Category Archives: Music

#1041: Bloc Party – Pioneers

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Only a minor point, but this track is labelled both ‘Pioneers’ or ‘The Pioneers’ depending on what issue of Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm you have. When the animated music video was getting its airtime on MTV2 back in the day, it was always shown as the former and that’s how I’ve always come to recognise. It’s probably not a note to even think about for more than a millisecond. But there are some people out there who would. Either way you look at it, it would still be the song talked about today, here and now.

I can sort of remember being alive and kicking in the Silent Alarm era. ‘Helicopter’ was the first track of the band’s that I witnessed I think in 2004, check out the post on that for more information, and then ‘Banquet’ came around some time after. Then eventually ‘Pioneers’ was released, and it was another great representative in the string of great singles that Bloc Party were coming out with at the time. Being nine years old going on ten, fair to say I wasn’t in the know of how well-acclaimed the whole album was by fans and critics alike. Thus the album wasn’t something I requested, for reasons I’m not really sure of, thinking about it now. But at the very least I knew that their singles were always good.

Kele Okereke sings in a range that I can only try to reach and does so from the moment he begins the first verse, never letting up until the calming bridge. If only the vocal melody wasn’t so catchy and memorable, it would put my cords under a lot less stress. Same applies to Matt Tong’s pounding drums, which never fully divert from the same tom-tom based pattern for the majority of the song. The title of the song doesn’t appear in the lyrics, but they very much intend to capture thoughts, feelings, beliefs and ideas that people may hold when setting out on an adventure, testing out a new theory or invention, heck, writing a new song. The lyrics detail the number of possibilities that can be taken into consideration, with the reassuring message that all you need is time to figure things out. They recount the overwhelming sensations that one can feel just by setting out on these creative endeavours. It’s a song of optimism and a sense of pride that as life goes on, these ambitious types will always be out there trying to follow in the footsteps of the great minds who have scratched their names into the fabric of time. There’s also a use of the phrase ‘so here we are’, which happens to be the title of another track from the same album. But that’s for another day.

#1040: Weezer – Pink Triangle

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So today’s track is number 1040 is this long series, but really it should be more. There have been a few occasions where I’ve missed some songs out and have had to hastily slot some paragraphs for them in larger posts in order to represent them. One thing’s for sure is that this should be #1041, because only a few weeks ago I realised I missed out Weezer’s ‘No Other One’ from the listings. I actually really like that song too, and I feel like I said to myself that I would go back to it at the time. But I didn’t, and now we’re in this situation. To keep things simple, it’s a great number – one about being with a lady who’s no good for you, but don’t want to leave because of the fear of being alone for the rest of your life. Big thumbs up from me.

‘Pink Triangle’, like ‘No Other One’ – also on Weezer’s Pinkerton, is another track on the album detailing a moment in River Cuomo’s desperate search for true love while being a ’90s rockstar and having a tremendously painful procedure on his leg. In the song, he thinks he’s found the perfect match. Finally, someone he sees spending his days with the kids, the white picket fence and the pets. It all seems too good to be true. And it is, as to his chagrin, the lady’s a lesbian. With this information, Cuomo’s lyrics recount the inner turmoil he goes through upon this earth-shattering realisation. Now, I know that Pinkerton contains some lines in there that would probably be categorised as problematic in these times. They most likely always have been. But Rivers Cuomo in 1996 was a person who needed a hug and was clearly very frustrated. It wasn’t something that people at the time were ready for, but it was as real as it gets and for that you gotta give him some respect.

Like all the other songs on the album, the track is a raw and hard-hitting performance on all fronts. What initially starts off with this almost Christmas-like introduction with softly-played guitars playing the opening riff suddenly pummels into the verses with the introduction of Patrick Wilson’s drums, Matt Sharp’s bass guitar and Cuomo’s vocal. Cuomo would never be as expressive in his vocal delivery past this album, though the melody within the verses is realtively simple, he’s really belting them out with some grit and melismatic turns occurring here and there. It’s pretty passionate stuff. Gotta give a shout-out to the slide guitar that arrives in the mix at points. And a big plus to the dueling guitars solo in the break. The chord progression underneath it would be used as the basis for ‘Do You Wanna Get High’ 20 years later, if you didn’t know. Always enjoyed how it transitions into the following track too. Two very complete songs, but hearing them both together is a whole other level.

#1039: Nick Drake – Pink Moon

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We’ve arrived. I’ve done many a post for a number of other songs on Nick Drake’s Pink Moon album. I’m sure that in the majority of them, I’ve mentioned that it’s one of my personal favourites ever. If I was to do one of those cheesy “need to know these albums to understand me” type of things, I’d have to say Pink Moon slots itself strongly into the list. It’s hit me that I would have been listening to the album for just over ten years at this point, and my god, it’s been one of my go-to listens in times of stress, recoveries from nights out, those cold winter mornings/evenings. So awesome how an album you come across pretty casually can become something you treasure and come to know like the back of your hand.

The record begins with its great title track, the two-minute wonder welcoming the listener into its world. Being 17 when I first heard it, the main thing that caught my ear was Drake’s singing style. Unlike almost every other person who put some volume into their vocals, Drake was singing what sounded like was barely above a whisper. Like he was sighing melodically. Wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. But it was that unique quality that made me listen to the whole thing again a second time, which is where everything clicked. Instead of focusing on just the vocal, I was listening to the charging acoustic guitar, how the chord progression moves underneath that vocal and alternates between the low strings and the higher ones. Plus, how that acoustic guitar just sounded so warm and the strings seemed to reverberate with a glistening richness. And then that lone piano comes in at about a minute in, the only other instrument to appear on the whole album apart from Drake’s guitar, just making the track that little more prettier than it had any right to be.

So why does the moon have to be pink? Why’s the pink moon so important? Well, for a while I was thinking that it was just a pretty, surreal image that Nick Drake was singing about. Something that he made up or had a dream about and was inspired enough to write a song about. After really thinking about it though, the pink moon is possibly a reference to the dark-red colour the actual moon takes during a lunar eclipse, when the Moon moves into the Earth’s shadow. Going on to know about Drake’s ordeal with depression, it hit that the pink moon is a metaphor for exactly that. He’s saying it’s written on the walls, it’s obvious, darkness is coming. He also just happened to set this message to some very beautiful music, so there’s a huge juxtaposition going on. It continues throughout the rest of the album. But it’s such a brilliantly warm and undertstated way to start off the proceedings.

#1038: R.E.M. – Pilgrimage

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Another R.E.M. song, and another one from Murmur too. On the few posts I’ve covered for the tracks from this album, I’ve gushed about how it’s one of my favourites, what it is that made me like it so much and how it happened. It’s a story that you may want me to get over. But I’ll just put a different spin on how I usually tell it. December 2017 I was going through the album for the second time after hearing it years prior and forgetting about it. Opener ‘Radio Free Europe’ set things at a high bar – now I recognise it as being one of the best first songs on an album that I know. ‘Pilgrimage’ is the track that follows and, with my expectations lifted to great heights, I didn’t want to be disappointed not to have that 1-2 punch effect that the opening two tracks of an album can have.

I remember really listening to the verses, analysing which direction the track was going to take, because they’re very unassuming. They’re carried by an infectious melodic riff simultaneously played on the bass, piano and vibraphone. Michael Stipe sings these short, sharp lyrical phrases with tons of space in between. The verses were just fine. But then there’s the sudden rise in mood with the arrival of the pre-chorus in which Stipe announces the pilgrimage has gained momentum, which in turns opens up into the first of many soaring choruses that occur throughout the album. Just as soon as it gets going, it returns back to the more closed-in feeling for the second verse. It’s not long after that the chorus arrives again, but this time Mike Mills and Bill Berry join in on vocal harmonies to add a whole other dimension to the proceedings. By this point, I think I was sold on the track. Might have even been singing along to it too. I was so into it that I was totally caught off-guard by that unexpected double-take of the riff at the end that sounds like a production error. Fair to say, the track did complete that 1-2 combo that I was hoping for.

Get the goosebumps to this day when I listen to this track. Truly, those three-way harmonies between Stipe, Mills and Berry alongside the strident chord progression within the choruses just make for such a glorious piece of music. Again, the lyrics here are meant to conjure up interpretation rather than telling it to you straight. In my opinion, on the one hand I have a feeling that the words were written to mirror the movement of the music. I mean, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the words “the pilgrimage has gained momentum” are sung just as the the backing instruments do the same. On the other hand, I want to say there’s probably something religious in there that could be taken into account. Pilgrimages, speaking in tongues… usually things you may associates with church and the like. I’m leaning more towards that first hand though.

#1037: Pink Floyd – Pigs (Three Different Ones)

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Ah, Animals. I’ll tell you now, my favourite Pink Floyd album. I can remember the day I downloaded it and heard the whole thing for the first time. It was Halloween 2010, and the 1990 Roald Dahl Witches film was on the TV. Channel 5, to be exact. I was 15 years old. At the time ‘Pigs on the Wing Part One’ passed me by too quickly, and I don’t think I had devloped the bandwidth to pay attention to the almost-18 minute song of ‘Dogs’ just yet. The first track on the album that caught my ear immediately though was today’s entry. At 11-and-a-half minutes in length, ‘Pigs (Three Different Ones)’ was just about in my comfort zone, and was the track that would pop into my head as I would be on the bus ride home from school.

Man, where do I even start? Animals‘s pissed off tone has already been established in the 20 or so minutes that come before ‘Three Different Ones’ starts. This track only further emphasises it. The three verses on here represent a different ‘pig’, with the first covering a general businessman, the second is widely agreed to be about former Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher, and the third explicitly calls out conservative activist Mary Whitehouse, who would dedicate a lot of her time campaigning against anything liberal. The verse isn’t about the White House in Washington D.C., as many thought for a while. Roger Waters chastises them all with the memorable, highly quotable refrain, “Ha-ha, charade you are”. You might ask, “If there are only three verses, why’s it 11 minutes long?” Well, in between the second and third verse comes a lengthy instrumental break that builds and builds, featuring heavy use of a talk box to mimic the sound of pigs during a guitar solo.

This song is fantastic. The groove that drags it along is undeniable. The use of every instrument present here is essential to the music, even down to the damn cowbell that appears in the mix between the verses. David Gilmour’s bass guitar performance is killer. Taking over from Roger Waters, who takes the rhythm guitar role here, Gilmour pulls off some melodic licks and scales that makes the track rip even harder than it does. Animals is noted for being the album in which Roger Waters’s grip on the band’s direction really began to take hold. It’s also the Pink Floyd album where I think he really came into his own as a vocalist. He’s not known for being the greatest singer ever. He’s probably the third best singer in the ‘classic’ line-up of the band. But even I try to copy the tone he gets on those ‘really a cryyy-hyyYYYYYyyy’s and the ‘charade you are’s every time I hear this one. A vocal take driven by seething resentment, for sure. Always a welcome time when this song pops up on shuffle.