Tag Archives: billy talent

#1328: Billy Talent – Sympathy

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‘Sympathy’ is the second-last song on Billy Talent’s second album, from 2006. I’ve liked this one for as long as I can remember. I gave a whole spiel about my experience with that record in the last post for a song I did from it. There are still two more off the LP left for me to write about. What I’ll say for now is, I still enjoy their sophomore album a lot even almost 20 years on. There was a lot of music similar to Billy Talent’s made by many bands in those early 2000s that people have forgotten about or couldn’t listen to because the material hasn’t aged all that well sonically. “It’s not a phase, mum” music. But I’ll put my cent of support in and say the same can’t be said for those first two Billy Talent albums. I’ll play those back-to-back today, no problem. Almost every song on both of them gets two thumbs up from me.

And ‘Sympathy’ falls under that category too. There doesn’t appear to be a website of any kind containing any context on how the song was written or what it’s about. But I vividly remember reading an official band-related thing that stated the song concerned a specific smarmy Canadian politician man/congressperson who singer Ben Kowalewicz and guitarist Ian D’Sa were completely disappointed by. The name was explicitly stated too, but I can’t remember that. But you read the lyrics to the track and it all makes sense. The politician would be giving condolences on a subject, and Kowalewicz would think it was all a crock of shit. So ‘Sympathy’ was written as a full disclosure of his displeasure with the guy. Just so happens that this displeasure is incredibly infectious when it’s written within a song.

Like many a Billy Talent number, a lot of the melody is provided by Ian D’Sa’s fine guitar work. He doesn’t do the distinct simultaneous lead/rhythm guitar style of playing he’s known for as much on ‘Sympathy’. It’s all very much rhythm, chord-based on here. But even then, the vocal melody almost mirrors whatever chord progression D’Sa plays throughout. It’s still very essential within the song’s proceedings. Oh, Jesus, the solo, though. Very unique for a Billy Talent track, a big highlight in this one. I really enjoy Kowalewicz’s vocal here too. Billy Talent II was made as a bit of a conscious effort to move away from the aggression and ferocity displayed on its predecessor. So there was a tad less screaming, more of a focus on melody. And there’s nothing but melody on ‘Sympathy’. I read comments online complaining about how Kowalewicz’s voice can be grating or shrill. I’ve never had a problem, even if I could see where those people come from. I couldn’t say it’s any of those things on this track. The way he sings those ‘Breaking me down’ lines, especially the last one, makes me feel a way inside. Like I can feel his pain, or whatever. Just a solid, solid tune.

#1320: Billy Talent – Surrender

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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.

#1305: Billy Talent – Sudden Movements

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If you were to search for Billy Talent’s ‘Sudden Movements’ in Google and come across a few Reddit threads or something in the results, you might just find a common theme. Quite a number of people don’t hold the track in a very high regard. This thread asks what the worst song on the band’s third album is, someone answers ‘Sudden Movements’, and the replies are like, “Yep, couldn’t agree more. Thread finished.” The song is the top answer. It’s not even as if the replies go into detail as to why they think so. It’s stated like it’s a well-known fact. And people just agree like it’s nothing. I’m freaking out a little bit over here. It may not be my absolute preferred track from Billy Talent III, but it’s a favourite, for sure. A shame seeing it be dismissed so casually.

‘Sudden Movements’ is in the penultimate slot on the record, a placement where sometimes you’ll have an album’s dark horse or a bit of filler before the album’s proper closer. Slotted in between single ‘Turn Your Back’ and closer ‘Definition of Destiny’, it seems as if people see throw it into the latter category. I’ve never seen it as a dark horse, really. Simply thought it was a pretty cool song. The way all the guitars and cymbals come crashing in immediately to start things off gives the track a huge presence already. Ian D’Sa isn’t playing those signature finicky guitar riffs that are a staple in many a Billy Talent number, but rather blasts out these open chords which I think gives the track this expansive feel. I see an image of giants (or tall figures of that type) marching over buildings when this chord progression plays. All so very emphatic.

What’s the song about? I’ve never thought about it before. But for the purpose of this post, I can look at the lyrics and say I think the whole thing’s about a general feeling of paranoia. Laid out in the first line, “Well, I’m scared of my reflection / Is it mine or is it yours?”, this sense of having to look over your shoulder and keeping your guard up is further built upon as the track goes on. All summed up in the song’s chorus, “No sudden movements / Gonna give us all away / Or they’ll blow us all away”. The narrator asks the listener to not think they’re going crazy, which is something that deeply paranoid people say. Usually if this was some sort of TV show, the paranoid person turns out to be right and then the non-believers all looks stupid. We don’t get that kind of resolution here.

#1271: Billy Talent – Standing in the Rain

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Back in the days of 2005, Billy Talent’s official website used to look like this. Two years after the release of their debut album, the design was still very much focused on that era. And the example I provide was the page that came up if you didn’t have Flash installed. Now that Flash is busy not existing anymore, not even Archive can go further than that. But I can tell you that when Flash was the thing to have, you were able to watch the band’s music videos, either through Quicktime or Windows Media, catch up on the latest news regarding the group, and listen to three of the songs from the debut album as a kind of preview through an integrated music player on the homepage. I want to say one was ‘Try Honesty’, another was ‘Line & Sinker’, and the third was ‘Standing in the Rain’. So I knew that one almost by heart before I had the album for myself.

‘Standing in the Rain’ is the eighth number on Billy Talent, a bleak one about the struggles of a prostitute. Not sure there’s much to pick apart in my opinion, because the lyrics are very much what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Ben Kowalewicz sings from the point of view of a woman of the night, or man, you don’t know, the gender’s never revealed in the words, detailing their misery. An annotation on Genius says the track was inspired by the Pig Farm murders carried out by Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton. I can’t find any other source by the band that corroborates this interpretation. It may very well be true. Maybe Kowalewicz and guitarist Ian D’Sa were just inspired to write about prostitution and thought it would be interesting to cover it from the prostitute’s point of view. I’d like to think it was just that. You can’t believe everything you see on those lyrics sites.

Just a solid, solid performance throughout by the band. D’Sa very much plays a strong rhythm guitar on this one rather than doing the simultaneous lead/rhythm guitar playing he carries out on the vast majority of the record. But the chord choices and progressions are still as strong. A lot of the attention, I think, may probably be directed to the harmonies and general singing carried out by D’Sa and Kowalewicz. They sing in unison for the pre-chorus, before the former goes to the higher harmony for the actual chorus. And then in the break, D’Sa takes the lead for a brief second before Kowalewicz joins in and the rest of the band crash in together for the song’s closing moments. On a personal note, I’ve always thought the mixing of the cymbals sounded a little strange during the opening. I know they were recorded separately from the actual drumkit during production, but I don’t know what it is. Anyone else can agree or disagree. But if you can at least get what I’m on about, I’ll be plenty happy.

#1265: Pezz (Billy Talent) – Square Root of Me

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Last year, 31st May, the people of Billy Talent did the thing that I, and I’m sure many a fan, was waiting on for the longest time, which was finally releasing their first first album Watoosh! onto streaming services. By that date, I was already well accustomed to the record, having had it in my iTunes library since about 2009. Thanking my sister for downloading it from Amazon for that one. And even then I’d known four songs from it since at least 2005. But last year was when it became much more accessible for everyone to hear. Watoosh! was the only album Billy Talent made when under their original name of ‘Pezz’. The music wasn’t as heavy, but just as energetic and melodic. Some would say “weirder” for whatever reason. But I know it’s an album that I prefer to the last couple that Billy Talent have released recently.

‘Square Root of Me’ is the ninth song on Watoosh! The title’s one that I haven’t been able to come to a conclusion too. It doesn’t appear in the lyrics, just like every other song on the album, though at least on a few others their titles have some sort of relation to the subject matter. In ‘Square Root…’, Ben Kowalewicz sings about being a full-grown adult and reminisces on the days when he’d get beaten up by bullies and swear that he’d get his revenge one day. The first verse is the same as the second. Well, there’s a one-word difference in the second. And after that the song’s changes to a minor key, an instrumental break settles in, after which Kowalewicz and guitarist Ian D’Sa harmonize the line “I like you anyway” until the song fades out. The whole shifting-movement-halfway-through-the-song structure is one that’s used on every track on the album. But the songs are different enough that it doesn’t become a massive issue. Very noticeable once you recognise the pattern though.

I’m not sure what else I could cover about this one. I find myself singing along to almost every element in the track, whether it be D’Sa’s various guitar riffs and chords, to bassist Jon Gallant’s lines and obviously the vocals. Each part has something in it that my ear immediately latches on to. The thing I’ve always admired about Billy Talent is that even though they’re primarily a punk band, D’Sa incorporates a lot of jazzier chords in his playing that sets they’re whole thing apart from the rest. So there will be a chord slipped in with a note that stands out more than the rest that enriches the whole listening experience. I’m sure there’s plenty of those in this, if only I knew music theory. It’s pretty much guaranteed that Billy Talent won’t perform any of the Watoosh! songs live, if you were to go and see them. In their words, they were a totally different band then. And that is the truth. So I’m glad that at least a few more people will be able to hear their older music now, rather than have it be this thing that only the “true” fans knew about. It’s pretty good stuff.