#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.

#1283: They Might Be Giants – The Statue Got Me High

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I could probably say that ‘The Statue Got Me High’ goes down as one of my favourite songs by They Might Be Giants. There was a short, very brief time when I didn’t get it that much. And that was when I was about 10 and watching the music video for the first time, on the Internet, on Yahoo’s old music service website. I don’t know what it was, there’s a lot of stuff happening in the music video and the song itself is quite busy in its structure and momentum too. I think it was all too much my little, tiny head to take in. But fast forward about five years to late 2010 when I was downloading the band’s albums and got to Apollo 18, ‘Statue’ started playing and I was into it almost immediately. I think it was the first time I’d heard the track since the attempt those years prior, but it felt like it should have been a certified favourite for all of that time.

Another TMBG track mainly written by John Linnell, ‘Statue’ is about a man who stares at a monument until his head explodes. And that’s pretty much the gist of it. There’s something about the wording of the song title that seems kinda clumsy about it. A sentence like “it got me” isn’t one you hear in everyday situations. But how Linnell sings it is where it becomes very convincing as a phrase. It’s like he’s shouting it from the highest rooftop and wants everyone to know about the situation he’s in. Or the narrator, whatever. It’s a song where I very much enjoy Linnell’s vocal performance. It’s one where he’s belting out the notes from his chest one moment and then singing in a standard baritone, sort of mirror the intensity/moments of relaxation in the music, all while maintaining these glorious melodies and recording these harmonies and backing vocals that add these layers of substance. As much as I like all the instruments behind them all, I think this song’s massive strength is in that vocal work. All so jubilant and earwormy, in general.

I want to say that I read somewhere that Linnell had a daydream depicting this scene and was inspired enough to write a song about it. Though, I may be making that up. I guess that’s how most songwriters fulfill their craft. They make up scenarios and write songs about them. But sometimes I think about how John Linnell can write songs like ‘Four of Two’ or ‘My Man’. And it’s like, yeah, maybe he just has daydreams about a person strangling themselves to death while looking at a clock, or another person suffering from spinal paralysis, and has an urge to write about them. Even the song ‘Unrelated Thing’ is about a woman daydreaming in the middle of a tremendously boring date. They’re not your typical song topics, but that’s what sets the Giants apart from nearly everyone else. And a large majority songs usually turn out good too. I just don’t know how they do it.

#1282: The Rolling Stones – Start Me Up

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In 2009, I stumbled upon the YouTube account of StSanders. If you’re aware of the whole ‘Band Shreds’ gimmick where people overdub themselves playing badly over a video to make it look like the artist/band can’t sing or play their instruments properly, I’m very sure StSanders started that whole thing. The main difference with his videos though was that he made completely new music and lyrics, somehow still syncing with the actions and lip-syncing of the original footage, ending up with some amazingly hilarious results. His one for the Beatles was the first I ever saw, and I remember my jaw dropping and my brain sort of rewiring itself when I realized what was happening. And once I got into it, I went onto his YouTube channel to see what else he’d worked on, saw the one he did using the video for The Rolling Stones’ ‘Start Me Up’ and fell about laughing some more. I’ll go ahead and embed that one below. It seems stupid at first. But just follow through with it, it’s worth the watch.

Safe to say, the actual ‘Start Me Up’ song is nothing like the Frankenstein’s monster StSanders made of it. Because I’d seen the Shreds video first, I couldn’t help but try and match it with the actual words Mick Jagger is miming to in the proper music video. Once those lines became less blurred, I came to appreciate both in their own respective ways. ‘Start Me Up’ opens The Rolling Stones’ 1981 album, Tattoo You, one that mostly consists of studio outtakes recorded in the 1970s. The song started out as a reggae tune in ’75 when the band were working on Black and Blue. They re-recorded it during some sessions for Some Girls in ’78. The group just couldn’t get the music right. But when 1981 came around, the album engineer found a take where the band performed a straighter rock version rather than the reggae vibe they’d mostly been sticking too. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood laid down some vocals over the top, a few overdubs were done, and the version of ‘Start Me Up’ we all know was completed.

‘Start Me Up’ is one long metaphor for sex. Sex and arousal, and there’s not much else to it. Jagger sings about seeing a beautiful woman and getting turned on, likening it to revving up a motorcyle and going for a long, long ride. Except at the end when the song’s fading out and Jagger then starts to go on about a dead man “coming”. A whole wink, wink, nudge, nudge moment this song is. But I can’t be mad at it. Keith Richards’s guitar’s the first thing you hear, followed by an thwack on the snare by Charlie Watts, and when the rhythm truly gets going, it’s pretty much a wrap. You’re under the song’s spell. At least that’s the way it ended up for me. I’m usually listening to the interplay between the guitars of Richards and Ronnie Wood. Whose guitar is in which channel, I’m still not sure, but they’re both never playing the exact same thing. It’s cool to see where they differentiate and then maybe play something in unison at points. And the rhythm section of Bill Wyman on the bass with Watts on the sticks is strong as ever. That snare really has a rich tone to it, slices through the mix. And despite all the innuendos being thrown at you, Jagger doesn’t sound bad either. Like those “mean, mean machiiiiiine” growls that transition into those alluring ‘start it up”s at the end of the choruses, which are usually followed by the perkier ‘Start it up”s that begin the verses. A strong performance by all involved.

#1281: Dinosaur Jr. – Start Choppin’

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I’ve written about a Dinosaur Jr. song once before. Years ago. That was for ‘Feel the Pain’. I want to say that was the first one by the band that I’d heard ever. And today’s number, ‘Start Choppin’, was the second. Both I found in almost identical circumstances. Sat on my behind in front of the television watching MTV2. Couldn’t remember what year exactly ‘Start Choppin’ was laid upon eyes exactly. I do recall feeling, again, very much like ‘Feel the Pain’, like I had heard the song before in an advert or something. The guitar trill J Mascis pulls off behind the falsetto “goodbye”s sounded very, very familiar. But if that wasn’t the case and my mind was just playing tricks on me, here was another song by that Dinosaur Jr. band that sounded just as good the last one to the young kid I was back then.

What I think the song details is a narrator’s frustration with a relationship they’re involved in that’s clearly on its last legs. Mascis dryly sings about feeling “so numb” that he “can’t even react”, wishing the other person would let things go and wondering if they’re listening to a word he’s saying. And yet, despite the dissatisfaction, the narrator is still too attached and isn’t ready to walk out – probably worried at the thought of being alone. There’s a definite tension threaded within the lyrics, between the two people in this relationship and I guess in the mental conversation the narrator’s having with themselves. And what better way to symbolise it than with not one but two blazing guitar solos? All distorted and wailing, they’re massive in sound among the crunching rhythm parts. Really aid in capturing the anguish. The music video fades the second solo out much earlier. Even I remember my young self thinking, “That solo definitely goes on longer on the actual CD.” And it does, I might even embed the whole thing at the end, just for the hell it.

‘…Choppin’ is the second song on the band’s 1993 album Where You Been. What I’ve always thought cool about that album is how most of the song titles on there can be used as an answer or addendum to the question posed by the album. Like, “Where you been?” “Oh, out there.” Or here, “Where you been? Start choppin’!” Like you’re being told to start preparing food or something. The song only has its name because the version of the album is made by splices of different takes of the track pasted together, to which songwriter J Mascis remarked the song title while all this was going on. The title appears nowhere in the lyrics, but I couldn’t imagine it being named anything else. It was released as the album’s second single, after ‘Get Me’ was released as the first. And that’s a great tune too. I only heard it for the first time in 2018, so it can’t get a post here. But if it could have, it would have.

#1280: The Kinks – Starstruck

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On this blog, you’ll find that the majority of songs by The Kinks that I’ve written about are from the Village Green Preservation Society album, released back in 1968. I’m quite fond of Village Green, think it goes without saying. The first number from the record I covered was ‘Do You Remember Walter?’ in 2014. I didn’t give much of a backstory on there as to how I came across the album. It would have been an ideal situation to, that’s for sure. I’m fairly certain I found it through besteveralbums.com, sometime in 2013, and after going through it a couple more times, melodies and rhythmic moments would spontaneously arrive in my head and the songs that would become my favourites made themselves known.

‘Starstruck’ was one of the songs on there that I came to treasure. When exactly, I don’t know, but I seem to remember at one point listening to the part where the band go into that wordless “ba-ba-da-ba-ba” vocal break during the middle eight, thinking “Oh, hell yeah” and wanting to clap along with them. Reminded me of being at the pub with old mates or something. The track was released as the album’s lead single. ‘Days’ had been released as one earlier in the year, but didn’t make it onto the full LP. The band even made a video for ‘Starstruck’ and everything, which you can see above. Apparently might be the last footage of the band in their original four-piece line-up before bassist Pete Quaife departed not too long after. But for whatever reason, ‘Starstruck’ only charted in the Netherlands and didn’t get the commercial success it was probably warranted. Very much like the album as a whole. A shame, but that’s how things had to be, I guess.

In the track, Ray Davies sings about a lady within his/the band’s circle who’s sounds like she’s having a good time being caught up in the celebrity lifestyle a member of a rock group would experience in the ’60s. Davies, however, takes a point of view that she might be having a little too much fun and that while the glitz and glamour may seem all appealing and everything, she’ll eventually be chewed up and spat out by all the vices that come along with it. Some fair advice, though could come across as a little condescending. Man telling a woman what to do and all that. “Starstruck on me.” Bit presumptuous. But man, if the melody on here doesn’t supersede all of that. Davies was in his melody bag during the making of this particular record, must have been something in the air. He sort of takes on this high, soft register, maybe to adopt a parental, motherly kind of character perhaps, which contrasts with the drier “Starstruck, baby, you know that you’re starstruck” backing vocals during the chorus. It’s all nice stuff. And you’ve got to appreciate a good use of a Mellotron too. It provides those strings you hear throughout. The Mellotron should come back in these times.