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#1231: Nine Black Alps – So in Love

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Although I wished it wasn’t the case, I remember being slightly disappointed by Nine Black Alps’ Love/Hate album. Their debut Everything Is was and is so great. The power and energy from the songs on there was off the scale. The 12-year-old me in late 2007 was expecting the same when the band’s sophomore album came around. That wasn’t to be the case though. There was less power and more of a focus on the musicality and the melodies with a rougher recording style too. The songs didn’t leave much of an effect on me, except ‘Forget My Name’ which I’ve written about before. I ripped it to my iTunes library, though. Could always have another listen one day.

And years later I did. I can’t remember what year exactly. I’m sure it would have been after the band released their third album. Maybe even their fourth. But it was on that re-listen that ‘So in Love’, the ninth song on Love/Hate suddenly sprang out to me. That particular track is the shortest one on the album, a sharp shock lasting for just over two minutes. It’s led by an ugly-sounding riff that’s more Nirvana than anything they did on the first album, as Sam Forrest alternates between softly singing and harshly yelling about the chokehold being in love can have on a person. Or at least that’s what I get from listening and looking at the lyrics.

‘Burn Faster’ was the first single to be released in the lead-up to Love/Hate. If you listen to that song, you can probably tell why. But I like to imagine a world where ‘So in love’ was that first piece of new music Nine Black Alps provided after those couple years of waiting. It’s really nothing like anything on Love/Hate and is a bit of a ‘What the fuck’ moment as a result, but it still has those melodic hooks than can win you over. The “Try to get out, try to get out” choruses sound so ’90s and are fun to sing along too, there’s a use of two-part harmonies during the verses that they never did on their first album. The whole track gives a huge rush that is sorely missing throughout the whole record. A lot of the B-sides from this era of the band probably could have been on here instead. There’s one in particular that will come around on here soon.

#1227: They Might Be Giants – Snowball in Hell

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They Might Be Giants’ ‘Snowball in Hell’ from Lincoln is a number that I remember liking almost immediately after listening through that album for the first time sometime in 2010. I had actually heard the track years before when I was an actual kid who had just got broadband in the house and was checking out this Internet radio station on a place called LAUNCH, owned by Yahoo!. Before YouTube existed, if you wanted to listen to music and watch music videos, that site was the place to go. It’s thanks to that site that I have any idea who They Might Be Giants are. ‘Snowball in Hell’ played on a station one day. Being the, I think, 8-year old I was, I promptly forgot about it. Short attention span.

But hearing it again all those years later, in context with the album and fully paying attention, it felt like a song I properly knew and had been listening to for years up to that point. There was a warmth and familiar feeling to it proceedings, it felt like a given that it would be one of my favourite songs on the album. The track revolves around this two-note doorbell “ding-dong” melody, over which John Flansburgh sings about being in a less than ideal situation spurred on financial troubles. He sings with much sincerity, backed by harmonies from John Linnell, incorporating wordplay and lyrical twists that result in a few of the band’s most memorable and devastating lyrics. “Money’s all broke and food’s going hungry”. That’s a good one. “If it wasn’t for disappointment, I wouldn’t have any appointments”. That’s a great one.

The song is also notable for the breakdown, over which dialogue taken from a how-to-organize-yourself cassette plays. Given to him by album producer Bill Krauss for his 25th birthday, Flansburgh went on to find that the tape didn’t contain much in the way of advice. But he, Krauss and Linnell all found it interesting enough to let it have its own little snippet in ‘Snowball’. Permission wasn’t asked to use it. No one’s threatened to sue. And its inclusion goes down as one of many memorable moments in TMBG’s discography. Back in June, a cassette of rough mixes from the Lincoln sessions was found in the archives of a university in Canada, and a work-in-progress ‘Snowball in Hell’ was found on it. As you can tell, the mix is a bit different. The acoustic guitar is given more prominence, a different model drum machine is present and more snippets from the self-help cassette are used. It’s the same song in essence, but sometimes I prefer this rough mix to what ended up on the album. It’s certainly a different approach. All the more happy to know it exists.

#1187: The Beatles – She Came in Through the Bathroom Window

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Well, this track comes as a bit of a weird one to talk about. It’s The Beatles. ‘She Came in Through the Bathroom Window’ is from Abbey Road. Everyone likes that album. When I think about it, it’s not the one I return to when I want to hear a Beatles album in full. That would probably go to Revolver or Rubber Soul or something. But I won’t argue that it has some of the band’s best songs on there. ‘She Came in…’ is a part of the medley that makes up the majority of Abbey Road‘s second half, kinda closing out its first part, and was performed in one take alongside ‘Polythene Pam’ whose closing solo segues right into the introduction.

For the longest time I looked at the medley with a bit of a side-eye. Blasphemous to say, I know. This was the masterstroke that marked the ending of the Beatles’ recording career. But seeing as it was made up of tunes that John Lennon and Paul McCartney had in the can going back to 1968, the album was released in Autumn 1969, I used to see it as the guys sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel for material and shmushing them together. Although I appreciate it a lot more these days, I do usually have that feeling lurking in the back of my mind. As a result, I like some of the parts more than the whole. And I can’t say that I have a deep, deep connection with this particular tune other than I found myself singing it to myself whenever I was out shopping or in the shower. If I was singing it in those situations, that probably means I’ve liked it somewhere along the line.

‘She Came in…’ was inspired by a real-life incident where a fan broke into Paul McCartney’s London home, literally through the bathroom window while he was out. The parts about being ‘protected by a silver spoon’ and sucking her thumb ‘by the banks of her own lagoon’ I have no idea about. Only McCartney could tell you if he asked him. But being a grandmaster of melody that he is, he makes the whole two minutes the song goes on for sound rather good. I guess he just let his imagination run wild about this particular person, wondering what she does as a job and what her aspirations may be. It’s all a bit up in the air, this one, regarding the lyrics. But regarding the harmonies, the backing vocals, Harrison’s guitar licks, the sort of half-time tempo McCartney’s bass takes for the second verse. That’s all good, good stuff. One of my highlights out of the so-called ‘Long One’.

#1139: Anderson .Paak ft. The Game & Sonyae Elise – Room in Here

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Well, here’s another artist you won’t see any more of from this point. Quite a shame, to be honest. Ever since I heard Anderson .Paak’s Malibu in early 2016, I’ve been a follower of the work he’s done ever since. It’s been a good few years since his last solo projects of Oxnard and Ventura, both of which I thought were merely okay. They just didn’t match the brilliance of Malibu in my view. There would be a lot more songs to talk about on here had that album came out earlier. I have a run-through of those contenders in the other post I did for a song from the LP. As it is though, you get two tracks from there and two tracks only. But I’d implore you to listen to that record in any spare time you possess.

Unbeknownst to me, by the time I was listening to Malibu the first time, its tenth song ‘Room in Here’ had been out as a single and available to the public for a couple months or so. And just listening through it, you can probably tell why it was chosen to be a representative to get people excited for the album that was to come. The jazzy piano loop lures you in, the chorus begins it all with a call-and-response dynamic going between Paak and singer Sonyae Elise who provides the harmonising responses. Paak gets all soulful during the verses, singing the first halves of them before sort of sing-talking for the other. It’s an interesting method of delivery. Very engaging though as his words bounce off the charging kick drum patterns. And capping it off comes a strong verse from The Game to give his streetwise take on the subject matter. To sum things up, it’s got something for everyone in regards to the choice as a single.

Like a lot of other songs in any genre, this song’s about wanting to get close to a lady. Paak makes it clear that he intends to go the gentlemanly route, wants to know what’s on their mind rather than fantasizing about her body and to make things as comfortable for them as possible in the large amount of space available in the room they’re occupying. The Game follows suit, recognising that the lady in his respective situation is clearly in a higher class than those he’s usually used to being with. He states he has to put in the work if there’s any chance at anything more, starting with a simple walk to her Uber cab. Yeah, this song’s a jam. It’s those like this that were missing on the albums that followed. With Oxnard he went in a more hip-hop direction, with Ventura leaning to R&B. They never caught that good balance of Malibu. Plus, the songs didn’t hit me as hard. But whatever .Paak does I’ll be there for it. That magic will come back one day.

#1007: Radiohead – Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box

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It’s P time. Everytime I start a new section of this, I’m always weary of the amount of typing that I’ve gotta go through. But it has to be done. I’ve had this voice in my head telling me to have this done by the time I’m 30. That gives me just over two years. Maybe that’s pushing it. There’s still so many songs to go. But it’s worth a try. So let’s get restarted.

‘Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box’ is the opening track on Radiohead’s 2001 Amnesiac album, the second in the group’s iconic – for lack of a better word – left-turn experimental phase after Kid A preceded it a few months before. I want to say that it acted as a bit of a message on part of the band that if people who thought Kid A was strange, then they had no idea. No better way to start of an album with looping metallic chimes and electronic bleep-bloops to keep rock fans on their side. As I’ve come to know it though, that wait for some sort of melody or settled rhythm to kick in is well worth it once those (keys? synths?) come in at 36 seconds.

I’ll always remember where I was when I ‘listened’ to Amnesiac for the first time. ‘Listened’ being in quotation marks because I was asleep for the majority of it. It was a tiring day after A-Level preparation in year 13 days, I think I may have been feeling down at that point too, and Spotify had this free trial offer going on. Though I more or less missed the middle part of the record, I remember still being sort of awake during ‘Packt…’ and digging Thom Yorke’s pitch-corrected vocals and the overall glitchy vibe of the entire thing. Then my consciousness faded away gradually, but then suddenly perked up when ‘Life in a Glasshouse’ started. As a result, those two tracks were the ones from the album that I considered its highlights for some time. I’ve come to appreciate a couple more songs from it, but the record isn’t up there in my personal Radiohead album ranking, to be frank. Doesn’t have that good a flow, I feel.

But, ah, the song. What is ‘Packt…’ about? Well, if you’ve been a longtime reader here, you may have come across a few posts where I’ve flat out stated that I’m not much of a lyrics guy. Even when it comes to writing these, I usually see what other people have said and see whether I agree with it or not. In rare cases, there are some tracks where I’ve felt I got the meaning down, which makes sense to me. This isn’t one of those times. Knowing that during the making of Kid A/Amnesiac, Thom Yorke utilised a method of cutting up lyrics and randomly linking them together, there’s a good chance that there isn’t a truly deep meaning to pick up from these sets of lyrics at all. They do sound great together, though, which to me is really all that matters. Oh, actually the main message is Thom Yorke wants some peace – leave him alone. There we go.