#1288: They Might Be Giants – Stone Cold Coup d’État

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On 26th February 2013, I wrote a blog about They Might Be Giants’ song ‘Absolutely Bill’s Mood’. A busy little number, that one. That post was the third one I ever wrote on here. Coincidentally, that was the day that the band’s album Nanobots was made available to stream in its entirety on Rolling Stone, a week before its official release on 5th March (or 4th if you were in the UK like me). You can see me going crazy about it all on that same post. As the big TMBG fan I was at 17, I was excited for sure. As the big 30-year-old TMBG fan I am now, Nanobots is one of the group’s that I don’t return to all that much. It’s not bad. It’s not boring. I’ve always thought the majority of it was okay, with a few jewels shining in the tracklist. And ‘Stone Cold Coup d’État’ was one of those jewels that I think I liked immediately when I heard it on that available stream all those years ago.

A coup d’état is ‘an unexpected or sudden measure of state often involving force or threat of force’, as defined by Merriam-Webster. It’s a term usually associated with the overthrowing of a government by some organization. Though a government isn’t described or depicted in the lyrics of ‘Stone Cold…’, there’s definitely a lot of overthrowing going on. In the track, John Linnell sings of instances where the natural order is flipped, and what we would consider to be the servants in the hierarchy are now in charge. The stars have banded together to take out the sun and the moon. The worker bees have jumped the queen and taken over. An orchestra conductor is killed off, and a single viola takes their place. All greatly exaggerated scenes. Things get real though, when Linnell implies that a son and daughter murder their parents during a pleasant family dinner. Nevertheless, all of these actions are celebrated with a harmonised “Oh, yeah!” Linnell remarks they have “a certain je ne sais quoi”. He asks what the certain je ne sais quoi is. To which the answer is the song’s title. A tasteful use of the French language, I must say.

John Linnell has usually had a knack for writing strong power pop songs. The first one I can think of where it started would probably be ‘Experimental Film’? Though anyone can disagree. But the 2010s seemed to mark the time where he seemed to write one great power pop song after another. Kinda lacking the weirdness and eccentricity that would be found in the band’s earlier work, which some may feel “sad” about. But still enriched in the melody and memorability that makes the great in the first place. ‘Stone Cold…’ is one of ’em. A notable feature about the track is the accompaniment of John Flansburgh’s wife Robin Goldwasser on vocals. She provides the second harmonised ‘Stone Cold Coup d’État’ in the chorus after Linnell sings it first, and then Flansburgh follows after with the higher harmony. I like how he stays on that note after the other two stop singing at the end too. Really belting it out. This is a big high from Nanobots in my view, so I reckon it stands it ground as being the last representative from the album that I write about on here.

#1287: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Stick Figures in Love

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The tale of how I came to know Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks’ 2011 album Mirror Traffic is one that I think I told quite well and hopefully with some clarity, when I wrote about other song ‘Senator’ a few months back. Without trying to repeat myself, I’ll just say the record made those first few months of my fresher year in university that little more enjoyable whenever I was in those moments of solitude in my room in the student flat. Can’t say I took in the whole package, I think, even at 18, I was still adjusting to really focusing on albums and listening to them in one sitting. But songs like the aforementioned ‘Senator’, ‘Fall Away’, the first track ‘Tigers’ – which will get its due on here one day – and the seventh song, today’s feature, ‘Stick Figures in Love’ were instantaneous likes on my part, from what I can recall.

I go on Spotify and I see ‘Stick Figures…’ being the most popular song on there, at least at the time of writing this, with a little over 3.2 million plays. Just over two million more than the next one. It was released as a promotional single for the album in 2012, but it’s not like it hit the airwaves and played constantly. Didn’t make it into the charts. So I can only put the popularity down to the immediate appeal initiated by the opening guitar riff. Straight out of the gate, Malkmus lays down a lead guitar passage that soars and gallops – changing up the delivery as the basic rhythm underneath goes on for an extra measure or something. This riff comes back at regular intervals, sort of acting as an instrumental chorus of the track. Choruses are meant to be the most memorable parts of a song, right? From how I’ve come to know music, anyway. And that’s certainly the case for the guitar solo ‘Stick Figures in Love’ revolves around.

And then in between those, Malkmus sings some verses. ‘Cause you’ve got to have verses at some point. When I sing along and decipher what Malkmus is relaying to us, I come to find quickly that they seem to make a lot of concrete sense. Or at least there’s no sort of cohesive thread from line to line. I am a fan of the verses here, Malkmus delivers them all lightly and softly. He increases the intensity of his vocal for the third and final one, though. He corpses during the last line of the first verse, which I think is cool that was left in the final product. But I do get a feeling that those parts are meant to keep us listeners occupied before the thrilling guitar riff comes in again. All that being said, this one’s still a major highlight from Mirror Traffic. The title doesn’t appear in the lyrics. I’ve only recently thought of it as a way of saying “Skinny people in love.” I feel like there can be a comparison there. Malkmus isn’t the thickest of human beings, so maybe it’s a love song in his own way. That’s as far as I’m prepared to go in terms of interpretation.

#1286: Blur – Stereotypes

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Up until The Great Escape in 1995, it was the trend that whatever the first song on a Blur album was had already been released as the first single in advance. ‘She’s So High’ for Leisure, ‘For Tomorrow’ on Modern Life Is Rubbish, and ‘Girls & Boys’ on Parklife. ‘Stereotypes’, although being the opener on The Great Escape when that came around in the autumn of 1995, bucked that trend. It was the main contender to be the lead representative, but then ‘Country House’ – the second tune on the record – was chosen instead. We all know how that went down. Nah, instead, ‘Stereotypes’ was released as the album’s third single in February ’96. But for the crazy successful year 1994 to 1995 was for Blur, ‘Stereotypes’ is a pretty perfect way to open an album released amidst the madness, with its frantic synthesizers and stabbing guitar chords.

I came across the track myself pretty much the same way I got to know all the other Blur singles. Through seeing their music videos on the television. Although it wasn’t on MTV2. I distinctly remember seeing it on Q, if anyone remembers that channel. Blur videos were usually playing on the telly, and this was during a time when the band weren’t even together. ‘Stereotypes’ was one of those live performance montage music videos you usually get when a band’s on the road and don’t have time for those two-day video shoots. Nothing like their cooler, cinematic videos, but the song sounded very, very nice. When I was 11/12, I was mostly into the songs I saw on TV, and so compilations were my usual request for gifts for older bands whose videos were frequently played. Blur’s 2000 Best Of didn’t have ‘Stereotypes’ on there, unfortunately. I have the feeling I knew this before owning it. I still got the comp anyway. But I downloaded ‘Stereotypes’ on its own a while afterwards.

The song’s kinda strange in that it’s about the activities of swingers, “wife-swapping” as it’s explicitly referred to in the lyrics. Damon Albarn sings about a woman who gets a little frisky with another man while her husband is away, having their way with each other in different locations of the house and in full view of the neighbours. The ‘stereotypes’ that there must be more to life than are the usual doting wife and adoring husband that I guess you would usually find in a faithful marriage. Albarn tells us to live a little, bring in another couple and get a bit freaky to spice things up. Graham Coxon’s guitar playing is a highlight. It’s kinda buried in the mix, but when you pick it out, you can hear how it sounds like he’s attacking those strings. A very rough sound to those chords, you gotta love it. Some websites last the line of the song as ‘You should go on another bender/Before you come to offend her’, which is a little menacing to say the least. I think Albarn sings ‘before you come to an end, uhhhh’, meaning “before you die”. I like how the song slows in tempo while that line’s being sung too. ‘Stereotypes’ is a bit of a forgotten single. Doesn’t help that the band don’t look on The Great Escape with the highest of regards. It’ll be a long time before they play it live again, is what I’m saying. I don’t think it’s too bad.

#1285: Pavement – Stereo

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And here it is. The third track by Pavement that I’d ever heard. ‘Cut Your Hair’ was the first. ‘Shady Lane’, second. One day, either when I was 11 or 12 and flicking through the music channels like I did on the regular in those days, I switched back to MTV2 and playing on the screen was the video for ‘Stereo’. It was nearing its end, but there was just enough time left that the graphic stating ‘PAVEMENT – STEREO’ popped up on the screen. It left me with a good feeling. “Hey, it’s that band again.” The song sounded great. But it seemed that whenever the video was playing, I’d be on another channel. I’d switch back to MTV2 on some days, and there it was again getting to the end. I don’t think it was until YouTube was a thing that I was able to watch the whole video. It also revealed to me that Stephen Malkmus was the singer in the band, as it showed him fully miming the words. He’s headless in ‘Shady Lane’, so I still didn’t know, and in ‘Cut Your Hair’ all the members are mouthing the lyrics. Malkmus wasn’t playing the guitar, though, so I thought Bob Nastanovich was the second guitarist for a while.

‘Stereo’ is the first track, the enigmatic opener on Pavement’s Brighten the Corners – the band’s fourth album, released in 1997. You’re probably well aware of this now, because it’s the third time I’ve written about a song from the record during this ‘S’ section. A quarter of the songs from the record begin with ‘S’, I guess that’s neat. I call the song “enigmatic” because, really, trying to think and gain an understanding on what it’s about would probably be a futile task. stephen Malkmus conjures up phrases and words that sound good together, coming up with lines that’ll make you chuckle. The “What about the voice of Geddy Lee” one is a classic in the indie-sphere. “Pigs, they tend to wiggle when they walk” is one way to start a song off, let alone a whole album. And of course there’s the chorus, “I’m on the stereo/Stereo/My baby, baby, babe/Gave me malaria/Hysteria”. All very much a stream of consciousness feel throughout, and yet if you’re singing along once you get the lyrics down, the words roll right off the tongue.

If I were to hazard a guess at what the song’s going for, I think it’s Malkmus’s way of trying to make a radio hit while making fun of the idea at the same time. The random nature of the words is the main signifier for this thought, and the way he caps it all off with “Lots of details to discern, lots of details” after providing a lyric that doesn’t really need to be analysed at all seems very tongue-in-cheek. The way he sings “Wave to the camera/It took a giant ramrod” using the “Ring a Ring ‘o Roses” melody, or the “na-na-na-na boo boo” one, sounds like he’s even making fun of himself and us with his delivery. And then there’s the intro and the instrumental breaks, which consist of erratic strums and picking on the electric guitars alongside some harmonics to boot, while the rhythm section keeps things nice and sturdy. In all those ways, it’s a song that shouldn’t work, but does. It was released as the first single from Brighten the Corners, two weeks before the album was released. It got to #48 in the UK. Maybe not a complete commercial smash. But it’s a beloved Pavement number, probably one of their most played out on the road, and I’ve got a liking towards it too. If that wasn’t made clear already.

#1284: Enter Shikari – Step Up

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Enter Shikari’s ‘Step Up’ is the last representative of the band’s Common Dreads album, their second, released back in 2009, that’ll be showing up on the blog here. If I was at this point in this series maybe a decade ago, there would have been a couple more posts for other songs on there. Namely, ‘Solidarity’ and ‘The Jester’. But there was a point when I would have my phone on shuffle and, despite the whole purpose of shuffle being random in the song selection, those two songs would start to play on almost constant basis. And as the years went on, I slowly fell out of favour with other numbers like ‘Gap in the Fence’ and ‘Hectic’. But the posts for those two up and available to read, so you can see my thoughts from a time when I was properly into them.

But through it all, ‘Step Up’ has stood tall while those fell to the figurative wayside. With its place as the third song on Common Dreads, it helps to further establish the mood of the album coming after the titular intro track and ‘Solidarity’. But while ‘Solidarity’ acts as a call for unity and is something for the fans with its musical/lyrical callbacks to refrains and motifs from their previous album, ‘Step Up’ is the slap in the face – telling people to wake up and pay attention to the injustice that’s happening on the regular around the world. Vocalist Rou Reynolds, alongside bassist and backing vocalist Chris Batten, critique the passivity I think the majority of us are prone to when we witness something happening horrible on the news and rally to us that, by doing a little research and taking action, we can at least play a part in making a difference. However small the result may be, the main point is that an attempt was made.

The track begins with its frantic synths, spilling over from the preceding track while that comes to a close, that soon make way for drummer Rob Rolfe’s thunderous entrance. It’s not too long that, after a dominant roar from Reynolds, proceedings properly get going, with he and Batten doing a respective call and response, shouting versus melodic singing dynamic – a thing that was very much a staple in those earlier Enter Shikari albums. For a post-hardcore type of band, they were never too proud to showcase their prowess at harmonies. There’s plenty of those to latch on to here also. I guess another notable part is the spoken word bridge Reynolds delivers nearing halfway through. It’s not the last time you’ll be hearing that sort of vocal delivery on the record if you’re listening from front to back. In fact, the very next song contains it too. But it’s there that Reynolds bluntly states that we don’t know how good we’ve got it while other people are suffering, screaming his frustration which then leads into the song’s second half. It’s great stuff. This is the last from Common Dreads on here. It’s not the last of Enter Shikari.