Tag Archives: dananananaykroyd

#1237: Dananananaykroyd – Some Dresses

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When I wrote about Dananananaykroyd’s ‘Black Wax’ in the bright days of 2013, I mention that I had seen another song by the band via its music video on MTV2 before going onto YouTube and finding ‘Black Wax’ as a result. ‘Some Dresses’ was that ‘another’ song. It was the first ‘Kroyd track I’d ever heard. I want to say I’d read the band’s name on an advert for MTV2 before and probably made fun of it when reciting it to myself a few times. But through the ‘Some Dresses’ video, I now had an image and a song that I could now associate with the name. The clip, showing the band messing about in the woods with some quirky blue screen effects thrown in there, made an impression. An endearing one. It wasn’t too long after that I went ahead and downloaded the band’s debut Hey Everyone! It would be the first of only two albums the group would release.

I only found out relatively recently that a quarter of the tracks from the album contain lyrics that were written by former singer Giles Bailey, who left the band prior its release. ‘Some Dresses’ is one of those Bailey-written numbers. Calum Gunn and John Bailie Jnr joined after Bailey’s departure and contributed their words for seven other songs, with Gunn being the main singer on the majority. The writing styles between the two factions are quite similar though, at least I think. Unless you had a physical copy that told you otherwise, it wouldn’t be harmful to assume that the person singing on the album was the one who wrote the lyrics. It’s not the case. The band did record ‘Some Dresses’ when Bailey was in the band and released it as a single in 2006. I’ll go ahead and embed that not-as-well-known version down below.

The song’s lyrics are told from the perspective of someone waiting for a dress to be fitted on them. There’s nothing much to work out if you read the words. They just tell a head-to-toe look of the different parts of the fabric and the work that’s being done by the tailors and fitters to make sure everything’s good and comfortable. Quite the mundane subject, but certainly unique, made all the more better by the riffs of guitarists David Roy and Duncan Robertson and vocal delivery by Gunn. There’s no reason why a song about putting a dress on should be this punchy and exhilarating. But it just is. The track is comprised of two parts, separated by a breakdown where the band sound like they’ve lost control of all their limbs. The first being more concerned with the dress, while the second takes the making of the dress and turns it into a metaphor of writing a song? At least that’s how I’ve come to think of it. Like this one quite a bit.

#1177: Dananananaykroyd – Seven Days Late

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After having known Dananananaykroyd’s second and final album There Is a Way for 13 years, listening to it since near the day it was released in 2011 and becoming very familiar to every song on there in the process, I made the decision to buy it outright and get a physical copy back in January. It wasn’t cheap. Almost £20, it was. But I knew the music was good, so it was worth it. A lot of things became clear once the copy came in the mail and I opened those liner notes up. For one, I’d been singing along to the majority of the tracks on there, completely differently to how they were originally written. And two, almost all of the music was written by guitarist David Roy and, bar three songs, the lyrics were covered by John Baillie Jnr, who’d been more of the backing vocalist on the band’s previous album while mainly acting as the second drummer. I guess that’s why those two stuck together in a new band when the ‘Kroyd split up a few months after the album’s initial release.

I’ve gone on a bit of a tangent there. Let’s take it back to the point about singing the wrong words. Yeah, that’s what I’d been doing all this time. ‘Seven Days Late’ is a track on the album where there’s a lot of shouting involved. And being the people of Glasgow they are, they were unapologetically Scottish in the way they enunciated their lyrics. It’s an endearing quality. I could only mimic what I could understand, apart from those phrases where it was very clear what was being said. ‘Seven Days…’ is the most intense song on the album. I remember being sort of blown away by Bailie Jnr’s scream at about 2:20 when I first heard it. Bear in mind, I was 16. But there was nothing from Hey Everyone! that made me think they had that kind of scream in them. Really from the chest, sounded truly pissed off. And I’m sure the whole song is simply about someone deciding to stay in a room somewhere and do nothing until their mum and sister comes to take them away.

Thinking about it, there should be no reason why a simple subject like that should be matched with such ferocity and urgency in the music. And if it does, you’d think it probably wouldn’t work out too well. But that’s exactly what goes on here and, in contrast to what I stated in the last sentence, it works out very well indeed. This track makes me damn-near want to punch a wall. Multiple times or something. That’s sometimes what it has to come down to. There’s a frustration and tension that builds and builds throughout, and when the track leaves you hanging when things pause for a brief second near the end, those anxious feelings are beautifully alleviated by the final chord where the band members breathe an almighty sigh of relief – like sitting in a nice, warm bath after a tiring day. It’s such a good moment, I get goosebumps every time.

#1101: Dananananaykroyd – Reboot

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Let me take you back to the 17th June 2011. It was the day after my last GCSE exam, and I was finally free. A year of revising subjects to a strict timetable created by my mum was over. It was done. I could forget everything. I was lying in bed watching Freshly Squeezed on Channel 4, early in the morning, it’s a show that ran its course after a while, and to my surprise came the new music video for Dananananaykroyd’s new single ‘Muscle Memory’. This is a story I’ve told already, most recently in the post for that song a couple years ago. I was always vague on the time all this happened though. Why I can be so precise now is thanks to the option of being able to see my timeline on Facebook, where the 16-year-old me made it clear that exam time was finished and the world was his oyster.

Unbeknownst to me, the band’s new album There Is a Way – their second and what turned out to be their final LP – had already been out and available to purchase for four days by that date. According to the ol’ family computer, I downloaded the 21st June. It must have been on that day that I realized that There Is a Way wasn’t something that was months away, but was actually out and existing and available to hear. I got to downloading it. Shame on me for not fully supporting the effort and buying the CD, but I needed to hear it, there’s nothing much else to say. Especially after becoming a fan through their first album Hey Everyone! ‘Reboot’ starts it all off. The band kick into gear, droning on an open A chord for the most part while a guitar pulls off some melodic licks over the top. The main riff of the song doesn’t arrive until just over a minute. The first chord change in the track doesn’t happen until just under 1:30. You’re waiting and waiting in anticipation for some vocals to enter the frame. I know I was all those years back. And they do, eventually, with two and a half minutes of the song remaining.

It’s only just occurred to me that vocalist John Bailie Junior being the first voice you hear on the album may have been a very conscious choice. On the band’s previous album, he also provided vocals, though served more as a backup to fellow vocalist Calum Gunn due to the fact that he was also the band’s second drummer. Two separate drum kits can be heard on both channels throughout Hey Everyone!. But during a gig, he fell offstage and broke his arm in two places which put his drumming duties on hold. Bailie Junior is very much at the forefront alongside Gunn throughout There Is a Way. And it all begins on ‘Reboot’. The track itself is just a statement that the band were back in something of a new form – a reboot of their old selves you could say – with two proper vocalists, one drummer only and a new bass guitarist, and ready to unleash some havoc through dripping gloss, candyfloss and planting seeds that spread disease. I remember being so happy experiencing this new song on this new album, and when that final chord hit with the band cheering and whooping with the cymbals sizzling away… gotta say I got some goosebumps. Felt so good to be playing this record. Shame they had to go ahead and split up some months later though. Interestingly, the main riff of ‘Reboot’ was around as early as 2010, as in this tutorial by one of the band’s guitarist, they start busting it out spontaneously around 39 seconds in.

#880: Dananananaykroyd – Muscle Memory

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Ten years ago, Scottish band Dananananaykroyd released their second album, There Is a Way. The day it was released was the beginning of the final week of my GCSE exams. But I didn’t even know that the band were even making any new music until the video for ‘Muscle Memory’ – as you can see up there – was shown on Channel 4’s breakfast music show Freshly Squeezed about a week later, I want to say. It might have even been on the last day of my final exam. Anyone remember that show? Freshly Squeezed? Anyway, I thought the track was great from the moment I saw it. Helped that the band looked like they were all having some good times in the video too. Right before it got into the shouty bridge, the video cut out and the show presenters moved on to something else. But I was left with enough. The knowledge that D’Kroyd were back with a new album. And an urge to see how the track actually ended.

By the time I saw that video, I was now a free 16-year-old who didn’t have to go to school for three months. The world was my damn oyster. So I watched the rest of that video on YouTube and downloaded There Is a Way as soon as I could. And I loved that album too. It was probably my album of the summer. And ‘Muscle Memory’ was always one of the highlights from there. The ascending riff that starts it off just sets everything in motion, and when all the other instruments join in the track is given this extra bounce that always gets my foot tapping. Vocalists Calum Gunn and John Bailie Jnr sing in unison, harmonise and alternate the lines they sing. It’s all generally a very fun listen. And what is about? Well, after some consideration in the past few weeks, I think it’s a song that’s meant to explore the relationship of a band/artist and its fans. How fans want to get closer to a band by trying to decipher their lyrics, reading their reviews, or playing along to their songs by learning them on the guitar. Dang, I think this tune’s so great. Hasn’t lost its energy ten years on.

So taking you back to 2011. There Is a Way had been out for a few months. There I was, excited for any new music videos from the band if they decided to release any more singles from it. And then out of the blue, they announced that they were to split up after their UK tour. Have to say, I was just a bit bummed out. But then again, listening to the last song on that album, the clues were there. The band had felt that they’d done their part, and from some articles I’ve seen they didn’t think they could go on with a band name as strange as theirs anyway. I miss ’em. But they have two albums that captured that essence of pure energy and joyous noise that the band were all about. And for that, I can’t be too sad.

#633: Dananananaykroyd – Infinity Milk

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About 10 years ago, my sister went to university. I was 14 years old, a teenager in year 10, and mother went to work every day usually. Whenever she wasn’t home, I would be in the house by myself…. Every teenager’s dream, right? There was a limitless amount of things I could do without either of them having to know. So what would I do? Stayed in and play FIFA all day. Really. I didn’t get out too much, no friends were really around my area. Weeks and weeks of that can take its toll. There was only so much of that game’s soundtrack (FIFA 09) I could take after a while, so I would usually put my iTunes library on shuffle and listen to that while I was in the game’s menu. It was during those times that today’s song randomly played and I realised how much of a belter it is.

I gave a somewhat curt backstory as to how I found out about the band in my post for ‘Black Wax’ six years ago. I just found that and laughed at how I worded that thing. But anyway, I downloaded the album and listened to it but probably didn’t pay much attention to all of the tracks apart from the aforementioned song and ‘Some Dresses’. Those were the only two I knew prior. ‘Infinity Milk’ I properly listened to when playing FIFA. It’s pretty mental. Comes out of the gate with a forceful ascending guitar riff that’s surrounded by two drum kits falling down the stairs in the left and right channels. It goes quiet with another sole guitar lick that alternates between sudden explosions of noise before ending in a call of ‘OH! MY! GOD!’ and finally going into the first verse.

Calum Gunn is the lead vocalist throughout most of the album. On here, he trades lines with the other vocalist (and then-drummer) John Baillie Jnr. Makes for very active listening. Gunn’ll say one line, Baillie will scream the next and by the end they’re both yelling until their lungs give out. The track pushes and pulls, emphatically slows down and thrashes for its choruses before speeding up again for the verses. It’s a rollercoaster. You don’t know where it’s going to go next. I don’t know what it’s about. The lyrics are very descriptive. Quite violent too. Mentions of blood, cutting out gums with knives, and murder in there. It’s hard to make sense of it. I read somewhere that it could be about losing your virginity(?) I can go with that. What matters is – this song is ferociously optimistic. You should give it a listen.