Tag Archives: i

#1243: Supergrass – Sometimes I Make You Sad

Leave a reply

In It for the Money is my favourite Supergrass album. I may have said that before in the posts for other songs from there. There’s no sort of concept you have to dig your brain into, or any kind of lyrical themes to take mind of. The record is just song after song of unforgettable bangers. Bangers with some slower tunes in between. …Money is grander in scale in comparison to I Should Coco, which was released a couple years prior, marked by a bigger production and a use of a wider variety of instrumentation, whilst still containing a lot of the playfulness and memorable melodies that endeared Supergrass to so many in the first place. Its final track, ‘Sometimes I Make You Sad’, is very playful and however stranger it may sound in comparison to the songs that come before it, it acts as the perfect way to bring the album to a close.

The track preceding ‘Sometimes…’ ends with this slow fade out of the band jamming. A few moments of silence arrive. Then ‘Sometimes…’ starts and you’re greeted with a gloomy Hammond organ and a beatbox loop performed by members of the band which apparently took a couple of hours to properly get down. The scary-circus ‘Benefit of Mr. Kite’ vibe the song has going for it wasn’t something I expected on that first time of listening, I tell you. But underneath the spooky atmosphere is a something of a motivational song, telling you to do what you like, go out into the world and explore. The ‘motivational’ part is somewhat negated though as the lyrics make sure to tell us that whatever you do, no one really cares all that much and there’s nothing out there that’s all that exciting anyway.

For the longest time, I assumed that bass guitarist Mick Quinn was the lead vocalist of the track. It obviously wasn’t Gaz Coombes, and Quinn does sometimes take the lead in a few Supergrass songs. But that assumption was laid to rest when, during a Twitter “album listening party” in the COVID times, Quinn mentioned that it was drummer Danny Goffey who sung the song, after a quick trip to the pub. So it turned out ‘Ghost of a Friend’ wasn’t the only Supergrass he was the lead on after all. The reason his voice is so high is because, and I’m guessing here, he recorded it while the track was playing at a slower speed, so when sped up it sounds like he ingested some helium before performing. That is the reason the guitar solo also sounds all spindly like it does. So why not apply the same technique for the voice? Thanks to the remastered deluxe edition that came out in ’21, I can now embed some moments that look into the making of the track. More specifically, the creation of the beatbox loop and Goffey’s guide vocal. Both comical in their own ways.

#1197: Mac DeMarco – She’s Really All I Need

Leave a reply

Rock and Roll Night Club. That’s a bit of a strange one to me. I’m a big Mac DeMarco fan, and I may have said that quite a few times in the previous posts I’ve written before. But I think I’ve only listened to that particular (mini)-album just the one time. It was DeMarco’s very first release, before 2 even came out, but it was the last one I got round to listening to. I remember the recording quality sounding pretty murky, while DeMarco’s vocals sounded much, much lower than usual. A much different vibe from the usual Mac stuff I was used to. But the one song on there that stood out by not being so different is the one I continue to listen to to this day.

‘She’s Really All I Need’ appeared in my Discover Weekly playlist on Spotify one day at work back in 2018, and initially I was confused. That slinky Mac guitar tone was all there, and the standard calming vocal delivery was present. It was obviously a Mac DeMarco song, but why hadn’t I heard it before? Was this a new song? Then I saw it was from Rock and Roll Night Club, and that answered the question. But because I liked the tune so much from the jump, think I downloaded it to my laptop when I got home, it gave me the motivation to actually go ahead and listen to the whole album. From the first paragraph, you may have sussed that it’s not one of my favourite DeMarco records. But ‘…All I Need’ is definitely one of my favourite songs of his. And so I write to you in the hope that you might enjoy it too.

The track is one of the many, many love/relationship songs that DeMarco has in his catalogue. May even be safe to assume that it’s another written about his longtime girlfriend. Though if you want to get into more depth, it sees DeMarco write about his anxieties. He’s waking up in the middle of the night with shivers. He’s bummed out by these people waving their degrees in front of his face, reminding him of his own inadequacies. But in the end, none of that really matters because he’s got his lady to calm him down and get him on the right track. All very endearing stuff, with a bunch of relatable, humorous lines and a general laid-backness to the proceedings. Also notable in that there’s an actual bridge in the track that DeMarco solos over, which I don’t think he’s done ever since.

#956: They Might Be Giants – Now That I Have Everything

Leave a reply

‘Now That I Have Everything’ was the first song on They Might Be Giants’ very first demo tape released in 1983. There may be only a few people out there who own that. Unless the track then hadn’t been officially released on Then: The Earlier Years in ’97, the track would most definitely have become one of the many TMBG songs that you could only find in a lower audio quality on a bootleg somewhere. If ‘Everything Right Is Wrong Again’ hadn’t been considered as the album opener to the band’s first album, ‘Now That I Have Everything’ could have taken its spot. Coincidentally, they both have the word ‘everything’ in their titles, but they also have an upbeat inviting tone to them while also sharing a theme of situations not being as great as they seem/used to be.

The track actually goes way back before They Might Be Giants were even a band. Prior to their formation, John Linnell was the keyboard player in a band called The Mundanes and had written the track while in that position. They tried to rehearse the track, but he was too shy to sing out loud. It can only be assumed that he kept it in his locker and was more than ready to do something with it when John Flansburgh came around. To my knowledge, there’s no reason as to why Flansburgh takes the lead vocal on the track instead of Linnell, but I’m not complaining because he does such a fine job. At this point it would feel strange to hear Linnell on the vocal, even though it’s his song. Maybe Flansburgh could pull off the ‘man who has everything’ persona that the track is based on. Who knows, it’s all suggestions. Those are my ramblings on the vocals over.

Like a lot of other They Might Be Giants songs, the melody is all there instantly. I don’t know how they do it, but they possess a abundant knack for that stuff that’s difficult to find. Unlike other TMBG songs, there’s a distinct absence of guitar. Instead the keyboards provide the rhythm chords and lead riffs, noticeably during the track’s outro and a little part about 45 seconds in that borrows the melody from a 1963 song called ‘On Broadway’. While the Johns perform in standard 4/4 time, the programmed drums are playing in 5/4, which provide this chaotic feel as these fills and cymbal hits come in at seemingly random points. You’re never quite sure where the downbeat is. Funnily enough, the drum track was taken directly from a drumbeat CD, and you can listen to that exact beat here. So yes, a good mix of musically interesting and melodic accessibility. That’s really all you ever need from a song. It’s on show here. It’s on show a lot of the time with TMBG.

#792: They Might Be Giants – Madam, I Challenge You to a Duel

Leave a reply

Back in 2015, They Might Be Giants revived their iconic Dial-A-Song system, but delivered it in a very different way. Starting from the first week of January, the group released one new song every week. When they were done, the majority of the 52 songs were released on three albums: 2015’s Glean, Why?, and the following year’s Phone Power.

‘Madam’ was the second song in that 52-week run. It was an exciting time for a They Might Be Giants fan. I vaguely remember listening to the track on the day of its initial release thinking it was okay. It wasn’t until I gave Glean a full listen some time later that I truly appreciated it. Here’s a song in which John Flansburgh, who takes on this viewpoint of a very formal person, challenges a lady to a duel which you’re not really meant to do as a person of a high status. The band have always been good at building narrators up one way and then suddenly switching the narrative to make them look like terrible people.

This is a majorly piano-led track by the group, which is a bit rare for them. I think that’s what got to me when I originally heard it in 2015. Flansburgh sings with a breathy, kind of deep tone to his voice, which he would employ a lot of times on older albums, but I guess aging would affect your vocal range. The song just sounds good, you know? It’s like a soundtrack to a quaint ball, or something. Out of 910 songs on This Might Be a Wiki, the track is rated #488 by TMBG fans. That more or less categorises it as one of the average They songs. A bit unfair, I would say. I enjoy it a lot.

#655: R.E.M. – It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Leave a reply

If I were to take a guess, I think I sing this song the same way that the majority of people who know it do. The first three lines are easy as pie, then every verse that follows is just a lot of words smushed up together into a one note melody which is then followed by the very memorable chorus.

‘It’s the End of the World’ is one of R.E.M.’s most well known tracks, one of their most played too – to the point that it may be overplayed for some people. But I only started properly listening to R.E.M. last year. I had heard the song maybe two… three times before? I’ll say five at most. And that was when its video was shown on TV. And in Chicken Little. Actually listening to it with headphones was a very different experience.

‘End of the World’ is the sixth track on R.E.M.’s fifth album, Document, released in 1987. It is not my favourite album of the group’s but this song right here is one of its highlights. The uploaded video above takes all the weight out of the audio quality though which is a shame. When those thunderous drum rolls come in at the beginning, the energy never dips from there. It’s four minutes of relentless, driving momentum. And though I never succeed in enunciating every syllable in the quickfire verses, it’s always fun to try. As said earlier, it doesn’t really matter because it has a hell of a chorus that’s not related to what goes on in those verses in any way.

Going through R.E.M.’s discography (which I had to when I found out they were actually very good) there were a few things I picked up on, especially in their earlier albums. They had a knack for great melodies. And the triple vocal harmonies of Michael Stipe, Mike Mills and Bill Berry added a layer that made the band’s songs even better when they were utilised. Melodies and harmonies are present on this track… a few countermelodies too. There’s always something new to pick up on in this track every time I hear it. It’s such a thrill. It’s quite disappointing when it starts to fade out at the end, wish it could go on for ages.