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My iPod #18: Brakes – All Night Disco Party

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This one’s for all the Catholics out there. Pope Francis all the way.

Got MTV2 to thank for this song again. You guys might not know a lot about Brakes. So I’ll probably just give you the gist.

Brakes are another British band, from Brighton this time, who formed in 2003. They released their first single, ‘Pick Up the Phone‘ (song starts at 0:21), and followed that up with the song above. Those two singles can be found on their first album ‘Give Blood’ which got quite good reviews, even from Robert Christgau and Pitchfork. They also go by the name BrakesBrakesBrakes in the US.

This song is so hypnotic. The bass groove, the descending guitar riff in the verses…. The repetition of the song title just sets a tone of anticipation, you’re walking with your mates down the street to the biggest party that has been hyped for months. You find the door, you hear the thumping music, and then you walk inside. That’s when the chorus comes in.

EAST WEST. NORTH SOUTH. LEFT RIGHT. CROQUE-MONSIEUR, CROQUE MADAME.

Yes, the chorus doesn’t make any sense at all. When I first heard the song, I thought that the lead singer was speaking in a different language/from a different country altogether. I think Brakes are known for their nonsensical lyrics, I mean listen to ‘Porcupine or Pineapple‘, or ‘Hey Hey‘ for example. Don’t let that take away from the song’s message though, who cares about anything when you’re at an awesome party? You don’t listen to the lyrics in the music, you just dance around and hopefully get some.

This song would be suitable to play at any party. At least an indie disco party anyway.

Also, for more information on a croque-monsieur and croque-madame, click here.

Until next time.

Jamie.

My iPod #17: The Offspring – All I Want

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So I’m watching standard TV one day, I change it to MTV2 and then suddenly “ALL I WAAAAAAAAAAAANT YAH YAH YAH YAH YAH” and a guy falls into a pit of mud and the video ends.

Wh-what.

I should probably start from the very beginning. Everyone knows ‘Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)‘ right? If you have heard this song, even a clip of it in the shop or an advert or what not, this is the band who made that song.

I probably knew that song when I was, like 4. It got to number one in the UK for about a week, and I think I liked it and I remember my sister singing it too. Of course then I didn’t know who it was by, but the counting in Spanish and ‘Give it to me baby, UH-HUH UH-HUHs’ were too catchy. I barely like it anymore, it’s really cheesy for me anyway. I haven’t got it on my iPod.

My cousin bought me The Offspring’s Greatest Hits compilation for Christmas 2005, but that was because I knew that songs like ‘Hit That’, ‘Original Prankster’ and ‘Can’t Repeat’ were on there, so I didn’t pay as much attention to ‘All I Want’.

I would probably talk more about how I got to like The Offspring. But that will probably in the blog for ‘Hit That’ when I come to it. Maybe next year. Or 2015.

In regards to ‘All I Want’, that split second of the ending of the video left me really puzzled. I never listened to ‘All I Want’ before so I went onto YouTube. The comments below were mostly along the lines of ‘Yeah, this song rocks’ to ‘Yeah, Crazy Taxi’ to which I thought, ‘OK… back to the video.’

The song is very quick. It’s on their album ‘Ixnay on the Hombre‘ released in 1997 and was released as the first single from it. It’s a fast, punchy, all-up-in-your-face punk song about breaking free, fuck the system, ‘I DON’T WANNA BE CONTROLLED, ‘SALL I WAAAAAAAANNT.’

Dexter Holland singing ‘Want’ in the chorus probably takes up half the song, but it’s a hell of a chorus. You just feel like running down a corridor screaming that shit.

The video is something else too. It’s pretty funny, you get the band performing the song in a house with different colour effects, a guy pushing women over, stepping in some weird shit on the ground, running past policemen on pogo sticks and random clips of a guy with sunglasses and a mask over his face whilst playing the piano. It’s crazy. It’s cool. IT’S ALLLLL I WAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNT. YAH YAH YAH YAH YAH.

Until next time.

Jamie.

My iPod #16: Radiohead – All I Need

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‘In Rainbows’ was the long awaited Radiohead album that was released as a download, pay-as-much-as-you-want in 2007.

I’m not a great fan of the band, in comparison to other crazy Radiohead fans, I am nothing – I might have already said this in my ‘Airbag‘ blog.

So when ‘In Rainbows’ way back when, I didn’t really see the fuss about it. I thought it was cool that people could pay whatever they wanted like 1p or £100, most fans paid nothing anyway, which resulted in many complaints about how companies don’t get enough money for their stuff being released or whatever. Apparently, pre-release sales were more profitable than the total money from sales of ‘Hail to the Thief.’ So they must have done something right from changing their selling tactics.

I have to admit too that as an album, I still haven’t given ‘In Rainbows’ a chance. I’ve never sat down and fully listened to the whole package. I should do. I really should. Most fans like it more than ‘Hail to the Thief’ and I think that ‘HTTT’ is a very good album, so what could go wrong?

The songs on my iPod from this album are not those I liked upon listening to the album once I received it for Christmas 2007. ‘Jigsaw Falling into Place’ played repeatedly on MTV2 and I liked that song and the video too, no matter how weird the cameras were. The song would be the first I would hear from ‘In Rainbows’.

I first properly paid attention to ‘All I Need’ when MTV2, again, dedicated five minutes of its schedule to advertise its EXIT campaign. The ‘advert’ was basically a music video for ‘All I Need’, which you can watch by clicking these two words.

Still, I didn’t think much of it.

Listening to it many times after though, I realised that the song is great. Quite calming actually. You’re provided with a smooth, soothing vocal by Thom Yorke with a steady backbeat by Phil Selway and a strong bassline by Colin Greenwood. The lyrics come off kinda stalkerish, ‘I am all the days, that you choose to ignore’, ‘You are all I need. You’re alll I neeeeeeeed.’ You probably wouldn’t recognise this, because the instrumentation is very calming. It’s like slowly sinking into a beanbag when you begin to sleep in it. But then, the song picks up and there are thrashing cymbal crashes, a chorus of piano and, overall, a real build in tension of atmosphere with Thom singing ‘It’s all right, it’s allll riiiiiiiight!’ And just when you think the song is going to climax, it ends.

It’s a magical song. I really need to listen to ‘In Rainbows’. Fully though, not just the singles.

Until next time.

Jamie.