Category Archives: Music

#925: Foxygen – No Destruction

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There was a time when I thought Foxygen was going to be my new favourite band. In 2013 I was looking for new music to hear and stumbled upon the Best New Music review for the duo’s Peace & Magic album. The logical thing to do was to listen to it, after reading the review it seemed like a good idea. And it started off well. Opener ‘In the Darkness’ had a nice invitational tone, the lead singer had this sigh-like delivery to his vocals, and the melodies were all on point. But it was only two minutes long. You could say that things properly get underway with the following track “No Destruction”, also released as the album’s third single.

And really it’s more of the same. The track flows at a much slower pace, but is led by these pleasant piano chords, a steady rhythm and possesses more of a country-rock sound. Vocalist Sam France continues his sigh-like approach to his vocal delivery, singing about forgetting someone who he used to be quite close with, seeing them with a new partner sometime down the line, and proceeding to shut them out of his life completely because they were never that great in the first place. He perceived their behaviour to be destructive, and now that they’re gone there’s no destruction. Everything’s at peace. Overall, the music has a great relaxed feel to it. One of those tracks that suit those moments where you’re looking out the window and watching the scene fly by. There is a moment when France pulls out his best Mick Jagger impression, watch out for that, it’s almost uncanny. And I think a big nod has to go to Richard Swift who produced the album and provided a lot of the instrumentation on it. He passed away in 2018. The whole record wouldn’t sound the same if not for him.

“So why didn’t Foxygen become your new favourite band,” I think you’re all asking. The answer is, I just didn’t feel so strongly about ’em. They released ‘How Can You Really’ in 2014, the comeback single to promote what was to be their new album. Thought it was okay, but that was about it. Then that new album turned out to be a double album. If I wasn’t that excited about the lead single, I probably wasn’t going to listen to 82 minutes of additional material. And so, the support faded away. Still think Peace & Magic is a good time.

#924: Pezz (Billy Talent) – Nita

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I’m waiting for the day when the band members of Billy Talent collectively say “Fuck it,” and make their very first album, Watoosh!, available for all to stream. Before they named themselves Billy Talent, they went by the name Pezz and made that record before another band with the same name complained and forced them to change the moniker. I’ve seen fans ask them to play Pezz songs live, and I believe an answer in response was along the lines of them being Pezz songs and not Billy Talent songs. Basically saying that they’d outgrown them and don’t hold them in any high regard. Though in my view, I’d say the album has aged really well. It doesn’t sound like it belongs to any particular time. The tracks are unlike anything the band would do after the name change, which I think adds to the charm. And it’s not as groan-inducing as much as other bands’ earlier material can be.

‘Nita’ is the third song on Watoosh!, featuring probably the most zaniest vocal performances that singer Benjamin Kowalewicz has laid down on tape. I remember being ten years old, laughing out loud when he abruptly goes into motor-mouth mode only a few seconds in, and having to pause it and repeat it because I thought it was so strange. Eventually I let the track continue, and it continued to draw me in. The verses are led by these jazzy progressions, Ian D’Sa pulling off these licks while Jon Gallant and Aaron Solowoniuk lay it down on the rhythm section, all while Kowalewicz performs a spoken-word verse where he details a meeting between himself and a lady – who I’ll assume is the ‘Nita’ in the title. The song moves into the pre-choruse where the track forcefully changes into a more punk-like performance, before exploding into the wordless chorus and falling back into the verses again. There are a lot of melodic changes within this track, too many that I could type paragraph and paragraph about each one. It’s only right that you hear them because the way I write wouldn’t do them justice.

The song is a real us against the world type of song. Guy meets girl, they talk about the strangest things but like each other more because they feel comfortable doing so. They’ll laugh at the people walking to their jobs thinking “suckers” while they sit on the curb and talk rubbish. Sounds like a very carefree affair. What seems to get to the guy the most is the little things she says that stick with him, all of which are listed throughout the majority of the track. But then we reach the song’s ending where the line “You swore you’d never leave my side” is repeated, implying that it’s all coming from a point where the relationship has ended. A bit of a bittersweet one after all, but the fond memories remain. You see? There’s genuine emotion in this song. Free Watoosh!, Billy Talent. Get it out there.

#923: Wings – Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five

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After a year of ploughing through YouTube for videos, reading Wikipedia articles and downloading Beatles albums, the time came that it only made sense to listen to each member’s solo material. 2010 was the year. Not knowing where to start, I chose what I presumed to be the most popular solo albums – leaving me the options of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Imagine, Band on the Run and All Things Must Pass. Not too bad to start off with. My own experience with Band on the Run has varied with time. Twelve years ago, I thought it was great from front to back. Now I don’t revisit it too much. The songs are still enjoyable, but it does sound really 70s. Which does make sense seeing as it was recorded then. But you know when you hear something and it sounds like it could only have been released during that time.

So I haven’t really listened to a track from that album for some time, except ‘Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five’ which, in my eyes, beats all of the others on there hands down. It’s the album’s big finale. It’s a bop. It brings the album’s themes of love and escape into focus here, overloading it with a dramatic production of busy minor-chord pianos, harmonious backing vocals, organs, the whole lot. I don’t know if anyone’s put it down to a tee of what the track is about. McCartney stated that he had the song’s first line in his head for months before eventually carrying on with it. But what I gather from it is a ‘love will conquer all’ kind of message. While everyone’s thinking about themselves and their own worries, Paul and Linda (who I assume he’s probably singing about) don’t have so much of a burden because they have each other. Although, it could just be a case where the lyrics came to McCartney and sounded good with the music with not much thought put into them. It’s all speculation.

Really, the highlight of the entire track is its ending, which really begins with two minutes left of its running time. While Paul McCartney’s adlibbing in the background, grunting, yelling, wooping, making all kinds of noises, the instrumental builds and builds. McCartney’s going wild on the guitar performing these bends and licks. A droning synthesizer is introduced followed by blaring horns. What I think is a clarinet comes in and pulls of this crazy run of notes. The music gets louder and louder before crescendo-ing into its explosive final chord, which then segues into a reprise of the album’s opening track. I get goosebumps every time. A big fan of songs with great endings over here, and this one is up there with the best of them.

#922: They Might Be Giants – Nightgown of the Sullen Moon

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If you were one of the OG They Might Be Giants fans back in the 80s and around when ‘They’ll Need a Crane’ was released as another single from the band’s Lincoln album, you would have been lucky to stumble upon ‘Nightgown of the Sullen Moon’. The track was one of three B-sides on the They’ll Need a Crane EP, alongside ‘It’s Not My Birthday’ and ‘I’ll Sink Manhattan’. Once the two Johns were signed to major-label Elektra Records, another compilation was then released including all of the B-sides the band had officially released in the form of Miscellaneous T which a brought something of a larger attention to it.

There are a few interpretations as to what this track is about. There’s a selection you can see on the band’s dedicated Wiki page. From my point of view, I always saw it as a description of a person’s transition into the next life after falling into a door in an awkward manner and dying on the spot. Sounds quite tragic, but you’ll see the lyrics and kind of get it. The first verse describes the accident, I would take the titular ‘nightgown’ as heaven pretty much, and the following verse captures the person’s feelings of being within this new environment. They’re not on drugs, but they feel like they’re floating on air. And they begin to feel bored eventually, which shares the same sentiment as that Talking Heads song that’s also about heaven. In typical TMBG fashion, the song’s dang catchy and the melody throughout is off the charts, contrasting with the almost brutal subject. It’s also carried by this great I want to say Calypso-influenced rhythm, that’s accentuated by the introduction of bongos in the final choruses. There’s a lot of syllables John Linnell has to sing in each line, and there are points where you can him hear him inhaling sharply between them so he has enough breath. For a song that’s only two minutes, it’s filled with little things here and there that you can pick out with each listen

Like John Lennon with ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, John Linnell was inspired to write the track of its name after being shown a drawing that a person’s child had drawn. It’s a very poetic phrase, ‘nightgown of the sullen moon’. Reminds me of something you’d see in those classic books. Very unique. But it came as a surprise to Linnell when he found that the phrase was already the title of a children’s book that had been published in 1983. Must have taken some of the magic out of the phrase just that bit. According to the wiki, it’s one of the band’s most popular songs, but they’ve never performed it live. If they ever did, it would be a sight.

#921: Big Boi ft. B.o.B & Joi – Night Night

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Who would wanna go back to 2010? In some ways I wouldn’t mind, in others the answer would be a big nope. But it wasn’t such a bad time to be alive. I think there was some optimism going into what was a new decade. Plus there was all the new music to look forward to. That year saw the release of Big Boi’s debut album, Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, his first since OutKast fizzled out about four years prior. Had it not been overshadowed by My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy a few months later, it was probably bound to go down as the greatest hip-hop album of that year. It’s an album where Big Boi’s flexing on almost every track, telling the listener how good he is at his craft, how other rappers should just stop when they come up against him. No surprise he does it here on the album’s 12th track, ‘Night Night’.

My first experience with the track would have been in 2010 when a friend of mine from school told me I’d be into it. He was always obsessed with finding the newest hip-hop/R&B music, and he knew I was into that stuff to, so just passed on the word. Went to YouTube and ‘Night Night’ was there, but was uploaded with a higher pitch so it could get past copyright laws. You could get away with that back in those days. In fact, it was very similar to this. So for a few years I thought that’s how the song was recorded. But even then I thought the track sounded good. B.o.B came in clutch on the hook. This was when it was cool to listen to B.o.B, before he went on about how he believed the world was flat and had beef with Neil deGrasse Tyson. The instrumental slapped, still does I believe, carried by that driving rhythm and those horn-like synthesizers. The general gist of the entire track is that Big Boi’s going to put his competition to sleep with his bars and flows, hence the song title. Not in the way that they’ll be bored. More in the stunned-into-submission-that-they-lie-down-and-never-try-again kind of way.

It wasn’t for a couple years that I listened to the album in full and was surprised by how it really sounded. GCSEs and exams got in the way. Either way, the song still holds up as it did 12 years ago. I use Spotify, do with that information what you will, and I’m really surprised to see that the track has the least amount of listens on the album. Even less than the minute and a half intro song that starts it off. I’ve always thought the track was potentially single worthy. I can only put it down to the skit at the beginning. Probably should have been tacked onto the end of the preceding song. It lasts only ten seconds though. I guess people don’t have the patience anymore.