Category Archives: Music

#977: Mac DeMarco – On the Level

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Mmm-mmm. Just want to wrap myself in a blanket and let my mattress swallow me whole when listening to this one. ‘On the Level’, another one of Mac DeMarco’s, was released as the third single from the then-upcoming release of his album This Old Dog in 2017. While the anticipation was building towards the records release date, I was studying for my final exams in university. I’m sure I did hear ‘Level’ when it was unveiled on YouTube, but I think I listened through my iPhone speakers and so didn’t really get the whole picture. But with some good headphones on, those warm ethereal synths that open the track and are a constant throughout are a cleansing sonic experience.

Because I’m usually so zoned in on the sound and Mac DeMarco’s lilting, heavily-reverbed vocal, I’ve gotta admit the lyrical content within the song is something that’s gone one ear and out the other over these years. From the titular phrase, I’ve always assumed the track to be about feeling content, on a certain wave, like there’s nothing much to do but just let life be and let time pass without feeling too guilty about it. But after looking up the lyrics for the purpose of writing this, I’ve found my interpretation to have been just a bit off. Though I still kind of like the way I’ve taken it. Really, it’s another instance of existential reflection on the album, with DeMarco somewhat coming to terms about getting old and coming to something of an understanding with his estranged father.

Coming near the end of the album, ‘Level’ provides that last moment of bliss before things become quite spacey in the following track and downright sad in the closer. DeMarco described it as a “kind of a sister song to ‘Chamber of Reflection’” from Salad Days. It’s hard to disagree. Both synth-heavy and led by very memorable synth melodies with a distinct lack of guitar in the frame. Whenever DeMarco does this type of track, it usually ends with impressive results.

#976: Kanye West – On Sight

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Ah, Yeezus. If you want to see two naive 18-year-olds listening through Kanye West’s album for the first time, check out the opening to my post on ‘Bound 2’. Copied and pasted directly from my Facebook messages, there’s obviously a few statements and claims that are exaggerated for comical effect. A lot of all-caps in there too. We were both very excited. Now, I can’t speak on behalf of my mate from that chat, but I really don’t care for Yeezus at all despite the classic-labelling it gets by many of Ye’s fans. A lot find it to be music that’s forward-thinking, sounding like it could be from the future. On the contrary, it always reminds me of 2013 when he was angry a lot of the time, and going on every radio show talking about how he was being marginalised by the fashion industry. Plus, I just don’t enjoy the songs that much. I did posts for ‘Bound 2’ and ‘Black Skinhead’, the two of them coming not so far after Yeezus‘s release. A few months, something like that. Both songs had lost their effect on me even at that point.

The sole survivor from the album that I obtain a lot of enjoyment from to this day is, maybe surprisingly, ‘On Sight’. I remember very clearly hearing the introduction to the track after I downloaded the link for the Yeezus link and thinking, “I’ve been scammed./This is a troll.” I was very close to stopping the track at the first blast of incomprehensible noise. But then that noise started having a rhythm to it, and then the techno beat kicked in with that offbeat bloop which seems to go on forever. My suspicion was still high. Then Kanye actually started rapping, to which I was still confused because what I was hearing was definitely not what I was expecting. But even with the incessant blooping in that beat, Kanye was sounding good. “Yeezy season approaching, fuck whatever y’all been hearing/Fuck whatever y’all been wearing/A monster about to come alive again” is one of his best album-opening lines just for sheer confidence. Then there’s the questionable line about getting “this bitch shakin’ like Parkinson’s”, which shouldn’t be laughed at, but within the context is pretty chuckling-inducing. A few more lines that amount to the meaning of being a Black man who’s looking to take over your home and wife, and you’ve got yourself a first verse that could only ever be delivered by Mr. Kanye West.

It’s so clear how self-aware Kanye West is being throughout this track. You don’t think he didn’t know what he was doing making this abrasive electro-hip-hop track the first on his new album, the one coming right after what fans and critics alike immediately deemed his instant classic? Come on, now. He clearly wanted to annoy some people. To prove how much he doesn’t care what anyone thinks, he briefly switches the beat in ‘On Sight’ to a gospel sample – a move that would have literally music to the ears of a standard Kanye fan – before going back to the techno beat as if it never happened. That decision right there sold me on the track on that first listen all those years ago. Once that gospel switch happened, I had a feeling it wouldn’t last for very long. It wouldn’t have been the Kanye way to just follow through with that change. Once that bait-and-switch happened, I understood what the track was trying to achieve. Just like its introduction, the track seems to not know when it wants to officially end, cutting out and dropping in again and abruptly increasing in intensity after Kanye throws out that reference to ‘Stronger’. I appreciate this track for being the introduction to what was essentially the anti-Dark Fantasy. I just can’t vibe with the whole package though. This is like the edgy Kanye album, and, to me, he properly gets it right on this one.

#975: Eminem – On Fire

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Is it fair to say that Eminem’s Recovery was the last album in which he actually sounded natural over a beat? Sure, it’s filled with all these poppy choruses that sound like they belong in 2010. But otherwise when the rapping’s going on, there’s never a moment where I’m suddenly put off by how mechanical and static he enunciates some words. On ‘Rap God’ there’s a lyric about rapping like a computer, which is kind of ironic because he’s been sounding like a malfunctioning one on a lot of song since, and I think it started from The Marshall Mathers LP 2 onwards, an album I’ve never cared for, but from what I’ve seen has become known as one of Eminem’s best in his post-classic era. I’m digressing a bit here. If you do agree with what I asked in the very first sentence of this paragraph, then I think the track ‘On Fire’ is a great example of Eminem just rapping well and sounding good over the beat provided, even though he’s not saying anything of great importance.

Seguing into the mix right after the end of previous track ‘Talkin’ 2 Myself’, ‘On Fire’ is led by a hypnotizing boom-bap beat produced by Mr Porter, also known to many a fan as Kon Artis from D12, which very much stays the same throughout the whole track albeit with some pauses and removal of elements to allow Eminem’s voice to take more of the spotlight for brief moments. Speaking of Eminem, he flat out states that this track is no more than “a bullshit hook in between two long ass verses”. It sort of sounds like he’s making fun of the listener for putting any emotional investment into this track, which he’s no stranger to doing. But looking deeper into the lyrics, there’s nothing much that you really have to latch onto. He’s just flowing and rhyming really effortlessly, and not in that way like now where he seems to try and put an emphasis into every internal rhyme he does. He references Flo Rida and Brooke Hogan, throws a shout-out to the track’s producer, and sort of makes a witty remark about Michael Jackson, who at the point of the album’s release had only been dead for just under a year. The whole track is just him reminding us that he’s very good at what he does, culminating in the hooks where he tells us he’s on fire the way he’s able to rap so well.

Although I have written about album opener ‘Cold Wind Blows’ in the past, I can say that that track is no longer in my rotation. Hasn’t been for some time now. And ‘On Fire’ is really the only track from Recovery that I go back to regularly. Like Em says, it’s just a simple hook sandwiched by two long verses. But it’s executed so well that I’m never disappointed by the end of it. The rest of Recovery consists of the most radio-friendly choruses and songs that I’ve just generally grown out of. But there’s still a soft spot I have for the album all the say. It reminds me of being in Year 10 and talking about awesome Eminem was with my schoolmates. But yeah, definitely sounds like it was made for 2010.

#974: Kings of Leon – On Call

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Two and a bit years on from Aha Shake Heartbreak, the time had come around for a new Kings of Leon album. The music video for ‘On Call’ premiered in the UK on Channel 4. If anyone from the UK remembers when Channel 4 used to premiere brand new music videos, shout out to you. But they always showed them at the latest times of the day. I was 11 years old at the time, and didn’t have enough energy to stay up until 11:45pm or whenever time they were showing it. It was some ungodly time, for an 11-year-old at least. My sister, however, did. When I asked her how it was the next morning, though I can’t remember the specifics, I do recall her making a comment on how the camera zoomed on Caleb Followill’s face every time he sang, “Be there.” I asked, “Kinda like Kurt Cobain in the ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ video?” She said, “Something like that, sure.” It wasn’t too long until the video started regularly playing on MTV2. Followill isn’t as unhinged as Cobain was in that music video. But the similarity was there.

Gotta say, ‘On Call’ is quite a strange choice for a single. Especially the first one for an album that fans would have been eagerly anticipating. In a lot of ways, it shouldn’t work. There’s no guitar-led introduction like the other typical KoL singles. Instead, in came these slow ghostly keyboards, with which Caleb Followill joins in not too long after. Even he delivers his lines, one after the other, quite shyly with spaces in between to really make those keyboards heard. Then that ominous tape-echoed bassline comes in with that chugging guitar line on the right by Matthew Followill. All these elements make for quite the mysterious introduction to a song. Then Caleb really starts singing. The “I’m on call to BE THERE” line is one that has a melody that, again, should not work in any way. But then the band properly fall in at 1:18 and everything comes together, it all starts to make sense. Then by the time the guitar solo comes in, you’ve got yourself another classic KoL track.

Think I’ve made it clear in other posts concerning Kings of Leon, but after Because of the Times, things were just never the same. The video for ‘On Call’ sort of marked an end of an era. It was the last video of the band’s in which Caleb Followill had his long hair, something of a remainder from the Aha Shake era. The band released the track ‘Fans’ as a single, but the next music video they would make would be for ‘Charmer’, where those locks were chopped off. Amazing how he looked almost like a completely different person through that act. But I’m not afraid to say I’m one of those fans who think it all went wrong from ‘Sex on Fire’ onwards. I don’t cry and wish they’d go back to their old style though. No point. By this point I’ve made my peace with the matter. But for a while Kings of Leon had us all going.

#973: Nirvana – On a Plain

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You may be a frequent reader on this blog and think, “Hey, where are all the Nirvana songs around here?” And that’s fair. The last song of the band’s I’ve written a post for was ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ in 2015, when I was nearing the end of my second year of university. To tell you the truth, I’m not the most massive fan of Nirvana. Appreciate the songs the trio made for sure. But man, are their songs played a lot or what? Especially in the case of Nevermind. The first half of that album’s lost its effect on me just a little. Except for maybe ‘Breed’, but even then I don’t go to that too much. Nah, while people are fawning over the usual suspects, and I guess ‘Something in the Way’ now thanks to The Batman, I’ll be in the corner jamming to ‘On a Plain’. It’s my go-to song on Nevermind by a considerable distance.

There are some odd moments on Nevermind, and the beginning of ‘On a Plain’ is no exception. A mixture of guitar feedback and what I think is someone attempting to armpit fart in the microphone introduce things for a few seconds. After a brief silence where you’re left to wonder what could happen next, the track starts for real and turns out to be arguably the catchiest three minutes on the entire album. The band come in emphatically on the downbeat, Kurt Cobain immediately joins in with some low-key vocals before ramping things up on the “Love myself better than you” line, where he’s also joined by Dave Grohl on backing harmonies. You don’t really even need to understand what’s going on during the rest of those verses. Those deliveries on the “Love myself…” lines are always killer. If you do want to pay attention to the lyrics, you’ll find that you’ll most likely gain nothing from them, as Cobain makes clear in the track’s final verse. I think it’s one of those songs where the words were written to match the music, rather than to contain any sort of emotional depth. And a lot of times those types of songs are the best ones. Especially for someone like me who doesn’t place much importance in the words anyway.

Apart from wanting to make clear my appreciation for the “Hmm-hmm” harmonies and that killer chord progression during the choruses and Krist Novoselic’s bassline during the verses, I think everything I’ve said in the previous paragraphs is all I have to say on this composition. It’s a bit of a ‘see you ’round’ moment, something of a happier ending to leave you feeling good, before ‘Something in the Way’ comes in and takes that feeling away. And we all know how ‘Endless, Nameless’ goes. This is the only Nevermind track you’ll get from me on here. I know, I know. It’s a shame. I’m much more a fan of In Utero anyway.