there. Victoria Legrand’s vocals are as smooth as ever, only adding to the overall consoling tone that I don’t think I’m wrong in saying the track is going for.

Terms of lyrics, in one way I think the majority of it is made of words where the syllables needed to match the rhythm of the music. Not to say that the lyrics are inconsistent or poorly written, because they aren’t. But I think there’s a definite feel of lyrics to evoke imagery rather than to provide a narrative. Where the most ‘soul-bearing’ or whatever occurs is in what I guess you would label as the chorus: “Baby at night when I look at you/Nothing in this world keeps me confused/All it takes: look in your eyes.” I mean, that’s real love-feelings isn’t it. Otherwise, I think the song’s main message is in its title. Things won’t go as you want them to go. You’ve got to do what you can to make in this world, but it takes time. Don’t work yourself up into a stress. Pay no mind. Or something to that effect.

#1019: Fall Out Boy – Pavlove

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Getting the deluxe edition of Fall Out Boy’s Folie à Deux for my 14th birthday in ’09 wasn’t what I had planned. The standard version would have been enough, but the deluxe was what I got. And alongside a couple remixes, alternative acoustic versions, and the band’s cover of Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’, came ‘Pavlove’ – another new track, left off the album for reasons that no-one apart from those in the band will ever know. Fall Out Boy fans have come to discover the track over the years, begging for it to become widely available through streaming services. It’s one of those times where I’m very grateful for that physical copy I have stored in my bedroom. I feel those fans’ frustration, though.

Really, I don’t think I even appreciated the track fully until maybe about a year later, when the track came up on shuffle in my iTunes library on the computer while I was simultaneously playing FIFA on the TV. That was what I did when there was no one at home when I was a teenager. There’s something about it that sets it apart from the other tracks that made it onto the final album. Those that did have a large, grand production behind them whereas this one seems much less so in comparison. There’s a lot of empty space occurring during the verses where Patrick Stump sings and there’s the sole guitar in the right playing its riff. But that emptiness and the tone of that guitar is something I greatly appreciate. Stump’s vocal delivery isn’t as extravagant here as some of the album cuts, but again that in itself is something I particularly enjoy. There’s no special featured guests, no gang vocals, no lengthy instrumental breakdowns. There’s a piano, some ‘We Will Rock You’-esque stomps and claps and multi-tracked Stump ‘oh-oh’ vocals. But apart from those, it’s a sleek band performance and a song that follows a simple ‘verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-end’ pattern. Maybe they wanted to develop it more, but couldn’t, and so left it off the album. I don’t know, I’m just throwing out possible answers.

As to what it’s about? The title is a combination of the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov, who discovered classical condition through his experiments with dogs, and the word ‘love’. But the title doesn’t have anything to do with what’s happening in the song. A case of a few Fall Out Boy song titles. What I theorise is that it’s a track about a cocaine addict. It’s all there in the lyrics. I don’t know about Pete Wentz’s drug habits. Could have sworn I’ve heard a story or two about him dabbling in some substances or others. But what he portrays is a narrator who’s head is blurring and chest is stirring from the cocaine consumption, who knows they could have an early death because of it, but can’t help but get right back to the habit because of the high it gives them. They describe themselves as ‘the invisible man who can’t stop staring at the mirror’. Invisible, cause of the skinniness, and ‘staring at the mirror’, the mirror they snort the lines off. And this narrator wants to make whoever’s in their company ‘as lonely as [them]’ by inviting them to join in. It’s pretty dark. Maybe that’s why it was left off too. Regardless of reasons, I’m all for this track. A deep, deep cut – let’s make it available for the people.

#1018: Mac DeMarco – Passing Out Pieces

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Well, damn. Tomorrow, it’ll be nine years to the day that Mac DeMarco’s Salad Days was released. Nine years in two more days if you’re reading from the US. And it’ll be pretty much nine years since I’ve been listening to Mac as an artist, waiting in anticipation for each release that followed. Look at this little post I did when I got the idea to write about how much I was enjoying the record. 19 years of age and wasn’t bothered about proofreading what I was writing. Not much has changed on that front. But the album really was on constant rotation at the time, and it’s probably my favourite of DeMarco’s to this day.

If you did click on that link that goes to that post from 9 years ago, you’ll see the short origin story of how I came across the album. It doesn’t bear repeating. But the gist is its Best New Music review on Pitchfork and hearing minute-and-a-half samples on iTunes. If you also look at the date of that post, I wrote it and got it out there on 24th May, the day after the strange music video (above) for DeMarco’s ‘Passing Out Pieces’ was finally released, five months after it had already been out as a single. By May, the song was a firm favourite of mine. Didn’t think the video matched its tone at all, though.

It opens up the album’s second half with these phat but glossy synthesizers, one playing the melodic hook on the left side and another providing the chords on the right, a thick bass mirroring the left-hand-side synthesizer melody and a steady-going drum pattern. The track concerns DeMarco’s feelings of being this musician man who’s never been hesitant to devote time to his followers whether or not it comes at the price of making a fool of himself in the process. He understands that its the price you have to pay in the business that is music, but admits that the stuff he’s done that he couldn’t never tell his mother has a bit of burden on him. He’s seen some scary stuff. But he closes the song out with a growly “Yeah” as if to say, “You gotta love it, though.” The song’s a jam. Always a good time whenever this pops up on shuffle. Yeah, it’s getting to a decade. But it’s sounds super-fresh, still.

#1017: Test Icicles – Party on Dudes (Get Hype)

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How ironic that a track about getting ready for a party and building up excitement for it would be the final track on the one and only album that Test Icicles would release during the short, short time of the band’s existence. I was 10 years old when the video for ‘Circle. Square. Triangle’ was in rotation on the regular on MTV2. I was the same age when the band announced they were splitting up just under a year later. At the time, I wasn’t very much into them, so my reaction to that announcement was one of a large indifference.. But it was when I was 15 that I revisited For Screening Purposes Only for reasons that I’ve forgotten at this time and found out how much fun the album was. Released in that dance-punk era of the ’00s, it very much handles ‘dance’ and ‘punk’ in its brash and noisy way.

I feel ‘Party on…’ is very much an account of lead vocalist Sam Mehran, witnessing the kids of 2005 feeling alive, being out in the town and knowing the places to go to have a good time. Under the pressure of being one of three vocalists and songwriters in a band, he can forget that feeling of unadulterated joy and freedom. He reminds himself that he’s just “gotta catch it”, with a nice reference to the track of the same name on the album. When he does, and the band perform, throwing out the energy to the crowd, everything comes together. He witnesses the fans waiting in anticipation to get into the venues they’re playing, people try and push in to the queues, and it seems like as soon as things get underway and the band do their thing, it’s time for everyone to leave and the band to move on to the next place. But no matter where they go, what matters is that a party’s gonna go down and things are gonna get wild.

And that was the final statement made on the band’s sole album. Well, that is if you don’t count the hidden track that followed after a few minutes of silence. That one’s a bit of a mess. From what I recall, the three members of the band really weren’t interested in the music they were doing, and weren’t expecting to create as much of a buzz as they did. They weren’t their separate ways and pursued their own individual careers. Rory Atwell became a producer, made remixes for a ton of bands and played in a few other bands of his own. Devonté Hynes became Lightspeed Champion before then evolving into Blood Orange. Mehran also forged out his own solo career under various aliases and was in the midst of making another project when he sadly passed away in July 2018 by suicide at the age of 31.

#1016: They Might Be Giants – Part of You Wants to Believe Me

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Just another They Might Be Giants song. There’s still a lot more to come in this thing. Maybe I might have said that they’re one of my favourite musical groups ever. If I haven’t, which I’m sure isn’t the case, I’m saying it again. ‘Part of You…’ was initially released as the fifth and final promotional track in advance of the band’s then-upcoming album BOOK in 2021. Slightly over a year has passed since the record’s release, and I’ve come to feel that it’s probably their best since Join Us arrived in 2011. Though it’s all subjective. You can’t go wrong with all the other releases that came in between.

What ‘Part of You…’ is is a delightful three-minute power pop ditty, primarily composed by John Linnell out of the two Johns. The opening descending/ascending melody of the keyboard in the introduction drew me right away, and that it’s also the same melody that Linnell sings in the opening verse really buried it in the brain. There’s no real discernible chorus, but more three sections that each have their own distinct melody. There’s the opening verse, the “Tiny voices” section, and the “Somewhere else” section which goes over the chord progression of the introductory verse. They make up the first half of the song in that order and are then switched around to make up its second. You’ll understand what I’m blabbering on about when you actually listen to the thing. What really matters is Linnell – Flansburgh too, but he’s not the song’s writer – is a master of melody and good hooks in a song and that’s all on display yet again in this one.

I haven’t been able to wrap my head around what the track is about, though. Like a few other Linnell songs, the lyrics are framed in this circular, elliptical manner that you have to take some time to think about. Not in the “Oh, you really have to think about this, man.” way, but more in the “That’s a funny way of wording a simple thing.” manner. There are double-negatives, maybe even a triple, so it kind of adds a bit more for the brain to process. But, from my general understanding of themes that can show up in TMBG songs, I think Linnell is writing from the perspective of a narrator who has either lied or said something straight up wrong to another person, and that person – who has to take medication for unknown reasons – is having an internal struggle on whether this person is telling the truth. Then I think the rest of the track is about what is happening in this person’s body as they try to process this potential lie the narrator’s telling them. Just my two cents, though. It’s known that TMBG just want you to enjoy their songs and not analyse them so much. But it’s hard not to have the urge when the lyrics are written in such a unique manner.