Ten Years of This Blogging Thing

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Hey there, everyone.

The 22nd of February 2023 marks the tenth anniversary of this blog. Well, it started on Blogger under a terrible name which, if you’ve checked the ‘About’ page, you’ll know about. But yeah. Ten years. What initially was going to be random-thoughts-on-a-daily-basis blog then turned into a concrete thing that came from the idea of “I like music, and I’m sure I could write about it on a daily occurrence. I should write about the songs on my iPod Touch.” And so I did. I was writing posts on the same day as they were posted almost every day for a long, long time. That then turned into every other day. Now I’m writing posts two months in advance. It’s just so much more manageable.

I’m glad I did start it. Gives me something to think about for the length of time I take to write each post. My writing back in those early was very melodramatic, exaggerated. I really wanted to get that feeling across that I very much cared for these songs. There are a lot of exclamation marks, smiley faces… uppercase letters. Very teenage. I don’t go back to those usually. Thank goodness, I’ve reeled it in a bit. There was a hiatus for a large period from 2015-2017 as I worked for a year and completed my final year of uni, and there was a lot of growing that happened in that time. Since then, I’m much more happier with the posts I’ve done on here, and even then I feel like I could add more to what I write.

So if you want to witness a naive, awkward 17-year-old slowly transition into a much-less-awkward-but-still-always-sort-of-there 27-year-old, here’s the very first post I made on that day. So innocent. I’d much rather be my age than 17 again.

#1006: The Vines – Outtathaway!

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My relationship with The Vines doesn’t go into much depth. I’ve never dug very deep into their discography, and have lived life being content only knowing the songs they made music videos for. The last song of the band’s that I had sort of an interest to check out was ‘He’s a Rocker’, and that was released almost 15 years ago. The videos that would be in regular rotation, at least whenever I was watching various music video channels on the TV, included ‘Get Free’, ‘Gross Out’ and ‘Anysound’. ‘Ride’, I’m very sure was used in advert that was endlessly repeated, but I don’t think I saw the video for that until years later. Out of those though, the one that ended up being my favourite was today’s track, ‘Outtathaway!’, the third single from debut Highly Evolved.

Song starts off with a stompin’ beat, nicely accentuated with the visual of a guy slapping himself in the face with a shoe in the music video, Craig Nicholls comes in with the guitar riff before letting out an indecipherable howl of an opening lyric – one that I still don’t think anyone really knows despite what any lyric website may say. The lyrics throughout aren’t very important, nothing to dwell upon, what really counts is the way they’re delivered, with Nicholls singing a phrase and bassist Patrick Matthews echoing in response. If I was to guess what the track was about, I would say it’s a general ‘fuck you’ type of song addressed to people who Nicholls doesn’t have a particular liking for. Who those types of people are aren’t disclosed in the track, but he doesn’t have the time for them, so this track is just a way of asking them to leave him alone.

But yeah, this track’s a rowdy one. Patrick Matthews provides a melodic bassline during the verses to counteract with the yelling both he and Nicholls do on the vocals, but then the wall of guitars slam into the mix for the choruses to fire the huge rush into the track. I assume what would be everyone’s highlight from this song is the tension building instrumental break which, after a repetition of ‘Come on’s among ‘aah-aah-aah’ backing vocals, the track reaches its freakout climax where Craig Nicholls just goes mad and screams as the guitars rise in intensity. Like Nicholls does in the music video, this song is one to let loose and maybe throw yourself into a wall to. And with that the O’s are over now. Didn’t we all have a good time? Probably won’t post here again before the year’s out, so wishing you all happy holidays. I’ll be back next year with the P’s. Maybe even the Q’s. R’s might be pushing it. But we’ll see how it goes.

#1005: Adrianne Lenker – out of your mind

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2019. Was a new year, and I had recently been laid off from my first job out of uni. To pass the time, while mind-numbingly scanning through applications, I listened to a bunch of albums that the Indieheads subreddit page had listed as ‘Album of the Year’ for 2018. There were 30 of them. There was only one I properly liked. It was abysskiss by Adrianne Lenker. You see the Wikipedia page I just linked to? I created it. I couldn’t take that a page hadn’t been made for it. Last year November I created a Wikipedia account just to make the thing. Listening to that album began a whole domino effect. I sought out Big Thief, listened to Capacity and Masterpiece. Kinda dug them both. But then ‘UFOF’, the single, came out, followed by ‘Cattails’, ‘Century’ and then U.F.O.F. the album, and just like that, Adrianne Lenker became a new favourite songwriter of mine.

‘out of your mind’ arrives as a bit of an odd one when going through abysskiss. After the four mainly acoustic folky, synth-tinged numbers that come before it, ‘…mind’ opens with a grungy electric guitar. Sprightly acoustic guitars take up the rest of the soundscape in both channels, but what I think the track is based around is Lenker singing the vocal while playing that electric guitar in one take. I’m not much of a lyrics guy, but what I gather is that there is a relationship involved. The whole time you’ll think Lenker’s singing about the person she’s seeing, but it’s when she uses her ‘Annie’ nickname in the last chorus that it becomes clear she’s actually taking on the perspective of her significant other. In that way, she’s reflecting on the way she acts as a person and how her partner may perceive her. It’s certainly a different way of approaching a narrative, particularly in a song.

This track is one of most recent I’ve heard when I had a sort of “eureka/a-ha!” moment. For a long while, I was having some major rhythm displacement with it. Every time I was singing along to it, I always found that the “Is it aaaannyyyy…” line for the chorus came in a beat too late. Everything was all 4/4 until that last bar before the chorus. Turned out I was missing the count-in completely. It sounded to me like the downbeat came on the very first strum of the electric guitar that starts the song. It actually starts on the second. So instead of 1-2-3-4, it’s “and, 1-2-3-4”. It would be a lot handier to visually explain it. But once I realised it, it was like ten lightbulbs going off in my head. I liked the song even with my off-timing, but with it all coming together, it truly secured itself as a favourite.

#1004: Blur – Out of Time

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The beginning of the new millennium was a weird one for Blur. They were all over the ’90s. The band’s singles and albums were a mainstay in the charts, and that whole Battle of Britpop thing with Oasis happened. But then that decade ended, they were all sort of dishevelled and in their ’30s. The band members weren’t sure which direction to go in. The band released a ‘Best of’ compilation (with great artwork), released a new single, and did some promo appearances. Search up ‘Blur 2000’ on YouTube, and it’s a bit of a trip. Kinda strange seeing the band performing ‘Girls & Boys’ with Gorillaz very much around the corner. By 2001, it was all about ‘Clint Eastwood’ and Gorillaz shot off into the stratosphere.

Couple years later, Blur got back together. Much to Damon Albarn’s hesitance as he stated in the No Distance Left to Run documentary. Graham Coxon left the band because of miscommunication, his own problems with alcohol and some strange handling by their manager. Blur continued as a three-piece. ‘Out of Time’ was the first taste of this new lineup as the first single from the then upcoming album Think Tank in 2003. I was eight years old at the time, I didn’t have a clue who Blur was. I didn’t hear Think Tank until 2013, going through Blur’s discography. I wonder how people must have felt hearing the track upon its initial release. It’s such a lowkey, very minimal track to choose as a first single. It does have a breezy groove, the percussion’s light and very tasteful. The thing that blows me away every time I hear it is Albarn’s vocal. Just so pure, clear and sincere, could bring a tear to your eye.

Released at the beginning of the Iraq War, the track asks the question of where civilisation is going with all the madness that was going on, stating that humanity was forgetting how beautiful life can be and that we may have gone too far into the deep end to recover from the devastation. That specific war’s over, but things aren’t going so well these days for anyone, so I think the song’s message still has as much poignancy now as it did then. You may across comments that harp on Think Tank because of how unlike Blur it sounds. To be fair, those may be justified. Coxon did play a massive part in the band’s sound. But this track came out of it, so I don’t complain too much. Contains a couple great ones that I’ll never be able to post about, and a few more that I will.

#1003: Cloud Nothings – Our Plans

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Cloud Nothings’ ‘Our Plans’ is a song of few lines. “Original – it’ll never get old”, “Essential – it’ll never get old”, “There’s no time for another try”, “No one knows our plans for us”, and “We won’t last long”. Five in total, that’s all. I mean, they are each repeated in various sections of the track’s structure. That’s very much what makes the track succeed. The reliance on repetition. Makes it just that bit more memorable. From the band’s 2012 album Attack on Memory, the song is in the penultimate slot. While listeners may just be waiting to see how the whole album ends at that point, I’d put in my two cents and say that ‘Our Plans’ is worth a close listen.

The track overall showcases a tight performance by all band members involved, and with Steve Albini’s production, the drums in particular sound absolutely chaotic and incredibly powerful. Even with the limited number of lyrics available to work with, I think I’ve been able to come to an understanding on the sentiment of them. Assuming they’re frontman Dylan Baldi’s lyrics and his alone – all of their tracks are credited to the band as a whole on the album, so it may not be the case – they seem to basically highlight the pressures of being in a band and making music. The pressure of being essential, original, timeless, getting things right in the least amount of takes. With the final chorus lyric being, “We won’t last long”, it seems that Baldi doesn’t think the band will be able to withstand all of these things that are asked of them. Luckily, this was about 10 years ago, and the band are still going strong today.

And that’s it for Cloud Nothings material from Attack on Memory unfortunately. ‘Cut You’ would have had a post for itself, but I had started writing posts for songs beginning with ‘D’ before I even knew who the band was. There was once a time when I really liked ‘Stay Useless’ too, but after a while each subsequent listen had less and less of an effect on me. Here and Nowhere Else is still my favourite album made by the band, and there’s still one more track to write about from that.