My iPod #543: Green Day – Horseshoes and Handgrenades

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“>”Horseshoes and Handgrenades” would have been the perfect first single for 21st Century Breakdown, in my opinion. “I’m not fucking around” seems like the perfect first line to come back after five years of waiting for a new album, Billie Joe sings like he is attacking with a vengeance on here and sounds absolutely untouchable. He isn’t playing any games. Most of all, the song doesn’t play it safe; though it’s a bit repetitive it is still very exciting to listen to whereas, unfortunately, “Know Your Enemy” pales in comparison.

Like Sex Pistols’ “Holidays in the Sun”, “Horseshoes” begins with a chanting soldiers march but instead introduces the song’s rip-roaring riff before Tré Cool pounds on the tom-toms to get things really rolling. In three and a bit minutes, Billie Joe Armstrong doesn’t really sing as he does melodically shout about destroying everything in his path and not giving a fuck about it. He has no respect for himself, labelling himself as ‘a hater’ and ‘a traitor’, so why should he care about what anyone else says? The solid wall of guitars made by Butch Vig’s production heighten Billie Joe’s delivery, providing a relentless riff that repeats for what seems like hours on end and come to a sudden stop after Billie’s snarling screams.

There’s a raw intensity captured in “Horseshoes” that doesn’t appear so much in the album, and it is the only one where the band go balls to the wall in their performance for the whole track.

My iPod #542: They Might Be Giants – Hopeless Bleak Despair

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“Hopeless Bleak Despair” is another They Might Be Giants song that takes on the depressing/saddening subject matter with upbeat/happy sounding music. Appearing on the group’s eighth album Mink Car in 2001, John Linnell sings from the perspective of a person burdened by this ‘hopeless bleak despair’.

Placed between “Yeh Yeh” and “Drink!“, two tracks where John Flansburgh sings about the joys of having a good time with a girlfriend and drinking respectively, “Hopeless Bleak Despair”, sung by John Linnell, is something of a sobering listen. The narrator’s life falls apart because of this despair. His family leave him, and he is fired from his job. It isn’t until the final verse where it is revealed, amongst angelic background choir vocals, that the narrator is dead – how he died is not said but we can assume it’s suicide – and was finally separated from it. However, the narrator goes to hell while the despair ‘ascends to heaven’ so even then it gains the upper hand.

The song’s quite funny that way. After everything that has happened to him whilst alive, the narrator can’t catch a break even in the afterlife. You want to feel sorry for him but Linnell’s enthusiastic vocals and the forceful performance by the band pushes those feelings aside, and instead will have you singing along to this poor person’s problems.

My iPod #541: Kendrick Lamar – Hood Politics

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Released a week earlier than its initial confirmed date, Kendrick’s third album To Pimp a Butterfly sent everyone into meltdown. It was the end of an anticipation that had been building following the release of 2012’s good kid, m.A.A.D. city, his game-changing verse on Big Sean’s “Control” and some notable feature appearances. Despite the number of tweets that criticised the album because of the lack of bangers and the funk/jazz/soul influence throughout, there were the smart ones who were able to appreciate that it was, truly, the second coming (in the way that the album is his second major-label release).

“Hood Politics” is its tenth track. It starts with a funky beat that plays over a humourous phone message ‘skit’ before abruptly introducing its main instrumental, made by sampling Sufjan Stevens and producing a booming drum pattern that beats in time with Kendrick’s electrified rapping. The track is a message to those who think the rapper was forgetting his roots now that he had made a big name for himself, and in three verses the man respectively details life in the hood before commenting on the government’s effect on it and providing his views on the rap industry. Beware of another sudden beat change that comes from out of nowhere after the second verse, shit gets real.

To Pimp a Butterfly is an album that you have to process upon listening to it. I heard it on Spotify the day it unexpectedly arrived and found that I was unable to comprehend its greatness for a while. But it is an album that focuses on very important issues that force you to think whilst putting yourself in Kendrick’s perspective. “Hood Politics” is another deep cut on there that does just that, even its focus is on rap and none of the other bullshit.

My iPod #540: Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Honeybear

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Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ second album Show Your Bones signified a change in the the band’s style. Determined not to make a “Fever to Tell Part 2”, songs written for the then-upcoming album were scrapped and the three members decided to re-invent their sound. The result was an album with a larger sound, a bit more mystique, and one that tended to embrace the country/folk aspects of rock rather than the dirty/punk of the group’s debut.

“Honeybear” is one song on Show Your Bones which the latter part of that statement applies to. Karen O sings about her loathing for phony LA A-List parties and her plans to gate crash them against a rocking Country-Western sounding instrumental including jumpy synthesizers and sandy electric guitars. Listen to that instrumental break and try to tell me that it doesn’t sound like the music preceding the final showdown between two cowboys. That is all I can imagine, and it will be hard for you to tell me otherwise.

So yeah, I like this track. It’s a cool deep cut from a decent LP. Rock on Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

My iPod #539: Green Day – Homecoming

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Jimmy’s story comes to an epic close in the second medley on American Idiot. In “Homecoming”, the anti-hero rids himself of his ‘St. Jimmy’ alter ego and makes an effort to lead a normal life before, overcome with self-pity and loneliness, deciding to return to the home that he had left ten songs earlier. In nine minutes, the track tells this story in five separate movements (“The Death of St. Jimmy”, “East 12th St.”, “Nobody Likes You”, “Rock and Roll Girlfriend”, and “We’re Coming Home Again”), acting as the final chapter to the main storyline before the epilogue of “Whatsername“.

Mike Dirnt actually instigated work on the track, writing a ‘thirty second song’ that caught Billie Joe’s attention. He then went to write his own half-minute number with Tré Cool doing the same. Serious business grew as the three members began to try and outdo each other, but the time arrived when they began connecting their snippets together and realised that they could really start something with the method. “Homecoming” was born, and “Jesus of Suburbia” followed soon after.

“Homecoming” has always edged further than “Jesus” for me. Both are excellent compositions for sure, but the former sees the narrator in a somewhat more mature light than the latter. Instead of feeling victimized and angry with those around him, Jimmy realises that he has been in the wrong the whole time. After all the shit he has gone through, it is good to hear the steps that lead to his much needed happy ending.