Tag Archives: go

#730: Mac DeMarco – Let Her Go

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I think I’m now older than Mac DeMarco was when he released Salad Days in 2014. I was in my first year of university, 18 but very close to 19, looking for new music to hear and DeMarco appeared with a Best New Music tag on Pitchfork. This is a story I’ve told many times before on this blog. To cut it short, I liked the album pretty much instantly. I still think it’s his best one to this day. This blog was well under way by the time he released the record, so songs like ‘Blue Boy’ and ‘Brother’ I wasn’t able to write about. I did do one for ‘Go Easy’ though, that could be a fun one to read (I don’t know I’ve never really looked back). There will be more to come from this album in the future. But today’s post looks at ‘Let Her Go’, a track that further proved to an eighteen year old me that this was some really good music.

It was the shining guitar tone that grabbed my attention initially when hearing the album for the first time. It was a constant throughout the album, and comes into play especially on this song. ‘Let Her Go’ is the obvious ‘hit’ from Salad Days, carried by a summery ringing descending guitar riff that interplays with the hopping bassline throughout its verses. Despite its upbeat rhythm, DeMarco sings about the hardships of unrequited love. It’s a classic song trope, happy-sounding music with sad lyrics, and I have to say that when carried out well it’s always an add to the music library. I don’t even think back then I realised how sad the song was until I read the lyrics, even though I was ‘singing’ along to them very freely.

Six years on and ‘Let Her Go’ resonates with me just as much as it did back then. I would be lying if I said I haven’t gone through what’s described in the track. Because of that, it probably resonates with me more. I always be a fan of Mac DeMarco, but that Salad Days/Another One era will always be the one I regard as his best.

My iPod #439: Queens of the Stone Age – Go with the Flow

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“Go with the Flow” is a song by Queens of the Stone Age that has grown to be one of the band’s most known and beloved songs. Reasons? It’s placed on what is arguably the band’s best album of Songs for the Deaf, it has a brilliant and iconic Shynola-directed music video used to promote its single release, and and because everything about it is just too badass to comprehend.

Though personally it’s not my favourite Queens track, I admire it for its sheer velocity, execution, and quality. The song doesn’t even allow you to settle into the groove. It just explodes into its rhythm and from then on it’s full throttle energy exuded all round by each member. Honestly…. never thought about its meaning that much because to me the music has a lot more impact. But Josh Homme still works it on the vocal area as only he does best, and backs it up with powerful guitar playing alongside Nick Oliveri on the bass and Gene Trautmann (and not Dave Grohl as some may think) on the drums.

If you haven’t heard it before, where have you been? Listen to it now, man.

My iPod #438: Radiohead – Go to Sleep. (Little Man being Erased.)

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“Go to Sleep.” was the second single to be released from the album Hail to the Thief, Radiohead’s sixth album released in 2003. The record marked a return to the guitar oriented music the band were known for, after taking a few years down the electronic/experimental route with “Kid A” and “Amnesiac“. Though it gets a bit of flack for not being as cohesive as other Radiohead albums, and because its almost-hour-length is a bit too much for some to handle. Thom Yorke had the same feeling; he posted an alternate tracklist showing what the album may have been had the band taken more time on it. Good to see that today’s track made it on there.

The song has many twists and turns to it. It starts off with an acoustic guitar driven riff playing at a 10/4 time signature that after being accompanied by Thom Yorke’s wailing vocals for a while is joined by Phil Selway’s drums and delicate electric guitar touches via Jonny Greenwood. The track then takes another turn when tom-tom drums dominate the mix as Yorke starts singing about the possibilities of the loonies and the monster taking over and Greenwood’s guitar becomes more distorted and frantic, eventually producing random noises and glitched out sounds as the song fades out.

It’s one of the songs from the album that I’ve known for the longest; I watched the video on the television way before I ever bought the album. It will always be a favourite track of mine from it.

My iPod #437: Mac DeMarco – Go Easy

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Salad Days, the second album by Canadian goofball musician man Mac DeMarco, was easily one of my favourite albums of last year. I wrote a separate post dedicated to how much I was enjoying it at the time. If you’re in a hurry and can’t read it, I basically said the melodies were great, every song is memorable, the sound he gets on his guitar is a thing of gleaming beauty, and the album’s overall chill and casual vibe makes for some very easy listening. I certainly became a DeMarco fan thanks to it and I hope to see him, God willing, in Manchester in the summer when he plays at the Parklife Festival.

“Go Easy” is the last ‘song’ on the album, in that it is the last one in which Mac actually sings in before the album’s closing instrumental track “Jonny’s Odyssey”. It carries on the trend established by the nine tracks before it of consisting of a steady beat bathed with DeMarco’s shiny guitar licks and fills. The track also concerns DeMarco’s feelings on the pressures of his girlfriend moving to a new place, a subject which is also referred to in other songs on the album. And again, like almost all of the other tracks, it follows the simple structure of a verse, a chorus, a verse and a few reiterations of the chorus before it comes to a close. May not sound very interesting, but you have to hear it order to believe for yourself. Salad Days is too good to miss out on.

Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day.

My iPod #436: Steriogram – Go

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Today’s song is by New Zealand based punk rock/rap band Steriogram. The group had a lot of their success about a decade ago with the song “Walkie Talkie Man” which featured in an iPod advert and had a creative video made for it with Michel Gondry as director. That’s probably as much as we know about them over in the UK. But they were still very popular in their homeland, and released a few other songs as singles from their debut album Schmack! – “Go” was one of them.

The narrator of “Go” expresses a desire to leave a boring, monotonous ‘country town’; despite the sulking and complaining he doesn’t follow this wish through, realising that moving this decision will possibly be a big step for his life. Eventually the repetitiveness of life becomes too much, and the song ends when the narrator finally decides to leave.

I’ve known this song for a long time. Probably since about the summer going from Year 7 to Year 8. I can’t really remember why I was looking for Steriogram videos then, seeing as they hadn’t been heard from for years. But there you go. I would say that “Go” is one of the most safer tracks on Schmack!, it has a steady and chill tempo to it but it never really veers in any direction except for when the chorus hits. But I still like it, just because I’ve heard it many a time. It’s alright.