Category Archives: Music

#899: Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Necessary Evil

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Some time ago I gave some thoughts on another Unknown Mortal Orchestra song. That posts gives the lowdown on how I even came to listen to the group. I’ve assumed that you clicked on that link and gained some context, which means that I don’t have to repeat myself for the sake of filling up the page. But to be short, I heard ‘Necessary Evil’ when listening through Multi-Love for that first time in 2017. I don’t think I was jumping out of my seat in amazement when it first came on, but appreciated it for its groove, its chillness, and those subtle melodies that come through, like that keyboard line before each verse and those horns in the choruses.

The track comes from the perspective of someone who seems to be in a relationship, but not for the greatest intentions. The two involved seemingly bond through recreational drug use, but it’s also through that that they bring out the worst in each other. This leaves the narrator wondering how they’re even able to function as two people in love. So it’s a bit of a sad song thinking about it. I’ve always thought there something melancholic in its mood. But again, the sort of funkiness and head-bopping groove can sometimes put a damper on any negative feelings that the track is supposed to convey. It’s all so smooth. Sounds like something that a band would play in some smoky nightclub that were into psychedelic rock bands. And that’s no downside. Sometimes sad music and sad lyrics can make things a bit too melodramatic. Gotta spice things up, make things different. I get it.

So, I hope you enjoy it too if you’ve never heard it before. It has an official music video, but it cuts out about two minutes of the rest of the song, thus the album version with the static album cover is the main one you saw when you started reading. Watching the video wouldn’t do you no harm. A nice art style and animation going on there. Reminds me of Adventure Time.

#898: Billy Talent – The Navy Song

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Recalling exactly how I was introduced to this song is a bit of a pointless task. I could only give vague and hazy mental images. I want to say that leading up to the release of Billy Talent’s second album, they uploaded 30 second samples of their new song onto their website which gave everyone a taste of what was to come. But I have the feeling that’s me wanting to remember something that didn’t happen at all. It doesn’t really matter. The point is, I got that album for Christmas 2006 and it’s been a mainstay on every mp3 player I’ve owned, the family computer, my laptop… I gave away a lot of my old CDs recently, but I couldn’t find it within me to give away my copies of the band’s first two albums. They’re just too good.

So, I would have been 11 years old when I first heard ‘The Navy Song’. Couldn’t tell you how 11-year-old me felt upon that first listen. But from my 26-year-old point of view, I remember that I was a huge fan of Ian D’Sa’s guitar playing. How he could make one guitar sound like two separate guitars playing at the same time. And that aspect of his style is on show here. Just that introduction alone draws me in every time, with that sort of skipping momentum while it plays the melody of the chorus that shows up later in the song. He never plays just one chord for four bars, or a standard 4 chord progression that runs throughout a track. He has guitar lines and progressions that can rise and fall while incorporating a lot of melody. His playing is something that always gets me bugging out when listening to Billy Talent songs. No exception here. Plus, the track is carried by this great swinging 12/8 rhythm, which I’ve always thought was meant to mirror the swaying of the ship on the waves of the sea. Not sure if that was the purpose, but for that I always thought the music matched the lyric matter perfectly.

And what the track is about is kinda sad. The track’s narrator’s gone to war, presumably for the navy, and is remembering their loved ones back home, while fully aware that they may never return. It’s pretty much confirmed in the bridge(?) that they do in fact die, and ‘wait in heaven’ until they meet again with their partner. Pretty brutal. But in a wider degree, I think it’s a song dedicated to those real navy soldiers who are putting their lives on the line and are very much in the same situation as the narrative voice in this track. It’s a heavy reminder that people die out there, and it’s not something to take lightly. It does make for some good listening though, I gotta say. Sometimes you think of some of the music you were into when you were 11 and think, “What was that all about?” And then there are those gems that stick with you for 15 years and counting. Funny thing, music is.

#897: They Might Be Giants – Nanobots

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Surprise! Bet you weren’t expecting that were you? No update post to say I’ll be coming back soon, just bam – here it is. Your favourite music blog. Or not, there are many others out there. But in general, I’m well and still kicking. It’s time to start the N section.

And it begins with the title track from They Might Be Giants’ 2013 album Nanobots. That year I was in my final year of secondary school and not having the greatest time, but the release of new TMBG material was a ray of light during that period. It’s not my favourite album of the group’s; at the time of its release I couldn’t help but compare it to 2011’s Join Us, which I still think is one of their best albums now. I think it was just a bit more consistent. But the highs of Nanobots are some of the group’s best songs, I think.

‘Nanobots’ is the second track on there, and introduces a theme of reproduction that appears here and there throughout the record. John Linnell is the lead vocalist, but is accompanied by some harmonising robotic backing vocals by John Flansburgh. Thinking about how just a bit weird it is to think that we were put on this earth to just make more of ourselves, Linnell wrote the track comparing the act of reproduction to the emerging technology field of nanorobotics. There’s a certain type of music that the song’s rhythm and guitar progression reminds me of… I want to say calypso? I’m probably way off, but I’ve had that thought for years. And as the song progresses, there’s a tasteful horn section that comes in, mirrors the chorus melody and adds another warm layer to the track’s proceedings. All in all, it’s a very pleasant two minute and 44 second affair.

I’m a bit rusty, so forgive me if the post’s a bit short. I’ll get into it though. Still got a lot more songs to come. Below’s the official video for the song, directed by the man who wrote ‘United States of Whatever’.

#896: Radiohead – Myxomatosis. (Judge, Jury & Executioner.)

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‘Myxomatosis’ may very well be the very first Radiohead song I ever heard. You may think, “Why that one?” Out of all of the tracks that the band have ever made, that’s a bit out there. Well, it’s because it was on the soundtrack of FIFA 2004, a game that I played almost every weekend when I was nine years old. EA Sports were on another level with their soundtrack picks back in the day. Have to say this song stood out from the many others that accompanied it in the the game’s background music. The child that I was, I had never heard a song like it before. The riff was nasty/strange, I thought it had a bit of a swing to it (which it doesn’t – it’s in 4/4, but I had no idea what time signatures were), and the singer had this low, relaxing delivery. It was sort of hypnotizing. And after enough times I was singing along to it whenever it popped up.

Obviously, there’s a huge irony about a nine-year-old happily grooving to a track that references a fatal disease that affected rabbits, but the music sounded too good. I remember the times of trying to find this song online, but music streaming definitely wasn’t a thing (at least not to the extent it is now), so all I could ever find were lyrics. Through finding those I then discovered that FIFA had actually censored some parts of the song and had cut a large chunk of it out. It was years until I listened to the full thing, I guess when I got Hail to the Thief as a present in 2010. Six darn years later. But by that point, my appreciation for Radiohead had grown immensely. In 2021, this song still stomps. It’s intense, it pummels, gives off such a menacing aura. I don’t know what it’s about, I can’t lie. I’ve had some thoughts, and my interpretation is that it’s a very, very dark take on touring and the media. The fans are the people twitching and salivating, the narrator talks about sleeping with whoever they like and how one woman in particular ‘ate him up for breakfast’. But at the end of it all, he ends up feeling confused and like a piece of meat. These are all just guesses on my part. In recent live performances, there are some extra lyrics that Thom Yorke sings that weren’t included in the album version. A particular appearance of these are in the band’s live take of the song in their From the Basement set in 2008. Sometimes, I even prefer that to the original. I’ll link it all below.

And that is it. That’s the ‘M’ section done. The calendar for this shows that I started posting for the M’s exactly seven months ago. I actually started on January 10th, and wrote each following post almost a month in advance. As I type to you, it’s the 7th August, and I’ve just had my second COVID vaccine. Hello from the somewhat distant past. Thanks for joining on this ‘journey’. Thanks to whoever’s been reading and liking and following. Makes all of these posts worthwhile; I’m glad it’s reaching people out there. The N’s will definitely arrive. But for now… a break’s needed. Bye, bye, now, Take care of yourselves.

#895: Beach House – Myth

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I’m not the biggest follower of Beach House. I think I only got round to listening some albums of theirs initially because Pitchfork said they were very good. This would’ve been back in 2013/14 or so. Their latest record at that point was Bloom, an LP that was considered to be a tenth of a point better than the album that preceded it. Having listened to those albums for some time now, I’ve gotta say my favourite between the two is Teen Dream. I just like more songs from there. But Bloom has some highlights itself, one of those by a mile is the opener, ‘Myth’.

Like the first track that came before on Teen Dream, ‘Myth’ basically grabbed me straight away with the progression of that twinkling guitar in the intro. Everything after that was an added bonus. Victoria Legrand’s voice was just as ‘grand’ and majestic, smokey still, but with a bunch of reverb this time round. The vocal melody was striking and seemed so familiar, even though I hadn’t heard the track before. It seemed like one of those that has always been in the ether somewhere. Obviously it hadn’t, but by the end of the track I was humming along like I’d known it for years. I couldn’t sing to it; I didn’t know the lyrics. And then to round it all off comes that crying guitar sort of solo to bring it home before transitioning into the quiet keyboard riff that’s been looping since the track’s start. All comes round full circle, and it’s beautiful stuff.

Beach House have some great, great songs. They’re just in a list of those artists/bands that indieheads love that I’ve never been able to quite get into. Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem… Sufjan Stevens. Those iconic indie people, I guess. Same situation, all have great songs, but there’s just something about them all I’m not able to vibe. But you know, it doesn’t matter that much. It’s okay. You should never try and force these things. All of these songs I’ll continue to vibe to when the time is right.