Category Archives: Music

#1015: Nick Drake – Parasite

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Hmmm. Now I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to write three hefty paragraphs for this one. That’s usually the max I go for when I’m going into these if you haven’t noticed. Feel like that’s a reasonable amount for someone to read before going on to something else unrelated. But I’m not sure whether there’s a lot to pick apart from Nick Drake’s ‘Parasite’, unless you’re willing to go through a line-by-line analysis which I’m definitely not prepared for. Plus, I’m not too well-educated on music theory. The second-longest song on Drake’s Pink Moon, one of my personal favourites, ‘Parasite’ is a track of pure self-loathing set to cascading waltz time.

Pink Moon is already a stark listen up to the point of ‘Parasite”s introduction, but I feel like it’s the one track where Drake details the depths on how he was feeling around the time of the album’s recording. The song is something of a commentary. Drake lists situations and details he comes across while walking around London and being heavily depressed, and not really having a very bright outlook to anything he witnesses. He eavesdrops on people’s conversations, not really caring about the problems their having and whether or not things will work out well for them. He drinks in bars and feels terrible afterwards. He feels isolated from those who seem to be having harmless fun around him. His self-esteem is at his lowest, and he compares himself to a parasite, sucking the joy out of the life of the town and latching onto people who are merely going about their day.

What’s really left to talk about his Drake’s guitar playing, because that’s all there is, just like all the other songs on the album. Despite the very coldness of the subject matter, there’s a definite warmth to the tones that ring from Drake’s fingerpicking. I’ve always appreciated how he’s able to play two different melodies on the lower and higher strings that come together to become this encompassing thing, but it’s the descending melody on those higher strings that are the main melodic hook. The artist who designed the Pink Moon artwork must have got some ideas from this track too. There’s no way that the sad clown on the front and the shining shoe on the back were chosen by coincidence.

#1014: Radiohead – Paranoid Android

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So, from the list, it appears that Radiohead have quite a few songs beginning with the letter ‘P’. This one right here is a bona-fide classic. At this point, it’s no question how good of a track ‘Paranoid Android’, but I can only imagine how jaw-dropping it was to people who heard when it first dropped back in 1997 as the first single from OK Computer. Being only two years of age at that time, I wouldn’t know about the song for at least another eight/nine years, when the music video would play usually on MTV2 or even VH2. A lot of it was censored. The man’s head popping out of the guy’s stomach was blurred out, and the whole scene where the businessman chops off his arms and legs and the large-chested mermaids was replaced with hastily put together scenes from earlier in the video. Any first time listeners/watchers, you did read that sentence. The whole music video’s a trip.

This track is one of those made up of different sections from unrelated pieces à la ‘Bohemian Rhapsody‘ or ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun‘ that are then brought together to make one composition. What I’ve always appreciated about ‘Paranoid…’ is just how seamlessly each sections transitions into the next. Even in the ‘…Warm Gun’, there are always these abrupt changes when one section changes into the other, and I’ve always felt it to be sometimes an awkward listen. Wikipedia says there are four sections in ‘Paranoid Android’, but I would say there’s three at the most with a little return to the second to close things out. But really the whole thing flows so well, and the whole performance by the band is off the charts.

I think it’s come to the point now where a Radiohead fan wouldn’t be impressed if you told them ‘Paranoid Android’ was your favourite track by the band’s. I’m a Radiohead fan myself, but I don’t even think I’m at the level of some other people that may be existing. They would understand, because they’d have to, but the track is essentially Radiohead encapsulated. Damn, there are just so many moments to pick out from this one as to what makes it so engaging to hear. From the wild guitar freak-outs to Thom Yorke’s vocals to those robotic “I may be paranoid, but no android” that are buried in the mix. To listen to this track for the first time again…

#1013: The Beatles – Paperback Writer

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Hey, look at that, it’s a Beatles song. So now comes the problem in how I can possibly approach this post without writing something that you can already find online… I think I just have to accept that when it comes to Beatles material, you can’t really write anything without regurgitating something that’s already been said or researched. But that’s why I have to put my own personal angle in there. Thinking about ‘Paperback Writer’, I don’t think it was one by the band where I heard it the first time and was instantly amazed. It’s only just over two minutes in length, but 14-year-old me needed those extra listens for it to all come together. It did. Thirteen years later, it feels just as good when those opening vocal harmonies come in.

Recorded during the sessions for what would become Revolver in 1966, Paul McCartney was inspired to write the track by his aunt, who suggested he write about something other than love for a change, and after he saw Ringo Starr reading in the backstage area of a venue. He and John Lennon got together, wrote the lyrics in the form of a letter from an aspiring writer who wants to get their book published and eventually worked on the track with George Harrison and Ringo Starr in the studio over two days in April ’66. Continuing their quest on experimenting in the studio, which properly started on sessions for the previous album, the group changed the line-up configuration to record the song’s backing track, with McCartney on lead guitar (he plays the riffs and the chugging lines during the verses), Harrison playing the rhythm, Starr on the usual drums and Lennon on tambourine. They did it in two takes, with the second being used for the final cut. That’s all they needed.

Got a lotta love for this power-pop number. With the Revolver Super Deluxe box set that came out a few months ago, some commenters were quick-witted to notice the huge similarity between the main guitar riff here and what would be used for the horns in ‘Got to Get You into My Life‘. Never would have put two and two together. Clearly, this was a melody McCartney had had in his head, so to make two songs out of it is quite something. Yeah, the riff’s cool, but there has to be huge props given to the bass guitar. Using a Rickenbacker bass instead of his signature Hofner and aided with some engineering know-how by Geoff Emerick, the low end has a fatter groove and provides a real drive to everything that’s happening. Plus, do like the Frère Jacques backing vocals by Lennon and Harrison in the final verses. Why they chose to sing that, I don’t know. But it just works. So, there you have it. Another Beatles post done. There’ll be more to come.

#1012: Modest Mouse – Paper Thin Walls

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As I’m typing this, it’s currently the 18th of January 2023 – which shows you just how much in advance I do these things – and just getting to almost three weeks after the passing of Modest Mouse drummer Jeremiah Green. That was some awful news to wake up to on New Year’s Day. It had only been made public that he had been diagnosed with stage IV cancer just a few days before, but I don’t think anyone could have expected things to go as they did, and so quickly too. It’s still sad in January, and now in March too – maybe in between the two months some update on Modest Mouse will happen. Will just have to wait and see.

It took me the longest time to listen to the band’s Moon & Antarctica in full and in good quality because, even though its Wikipedia page showed just how well-rated it was by critics, it wasn’t anywhere on streaming services for whatever reason. That was until December 2018 when it was suddenly on Spotify. Then I had to see what it was all about. It was an instant add to my personal library. Felt like an album I’d become so familiar with, even though it was my first time hearing the thing. ‘Paper Thin Walls’ is the 11th track on The Moon & Antarctica and was one of those on there that struck an immediate chord with me. Once that opening guitar lick kicked in, I think it was pretty much a guarantee, and what followed was an added bonus.

From what I’ve gathered in the four-and-a-bit years I’ve been listening to the song, ‘Paper Thin…’ is this musically upbeat track about a disturbing lack of privacy and a general sense of disappointment with things going on in the world, feelings and situations that usually come along with being in a band and having an expectation to please people wherever you go. Sounds like a let down in writing, but with the repetitive melody and call-and-response aspect between the vocals and the instruments during the verses, everything sounds a lot more lively and energetic than you would expect. I think that weariness shows more in the choruses, or is it a bridge – I’m not sure, in which things slow down a peg and Isaac Brock becomes a bit more introspective. But once that’s over, it’s a case of second verse, same as the first, and the energy props up again. Though it wasn’t until the band’s next album that something of mainstream success would come their way, I think ‘Paper Thin Walls’ could be considered an example of what was to come, just due to its sheer accessibility while still maintaining that unique Modest Mouse essence.

#1011: Talking Heads – Paper

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Hmmm… ‘Paper’. What can you say about Talking Heads’ ‘Paper’, the third track of Fear of Music, released in 1979? Well, you could argue that it’s one of the least talked about Talking Heads songs out there. I’ve given my take on a couple songs from that record in the past. I may have even mentioned in one of them that I consider Fear of Music to be my favourite Talking Heads album. Mainly because of the paranoia and David Byrne’s vocals. Now, why ‘Paper’ may be a Talking Heads song that flies under the radar, particularly in the context of Fear of Music, is that it’s somehow played remarkably straight. Sandwiched in between ‘Mind’ and ‘Cities’, ‘Paper’ sounds like a walk in the park. A walk in the park as David Byrne in 1979 probably wouldn’t be the same as the average person’s, though.

After ‘Mind’ establishes the something’s-not-quite-right theme that connects the whole album, with its odd guitar riffs and Byrne’s manic vocal delivery, ‘Paper’ reigns things in a little. The instrumental is more of your typical rock-band performance, though there may be some tape-echo/double-track production effect laid on to the scrambling guitar chords that arrive in the introduction and choruses. I’m not a producer, someone out there correct me if that’s wrong. Although you’re led to assume that the song may be a narrator’s fear/obsession with paper, the ‘paper’ in question is this huge metaphor about love affairs and short term/long term relationships. This is something I never would have even thought about, because I’m usually bumping my head to the busy, propelling performance by the four bandmembers. But yes, when Byrne’s telling us to hold onto the paper, or hold the paper up to the light, he’s really telling a listener to hold onto the relationship they have or take a moment to reflect on said relationship and really examine the truth behind it. Layers, people, layers.

Overall, I think ‘Paper’ is just fine. I can just about recall hearing Fear of Music for the first time back in about 2015 and remember the track jumping out at me straight away with those opening chords. The whole album was an immediate add to my home laptop. The track keeps those opening moments of the record flowing nicely, and is probably the last time on there that David Byrne sounds somewhat normal before becoming more and more unhinged as each track comes along. Should more people talk about it? I mean, it would be nice. But it’s always those ones that people don’t know so much that’ll surprise them.