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My iPod #532: Brakes – Hold Me in the River

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The Brighton based band Brakes released their second album The Beatific Visions in 2006, one year and a few months after raising the roof with the impressive debut of Give Blood.  The Beatific Visions reinforced the rough rock ‘n’ roll delivered in songs under/just above two minutes that was established with Give Blood, albeit with crisper and cleaner production.

“Hold Me in the River” starts it all off and was released as the album’s first single. The track takes fourteen seconds to warm up before breaking into its riff which acts as the main instrumental refrain. Lacking a chorus, “Hold Me” consists only of two verses sung by an ever-eccentric Eamon Hamilton who sings about, what I can only guess, being ready to take on anything that comes his way.

A very confident opener, it is something to get you ‘settled’ in for the ten tracks that are to come.

My iPod #477: The Darkness – Growing on Me

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A song from Permission to Land and released as the album’s second single in 2003, “Growing on Me” contrary to popular belief is not in any way about genital warts or other sexual infections. It is more about the feeling one gets when coming across an attractive person that you can never truly understand, but you love them that much that after a while it doesn’t matter anymore. That is what Justin Hawkins said in an old interview, anyway.

And so in the track the lead singer with his trademark falsetto and high-pitched wails describes his pains and yearning for this person that he just can’t shake from his mind with a soundscape of dominant guitars and a steady rhythm section, as is the standard for any hard rock group.

I saw the video for this on the TV months after I first heard it on my physical copy of the album. It is a very low-budget production. But honestly at the age of nine or so, that didn’t matter at all. At that point the song had already become one of my favourites from Permission to Land, and to see its hilariously sub-par video didn’t put a dent in my feeling towards it. Sounds great today just as it did then.

My iPod #430: George Harrison – Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)

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The first time I heard “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)”, or at least bits and pieces of it, was in the song “I’m Just Sitting Here”. That track is from the mash-up album “Everyday Chemistry” which was created by some person who tried to pass it off as an actual album that somehow made it to Earth from a parallel universe where The Beatles didn’t split up. No joke. But the actual product isn’t bad. “I’m Just Sitting Here” is a mix of “Watching the Wheels” by John Lennon with the slide guitars and George Harrison vocal, “Ooooooh my lord” and another Ringo tune. It starts at 29:40 in the link above.

But just those little parts made me want to hear the whole track. Decision well made. “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)” starts off what was Harrison’s fourth album (or second if you don’t count the experimental ones before it) with a sole acoustic guitar which then makes way for Harrison’s trademark slide guitar work. After a verse or two of George’s pleas for the Lord to give him love/peace on Earth, the track fully gets under way when the backing piano, and rhythm section come in together adding a bustling groove to the music.

A good song with a positive message, pleasant and lovely track to listen to, made for some easy listening.

My iPod #337: The Beatles – Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey

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Hey what’s up how’s it going?

Today’s first song is from disc two (or side four for all you vinyl people) of The Beatles self-titled album from 1968. Or “The White Album” as almost everyone refers to it. That year was when John, Paul, George and Ringo started to dislike each other a bit. Why? Well there’s one word that the latter three, and a lot of fans would answer that question with. Yoko. John Lennon and Yoko Ono were hardly ever apart, even during recording sessions, and this aggravated George, Paul, and Ringo quite a bit. How did John answer this? Possibly by many ways which would have gone on behind closed doors, but for us he wrote “Me and My Monkey”.

“Monkey” should be played very loudly out of speakers. It gets me in the mood to party. It sounds like the band had a very fun time recording it, what with the random howls and screams which appear after almost every “Come on” that John yells, that incessant bell that never seems to end and when John also appears to start becoming a sheep right when the song begins to fade out.

It may be about heroin use and there may be some sexual connotations thrown in too, but those are just interpretations.

Dunno about you, but has anyone else noticed during the breakdown near when only the guitars and bass are playing that the bass plays a sharper note than the guitar chords? Just irks me a bit. But still, it’s cool. Very good hard rock song.

My iPod #336: The Pigeon Detectives – Everybody Wants Me

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Turns out The Pigeon Detectives released their fourth album just a few months ago. Their fourth. I did not know the band were still together. It is a shame how the indie band from Leeds seemed to fade away after they got so many people excited with their debut album “Wait for Me” released back in 2007. That album, filled with anthems about relationships, got very popular managing to peak at number three in the charts. How could they follow it up? Quite quickly, ‘cos a year later came the second album “Emergency“. People liked that too. Not as much as the first though. Got to number five. And the singles released from it didn’t grab people’s attention like those from the debut too.

“Everybody Wants Me” was the second single from “Emergency” which, I think, is unusual for a track that closes out an album. It is a very easy song to play. Before typing this, I literally learned how to play the track on the guitar because it only consists of four chords (A-B-D-E if you want to know, A-B-D for the verses and E-D-A-D for the bridge in that order).

Overall, “Everybody Wants Me” is a nice song to listen to. Just a standard verse-chorus-verse-bridge (etc etc.) structured track, where the singer moans about all the girls wanting him now he’s famous. He doesn’t want them though. He wants a certain someone. Who that someone is is not told.