Tag Archives: metal

#835: They Might Be Giants – Metal Detector

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Here’s ‘Metal Detector’. Another song by They Might Be Giants, so soon after the last one. It’s found on their 1996 album Factory Showroom, their last on the Elektra label before they left and have sort of been an independent band ever since. I like Factory Showroom. I’ve always thought it was kind of a reaction to John Henry. That album’s almost an hour long and there’s a lot of horns and brass on it. I feel like Showroom put more of a focus on the band, and they dialled back the run time from 57 minutes to an easygoing 42. Only 13 songs on there too, which was peanuts compared to the number of songs They had on albums prior.

What I like most about ‘Metal Detector’ is that it’s essentially a song of choruses. There are only about two verses, even one and a half if you think about it. The rest is chorus, pre-chorus, kinda bridge over and over again. And it works, I don’t know what to tell you. The approach makes the song all the more memorable to me. It’s an easy one to sing along to, and the overall tone to its makes it seem like there’s some sort of mystery behind it. But it’s just a song about having a good time with a metal detector and going to the beach to find things under the sand. The group always have a knack for writing great songs about the most menial tasks. Or passionate hobbies, whichever way you want to look at it.

According to This Might Be a Wiki, this is quite a popular one among TMBG fans. It’s their 37th best song. The band haven’t ever played it live that much though. My guess would be that maybe the repetitive nature of the song just isn’t to the band’s liking, though that’s just a shot in the dark. Could have been a single for me. It’s nothing to think about too much.

#834: Teenage Fanclub – Metal Baby

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Looking at my laptop’s folders, it appears that I downloaded Teenage Fanclub’s 1991 album Bandwagonesque in 2014, which seems so strange to me. I remember it being one of those albums that I got switched on to from that first listen. The first half has hit after hit. ‘The Concept’, ‘December’, ‘What You Do to Me’, ‘Star Sign’… all 10/10’s. The first two I wish I could have written about, but you can just hear them for yourselves. The latter will have their posts some day. But today’s song, ‘Metal Baby’, starts off the album’s second half, carrying on the run of good tunes.

The track is about a girl who is into her metal music, has the track’s narrator around her little finger and eventually leaves him to be a groupie with a metal band. A simple song of love and loss, I suppose. But it’s delivered with such an ease that makes it comfortable to listen to. All these interesting chords and progressions. Guitarist Norman Blake sings well over it, accompanied by some nice harmonies too. The band have made it clear that one of their biggest influences was Alex Chilton and his work with Big Star from the 70s, and you can clearly hear that here if you’re familiar with that stuff. I guess if you want to be cynical about it, it’s one track of Fanclub where they really where that influence on their sleeve. But man if they don’t do it well.

One thing I’ve noticed which you don’t have to really care about but what I thought was interesting, is that ‘Metal Baby’ kind of mirrors ‘The Concept’ in a way. Musically, that is. If you sing the ‘I didn’t want to hurt you’ chorus from the latter with the ‘I’m not the sort of person’ chorus/bridge from the former, you’ll notice how similar they are. They are in different keys, so you’d have to adjust for that. I don’t know, thought that was worth saying. But happy listening, you can’t go wrong listening to their other albums too.

My iPod #505: Wilco – Heavy Metal Drummer

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Both this track and “I Am the Man Who Loves You” jumped out to me as being the radio-friendly hits from Wilco’s well-respected album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Though the album did go through a ton executive meddling that pushed back its initial release and forced it to be distributed on a completely label altogether, all of which was pleasantly documented, it could have been commercially represented by singles which I think would have been very popular. But what do I know?

“Heavy Metal Drummer” is one of the brighter, and lighter sounding tracks on the album. Faking you out with a boom-box drum beat for the first few seconds, the song suddenly bursts with a delightful piano line and brisk acoustic guitars amidst a general perky beat provided by drummer Glenn Kotche. The mix is then filled with bubbly synthesizers for the majority of the track as Jeff Tweedy recounts memories of the past from the heavy metal bands to personally playing Kiss covers whilst high.

You can’t help but feel the melancholic undertone when Tweedy sings “I miss the innocence I’ve known”. He yearns for the times when life wasn’t so hard and everything was alright. But the music’s uplifting and sometimes child-like playfulness overtakes that lingering sadness.