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#770: The Wombats – Lost in the Post

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I may not have listened to a Wombats song since about 2011 but I still enjoy a lot of songs from their first album quite a bit. ‘Lost in the Post’ is one of them. There’s nothing too deep about it. The lyrics concern the end of a relationship where the two involved just aren’t very compatible, and the narrator admits that it’s his own doing that has probably closed the affair a lot sooner. Once it’s over the lady seemingly vanishes into thin air, disappears, and is compared to those Christmas letters that children write for Santa which get sent to some unknown area.

It’s a great sing-along, I can’t really say much more. I don’t know who writes the melodies as all of their songs are credited to all three bandmembers, but lead vocalist and guitarist Matthew Murphy sings them well. There’s a weariness in the vocal delivery, I think, that appropriately matches the lyrical subject matter. And the rhythm section of Tord Øverland Knudsen (bass) and Dan Haggis (drums) support Murphy up with the ‘ooh-ooh’ backing vocals that are a constant throughout the whole album. Possibly the only thing about the track that I’ve fallen out of favour with is the ‘Go to Santa’ bridge which seems to last forever. It’s a bit repetitive. Has some great interplaying backing vocals during that section too though, which perks things up quite a bit.

The band made an actual video for this track though it doesn’t feature the song as it appears on the album. It seems to be a much older version recorded way before the group were signed to a label. The recording sounds a bit rougher; Murphy sounds considerably younger. It’s the same song, but I much prefer the final version.

#756: Billy Talent – Living in the Shadows

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It never occurred to me how many songs from the first Billy Talent album begin with the letter ‘L’. It feels like I wrote the last one to do so only a few days ago. It’s been three weeks! There are only three songs on that record that begin with that letter, but that still makes up a quarter of the tracklist. This is the last one from those that I’ll cover. It’s ‘Living in the Shadows’, and it’s the second song on the album.

This track just carries on the anger and ferocity that is established on album opener ‘This Is How It Goes’ and threaded throughout the 41 minutes the album lasts for. There’s a theme of seeing through artifice and lies that also runs through the album – and a lot of the band’s discography, thinking about it – and it’s definitely the predominant subject in this song too. Ben Kowalewicz’s sings/screams about those who hop on trends and put on a front to try and look cool but are ultimately lying to themselves because it isn’t truly how they are. All of this is summed up in a chorus which blasts these people for trying to change other people when they don’t even know themselves and are ‘living in the shadows’.

I think this song’s just great. Everything about it is so furious. How Kowalewicz’s can switch from singing to screaming in a split-second during the choruses is beyond me. And the song’s ending where he repeats the chorus among the barrage of guitars, snare hits and cymbals makes it a classic to me. I see it like a sister song to ‘This Is How It Goes’; they’re both sort of similar musically and even use the stop-starting guitar break in their respective instrumental bridges. Both those tracks are just so negatively charged in their outlook of the world… but they both work as a great one-two punch to begin the album.

#746: Animal Collective – Lion in a Coma

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Believe it or not, ‘Lion in a Coma’ was the first track from Merriweather Post Pavilion that struck me as being the most catchy and memorable. I went through the album for at least the second or third time while in my first semester as a fresher in university – it sounded like nothing I had ever heard before so I was quite perplexed as to what I was hearing the first time, that perplexity turned into admiration afterwards – and it was this song that I was humming to myself while walking down the road or going to my lecture. At that point I didn’t know what the lyrics were, but it was a song that was definite memorable melody. Weird time signature too.

There’ll be some who’ll agree with me and think “Why say ‘believe it or not’? I think [this song]’s great!”. Well, I’ve been on the Animal Collective subreddit and there are those who hear that Jew’s harp sample at the beginning and that’s a wrap for them. They can’t go on. I’ve never thought it was obnoxious. Once Avey Tare begins with his rambling lyricism, that harp blends into the background and from then on my main focus is on the fat rhythm set from the low end. I guess it’s the bass drum of the song, even though there are no drums present on it. The track is definitely something you can dance to, though not in normal ways – more like erratically moving your limbs and head to fit the beat and the spaces in between.

If you’re looking sideways at the title, it’s a play on the words ‘lying in a coma’. This song sees Avey Tare in a general sense of confusion and something of an identity crisis. He gets worried in times when you would think he would be at his most happiest and this sends him into a mode of overthinking. All this is perfectly matched with the odd time signature (9/8) and the way all of the lyrics such seemed to fall freely from Tare’s mouth. It’s a busy song, a lot goes on. One of my favourites from the album though.

#737: Coldplay – Life in Technicolor ii

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Coldplay’s debut album Parachutes was released twenty years ago last Friday. Though there’ll be hundreds of thousands out there who will think that they never got any better than that, I’m thoroughly in the stance that Coldplay peaked in their Viva la Vida era and haven’t matched it since. Collaborating with Brian Eno in places, the group created material that was far out by their standards and experimented with different instruments, soundscapes (they made a shoegazing track that was pretty great) and production techniques like tape loops and other bells and whistles that resulted in one of their most enjoyable albums.

The creative juices were flowing in the sessions for Viva la Vida, and so much material was made that Coldplay released the Prospekt’s March EP just a few months after Vida was available worldwide. Both album and EP go hand in hand with one another; for any time first time readers here it wouldn’t do any harm in listening to the two in one long sitting. The EP is also where ‘Life in Technicolor ii’ can be found as the opening track.

I think I read somewhere that Chris Martin had said that ‘Life in Technicolor ii’ would have been the obvious first single for Viva la Vida had it been released in its original form on the album. To prevent it from being so, they took out the parts where Martin sang, put a Jon Hopkins loop at the beginning of the track, and released it as an instrumental instead. That’s what ended up as the opening track on Vida. I was 13 when this track was eventually released as the lead single for ‘Prospekt’s March’; I seem to remember it being something of a big deal that the instrumental from their then-new album was being released with lyrics and all. It’s a nice sentiment too. Chris Martin sings about the world coming to an end because of a war that’s coming, but as long as we’ve all got love then that will guide the way. Kinda cliché thinking about it now. But it sounds terrific. The music video is a bit silly too, but what can you do.

#736: Radiohead – Life in a Glasshouse

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Continuing their run of awesome album closers, ‘Life in a Glasshouse’ is the last track on Radiohead’s album Amnesiac and, in a way, put an ominous end to their remarkable reinvention era of 2000/2001 when they wowed critics and confused listeners with the aforementioned album and Kid A eight months earlier. Obviously Radiohead always reinvent themselves in some way, but in this period people really questioned what the band were trying to do with this new anti-rock route they were going with.

‘Glasshouse’ is probably the group’s most unique track. There is no other song in Radiohead’s discography that is like it at all. And that’s not me trying to say that it differs in just a minor area from their other material. The track is this sad-sounding, jazzy funeral dirge complete with clarinets, trumpets and a huge big band section. I seem to remember lying in bed, half-asleep, listening to Amnesiac for the first time in late 2012. Though I thought the rest of the album was alright (an opinion I still hold today, it’s probably one of my least favourite Radiohead albums) this track stood out to me as a highlight while also bringing a downer to whatever dream I was having. The track itself is inspired by an incident where a wife of a famous actor covered her windows with newspapers to prevent paparazzi and the tabloids from getting any proper photos of her. But Thom Yorke’s delivery on ‘someone’s listening in’, especially at the end, is very creepy. Makes me feel like I’m being watched. We are all being watched in some way.

Because the jazzy instrumental was provided by a specific band, led by musician Humphrey Lyttelton who passed away in 2008, the band have never performed the song live. Except for that one time that they did in 2001. Below is Lyttleton’s band and Radiohead on Later with Jools Holland performing the track.