#1320: Billy Talent – Surrender

Leave a reply

On Christmas Day 2006, I got Billy Talent II as a gift after including it in the yearly list to my cousin. She came through. I’d officially become a Billy Talent fan in the autumn of 2005 just through watching the ‘Try Honesty’ video on the band’s website and being reacquainted with ‘River Below’, which I had seen in 2004 but forgotten who it was by immediately after. The band only had one album to their name. But it was around that time that the band uploaded the demo for ‘Red Flag’ on their MySpace page. (So much better than how it ended up on the album by the way, which is why you don’t see it on this blog.) The second album hype was officially on. 2006 went on. ‘Devil in a Midnight Mass’ was released as the first single. The band’s website changed in design. And on June 26th (27th in US and Canada), the album was officially released for all to hear. Though it had also been available to listen for three days up to then, as the band had put it on their MySpace too.

So I got that album, and I’m sure I wore it out. By the time it was in my hands, ‘…Midnight Mass’, ‘Red Flag’ and ‘Fallen Leaves’ had already been released as singles, so those were ingrained in the back of my mind anyway. And I think I even had a listen through that MySpace upload and liked what I heard already. But now I owned it and the first Billy Talent album too. Couldn’t get much better. ‘Surrender’ is the ninth song on Billy Talent II, one about unrequited love, from the point of a narrator who’s deeply infatuated with a girl they get along with, but can’t muscle up the courage to say how they really feel in fear of rejection. I’ve had the experience. Years ago. It’s not great being on the introverted side of life. Not to say it doesn’t have its perks, though. I tell you, this song is one of the few in this whole series that I relate to a little too well. I listen to this song sometimes thinking, “Just talk to her, you sap,” which is advice that I should have taken. The whole ‘surrender yourself to me’ bit is a little far-fetched, I wouldn’t go that far. But that’s where the song’s narrator viewpoint is in that moment. That’s where I can differentiate.

I’m sure I liked ‘Surrender’ as a track when I initially played the album through. I can recall rewinding to the “I think I found a flower in a field of weeds” section many times, just because of the emphatic change it marks in the song’s progression. But I don’t think the song was one that I ever thought would end up being a single. So it came as a mild surprise to me when it was announced to be the fourth one from the album. Got its own music video too, as you can see above, which got its regular rotation on MTV2 around the time of its release. It was the censored version, though. Understandably so. The blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene of singer Ben Kowalewicz being shot in the head was replaced by a scene of him falling backwards out of shot. I never liked the video all that much, to be honest. But seeing it on a daily basis made me gain a larger appreciation for it. I think the big highlight is the vocal harmonies and interplay between Kowalewicz and guitarist Ian D’Sa. Especially the way the latter sings ‘Surrender’ during the choruses with the former completing the phrases before they both sing ‘Yourself to me’ in unison. That’s some good songwriting there.

#1319: Weezer – Surf Wax America

Leave a reply

I’m doing this thing lately where I’m dating my posts. Don’t worry, from the next one on, you’ll be able to carry on reading without realizing I’m writing these two months in advance of their scheduled dates. But it’s important to note, for this particular track too, that this is written the day after the man, the legend, the genius, Brian Wilson – the brains behind the Beach Boys – passed away at the age of 82. I let out an unrestrained “What?!” when I saw the message panning at the bottom of the TV screen on Sky News. Luckily, it was just me in the house, so I felt free in doing so. I mean, what more can you say? So much great music written by this one man. He’ll live on forever through it. And the influence… I feel like the whole “songs about California” thing we see today was started by Wilson and the Beach Boys. And there would be so many tracks from the past 30 years that would have gone in a totally different direction had it not been for his work.

And that leads me in to the subject of today’s post. Weezer’s ‘Surf Wax America’, the sixth track on the band’s 1994 self-titled debut, better known by you and me as the Blue Album. When I got that album in 2006 and liked it instantaneously that I started reading up around it online, one of the things that was always made clear was how the vocal breakdown in ‘Surf Wax…’ was inspired by the Beach Boys. And in ‘Holiday’ too. “Guess it’s some old band,” 11-year old me probably thought. Wouldn’t be years until I listened to the Beach Boys. All I knew was I had this great album where every song was a straight-up 10 outta 10. The guitars were crunchin’, the melodies and vocal harmonies were memorable, the performances powerful. A very solid alternative rock album if ever there was one. All the better experienced with a good speaker system, like I had with my first listen, thanks to a setup my uncle did to go with the old Windows XP computer.

The track begins the second half of the album, coming as a big pick-me-up after previous track ‘Undone’ ends with an interlude of strange piano swoops and tinkling keys. Drummer Pat Wilson came up with the riff that begins the song, hence his songwriting credit, and on top Rivers Cuomo sings about all the conventional people driving their cars to their office jobs while he prefers to surf. The song’s a great one, all about wanting to be free and breaking away from the rat race of society. Though Cuomo has also said that the whole thing’s meant to be totally sarcastic and not meant to be taken seriously. He doesn’t even surf. What’s up with that? Well, he could have fooled me. The way the whole track’s delivered, the gusto in Cuomo’s vocal, the copious amounts of energy provided in all the instruments… Sounds to me like this couldn’t be done by a band who wasn’t being anything but sincere in the music. All I know is I have a great time listening to it. I don’t know if people have it as a favourite on the album when it’s next to others like ‘Buddy Holly’, ‘Say It Ain’t So’ or ‘Jonas’. But it’s all right with me.

#1318: Oasis – Supersonic

Leave a reply

I write this post at a point in time when the first Oasis reunion show is just over three weeks away. But today, they would have been going on for almost a month. I hope the Gallagher brothers (and Bonehead) have been going strongly. I wasn’t spending countless hours in online queues when the reunion announcement was made last year. I like Oasis, but not that greatly. The only album of the band’s I’ve listened through is …Morning Glory. Definitely Maybe is considered to be the best of the best by the group. Noel Gallagher thinks of it that way. I’ve never had the urge to check it out. What I definitely know about Oasis is that they usually never let you down when it came to their singles. Their music videos were on the TV all the time. And a lot of them I liked. So when the Stop the Clocks compilation came around in November ’06, I knew I had to get my hands on it somehow.

I have a vivid memory of seeing ‘Supersonic’ one day on the small screen, and just immediately getting what it was about just from blend of music and visuals. I might have even had Stop the Clocks at the time of watching and had completely ignored the song. But if I didn’t know it by then, I definitely knew it now. I think the song is one of Oasis’s best, even if the song is about nothing at all, as Noel Gallagher as admitted on several occasions, and was written in about half an hour because the band needed a song to be the band’s first official single, after ‘Bring It on Down’ was passed over. And what a tune. Liam Gallagher’s vocal is A-class, top notch. Doesn’t yet have that rasp that would make itself known as albums went by, but it’s still got that youthful power that makes it incredibly infectious. The song has a bit of a groove to it, I feel. If I find myself nodding my head to a song’s motion, which I do in this one’s case, it’s fair to say there’s a groove about. A solid wall of barre-chord guitars, lead guitar licks here and there. What more could you ask for?

I’m not sure what else I can comment on, really. ‘Supersonic’ is a super solid number. What’s Noel Gallagher writing about? A girl called Elsa who’s into Alka Seltzer. Doing it with doctors on helicopters. Riding in BMWs, sailing in yellow submarines. A whole lot of nonsense. But in between, you’ll have the coolest phrases like, “You/I need to be your/myself, you/I can’t be no one else.” And “You need to find a way for what you want to say / But before tomorrow.” Those are some short, snappy life lessons in there. Noel Gallagher was really good at somehow throwing in some very relatable things among the unusual. That was really his bread and butter, the formula that made those first two albums (and Be Here Now to an extent) so captivating. And Liam Gallagher sang them like no one else could. Thirty years on, I’m not expecting things to be quite the same. But I could be wrong, though. There’s still time. I’ll need you guys from the future to tell me how those Oasis gigs are going.

#1317: R.E.M. – Superman

Leave a reply

At some point after finishing work on R.E.M.’s third album Fables of the Reconstruction in 1985, singer and lyricist Michael Stipe had an epiphany. He realized that having this role within the band meant that he had a voice, and from that point on he was properly going to use it. For their first three albums, Stipe had more or less got away with providing lyrics alongside the music of Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry that didn’t make much sense. Were more evocative and image-building rather than having a solid meaning. Sometimes, he wouldn’t be singing any words at all and instead moaning or murmuring vocalizations that sounded almost understandable. The band’s fourth album, Lifes Rich Pageant, released in 1986, marked Stipe’s change in direction. He was singing loud and clear about various topics from the Cold War to the death of Elvis Presley. ‘Fall on Me’ is a fine, fine song on the album. One of R.E.M.’s best.

Funnily enough though, the song I write about today wasn’t written by any members of the band and Stipe doesn’t even take the lead vocal on it. ‘Superman’, the last song on the album, is a cover of the original by late-’60s sunshine pop band The Clique. On physical releases of …Pageant, the tracklist showed preceding song ‘Swan Swan H’ as the closer, making ‘Superman’ something of a hidden track until buyers put the CD into their stereo. To fully distinguish the track as one that’s not usually R.E.M., bassist Mike Mills sings the lead throughout with Stipe providing the backing vocals and harmonies. I do usually find myself singing Stipe’s melody in the verses, still. Mills reaches those heights that I don’t have the gusto for. But all in all, the song ends the LP on a self-celebratory, upbeat note to properly bring things home.

Well, it sounds celebratory. But is it safe to say that the song is very clearly from the point of view of a stalker? The first verse gives the idea that it’s from the point of a jealous outsider, seeing a girl of their fancy with another guy and taking it upon themselves to assume this girl isn’t happy in the relationship she’s in. But the stalker idea’s really laid out in the second verse: “If you go a million miles away, I’ll track you down, girl / Trust me when I say I know the pathway to your heart.” That’s pretty creepy, right? Or maybe it’s the thoughts of a completely earnest, sane guy who’s very determined to build a healthy relationship with the gal of its dreams. I think the song’s achievement in straddling that line is what makes it that much more interesting. I’m much more into the performance of the band, though. The four members are rocking, and Mike Mills takes lead vocal duties with aplomb. Up to that point, he was always providing these memorable countermelodies and harmonies to Stipe’s main vocal, and it’s really cool to hear him take the mic here.

#1316: Gorillaz ft. De La Soul & Gruff Rhys – Superfast Jellyfish

Leave a reply

On Thursday 25th February 2010, Zane Lowe premiered ‘Superfast Jellyfish’ on BBC Radio 1 when he was still hosting a show on that station. The second song unveiled from Gorillaz’s then upcoming third album, Plastic Beach. I didn’t catch that premiere. In fact, I’m quite stumped on when I heard the song the first time. I want to say it was another ‘Stylo’ situation where I was watching Soccer AM, might have even been the Saturday after that premiere, and during a goal montage the song played. But it also may have been another case where the song was uploaded on YouTube, and I caught the song on there. My gut’s saying it’s the former, but I really can’t remember. I do know for sure that I downloaded Plastic Beach on 7th March, the ol’ family computer says so. Gorillaz had come through with another banger of an album, and ‘Superfast…’ has always been one of the most enjoyable cuts on there.

In keeping with the whole environmental theme of the LP, ‘Superfast Jellyfish’ predicts a future where we’ll all be eating jellyfish as a commodity, as a result of depleting the ocean of all its natural wildlife for our own gain. In the Gorillaz-Plastic Beach world, the superfast jellyfish are an actual animal that swim around the island depicted on the album’s cover. The track, in general, is something of a commercial for the delicacy. Plugs 1 and 2 of De La Soul provide the voiceovers similar to those you’d hear in those fast food adverts, and there’s a sample of an actual TV dinner commercial to ram the message home. And Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals comes in for the glorious choruses, which further promote this way of eating while also alerting us on the continuous pollution of the sea in the process. Another fine, fine blend of rap and singalong melody as only Damon Albarn and his guests know how do when creating a Gorillaz composition.

And we have a whole making of documentary that shows the work that went into it. Not just a song, but the whole album. What I’ve linked to is, appropriately, the ‘Superfast Jellyfish’ section of the doc. Looks like Albarn, Rhys and De La Soul all had fun while in the studio. You like to see it. I do remember wondering if Rhys was on the song at all on those first listens. I thought it was Albarn doing all the vocals initially in the choruses. It might have taken watching that documentary years back to convince me it actually was Gruff Rhys. And I also have this vivid memory of waiting in line for a ride at Thorpe Park on a school outing, only a few months after the album was out, and this kid in front of us started reciting the lyrics to the song’s first verse. Maybe to impress his mates he was with, I don’t know. It took all the energy within me to refrain from being like, “Hey! Superfast Jellyfish! I know it too!” It was for the good that I did. But I knew what was up.