Tag Archives: my ipod

#1311: Supergrass – Sun Hits the Sky

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“I know a place where the suuun hits the skkyyy!” A great, great opening line to a song, the song in question being Supergrass’s ‘Sun Hits the Sky’ from their second album, In It for the Money, released in 1997. I’ve made it known in many a post before that this is my favourite Supergrass album, and I want to stress again that while you all may get your Britpop fill from Oasis or Blur, Pulp or Suede, all very respectable choices, please, please don’t leave Supergrass out in the cold. You should all be listening to Supergrass. Not one dud exists in the band’s six-album discography. I’m sad that it’s more or less confirmed that they won’t make another one, even though they are kind of together at the moment to celebrate the 30th anniversary. In another way, sometimes it’s best to just let things be. I can understand that. So I’ll leave it at that too.

Anyway, ‘Sun Hits the Sky’ is the sixth song on In It for the Money, closing out the album’s first half if you were to listen to it on vinyl. I have a strong, strong feeling that I heard the song in an advert for a UK holiday resort of some kind. Maybe Butlin’s. Maybe Center Parcs. If any member of Supergrass happens to read this, could you possibly confirm whether this was the case? I would have been a small child when those “commercials” were going around. But come 2005/06 when I was a little older, and by that, I’m talking the age of 10, Supergrass videos were usually playing on the television – a whole lot of fun they’d be too – and the video for ‘Sun Hits the Sky’ showed up one day on one of those video channels. The song was immediately recognisable, but the main thing I got was that it was Supergrass who had made the song – I want to say I had gained a fair knowledge of the band by then – and that this thing called In It for the Money was something to get, because song that was shown on the TV from it was I enjoyed a heck of a lot.

So where is this place where the sun hits the sky? Well, we all know that the sky isn’t this kind of border that the sun reaches up to. It’s all really limitless. I know it’s not meant to be taken literally. In fact, I think this track is about wanting to get really, really high – more in a haze of marijuana smoke rather than a darker deal with heroin – a bit like Paul McCartney’s ode to pot with ‘Got to Get You into My Life’. When you’re in your 20s and in a band, you’re gonna be smoking joints at some point. Gaz Coombes about knowing a place where the sun hits the sky and things get all distorted and strange, and in the choruses he sings about being someone’s doctor and being on the way to prevent someone from coming down. I guess like how it’s a dealer’s job to deliver the goods to their clients. I think I’ve got this song down. Just can’t help but feel good when listening to this one, got such a driving momentum. Very, very hard not to sing along to once you’ve got the words down, and notable highlights are the keyboard solo by Rob Coombes and the psychedelic ending where tablas and bongos enter the mix and the song eventually fades out with Mick Quinn laying down some licks on the bass guitar. A big “Yes” from me for this tune.

#1310: Animal Collective – Summertime Clothes

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When I first heard Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion in 2012/13, I really didn’t know what to make of it. It was an album unlike any other I’d heard before. At that time, I was firmly into standard band outfit, guitar, drums, bass guitar, rock music. There was none of that on the LP. And then I’d see MPP-era live performances on YouTube where members Avey Tare, Panda Bear and Geologist were onstage with these massive desks covered in wires and pads and other electronics. To the people who knew the band, it probably wasn’t so unusual. But from having no idea who the band was to then listening to the LP as a gateway, there was something overwhelming about it all. But I gave it another try when I was in my first year of uni, and I got my head around it then and there. It’s considered basic to say the album’s your favourite by the group. Personally, mine is Strawberry Jam. But MPP is a damn good album. Sounds like it was made in some outer Avatar-type universe rather than a studio somewhere in Mississippi.

‘Summertime Clothes’ is the fourth song on there, a very obvious single choice even if ‘My Girls’ was chosen to be the first one released from the album. In 12/8, or 4/4 time with a swing feel, the track has an infectious bounce reinforced by the kick drum and pulsing bass synthesizer. Avey Tare sings it, detailing a scene where the narrator’s twisting and turning in their bed at night, unable to sleep because it’s too darn hot in the room. They’ve gotta get out of the place. And so the narrators calls up a friend or partner, I guess you can assume the latter. Luckily, they pick up the phone and they agree to go walk around in the cool of the outside, grab a bite to eat and indulge in other activities you’d do when going out. Basically the track conveys a huge sense of happiness and comfort of being in the company of someone whose presence is very much appreciated. And, you know, that’s pretty wholesome stuff. A very simple topic to write about, but the production and delivery makes it sound a lot more glorious than it should.

Merriweather… marked a moment where vocal duties between Avey Tare and Panda Bear were somewhat equally split between the two. While predecessor Strawberry Jam was a mostly Tare-led record with Panda Bear contributing two songs and providing backing vocals here and there, MPP provided a larger Panda Bear presence throughout, with an abundance of harmonies and countermelodies to boot. And there are those aplenty just in this song alone. Yeah, Avey Tare starts the song off by himself, with a subtle warbly effect going on with his vocal, but then Panda Bear comes in on a harmony here and there, before the chorus kicks in and the two of them sing together. Always nice when the two sing in unison. During the rushing “When the sun goes down, we’ll go out again” bridge, there are some “Oh-oh” backing vocals by Panda that are buried in the mix and pan all over the place. I thought that was a cool little feature. And I also like the lone ‘paarp’ that occurs after Avey Tare sings “Don’t cool off”. It doesn’t need to be there, but it’s also a nice extra touch. There’s small odd moments like that sprinkled throughout the album that my odd self appreciates thoroughly. But this is a good song. Definitely worth 4-and-a-half minutes of your time.

#1309: Weezer – Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori

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Weezer had us going for a little moment there in the mid-2010s. After releasing Everything Will Be Alright in the End in 2014, an album that was immediately regarded as a return to form, they then provided their fourth self-titled album – commonly referred to as the White Album – a couple years later. These two records here suggested that the band were on a bit of a roll. Here they were making solid rock music like they did in those halcyon days of the ’90s, something that everyone was praying for when it seemed like all was lost between 2005 and 2010. Then Pacific Daydream arrived in 2017, which felt like a move saying “Don’t get those hopes up too quickly now.” Rivers Cuomo had returned to his mission of writing the perfect pop song. But those two rock albums showed that the band could still do it. They probably could now too. I’m waiting for that day to come.

‘Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori’ is the seventh song on Weezer (2016), one that sees the narrator reminiscing on the two titular characters and wondering, “What they could they both be up to now?” One of those types of songs. It’s boosted by a glorious chorus, another one on an album that’s filled with them, and includes references to Radiohead and Paul Simon. The former of which felt out of place initially, but as time’s gone on I’ve just accepted it for what it is. Luckily Rivers Cuomo provided an interview on the Song Exploder podcast on an episode that was dedicated to the entire song. Really, you could just listen to that, and I wouldn’t have to write anymore. It’s been a while since I listened to that specific episode, but I do remember a mention of Excel spreadsheets when it came to creating the lyrics. Genuinely fascinating stuff. It’s usually better hearing the backstory of a song from its actual songwriter rather than a guy who just listens and provides his own interpretations.

So it looks like this’ll be the only entry from Weezer’s White Album. A shame really, ’cause there’s a number of good songs on there. Opener ‘California Kids’ is one I remember humming spontaneously to myself when I was grocery shopping around the time of the album’s release. ‘L.A. Girlz’, the track ‘Summer Elaine…’ transitions into on the album, was an instantaneous like for me, and I think the band shouldn’t try and make anymore pop songs because they already made their best one with ‘Jacked Up’. It surprised me how much I came to enjoy that one. Had the timing aligned, those three songs would’ve had their own posts too. Not saying the album’s perfect by any means. I was never into ‘Thank God for Girls’ when it was released months in advance, and ‘Do You Wanna Get High?’ I sort of fell out of favour with even after initially being really excited by it and playing repeatedly when it was first unveiled on YouTube. But I still have a lot of love for the whole package and still think it’s the best post-’90s Weezer album to this day.

#1308: Pavement – Summer Babe (Winter Version)

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Who knew there were so many Pavement songs beginning with the letter ‘S’? Feels like I’ve written about 20 of them. The number is probably much smaller than that. But it appears that this’ll be the last one in this section. And there’s an irony that the trend finishes off on an album opener, the first track on Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted, the band’s debut album, released in 1992. I’ve relayed my personal opinion of the record in a previous post. Though if you’re not up for reading that, it boils down to me not liking the lo-fi feel of the album and preferring the songs on there a lot more when I see them being played live. It took seeing a live performance of ‘Perfume-V’ to get me into that number, and the story’s very much the same for my eventual appreciation of ‘Summer Babe’.

After downloading Slanted… in 2013 or so and not caring so much for it, there would be times when I was online and navigating various music places that ‘Summer Babe’ would be recognised as “one of the best songs of the ’90s” or “the greatest indie rock song ever”. It left me wondering what I’d missed. There was once a performance of the song the band did at the Hollywood Bowl, during their first reunion shows in 2010, available on YouTube. Alas, it doesn’t seem to be up anymore. That would have been a nice one to link. In fact, I think you can see the person filming that video in this video of the same performance. That’s as close as we can get to it. And there’s this take of the track from 2014 when Stephen Malkmus was on tour with his Jicks entourage. Listening to those, and then listening to the official album track afterwards, it was like, “Yeah, I get it now.” Sometimes it takes that live context to understand where a song’s coming from.

In comparison to those live shows where the track is performed with more of an emphatic energy and a wider display in vocal range, similar to the sound of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain which would follow (and which I’m more a fan of), ‘Summer Babe’ as a studio recording is much drier, with Stephen Malkmus sounding nonchalant as anything. But despite the production, or lack of it, whatever you want to say, I can’t look past its catchiness. Three chords is all it needs, revolving around a chord progression of D-A-G, over which Malkmus potentially sings about relationships while referencing Vanilla Ice and evoking images of shiny robes and protein delta strips. I say “potentially sings” because, like I’ve mentioned many a time before, Stephen Malkmus doesn’t make things too obvious with his words. I feel like I had to be around at the time of the song’s initial release to truly understand why the song gets the accolades it does. But I do enjoy it a lot. If I’m not singing along to the ‘summer babe’s during the end, I’m probably having a bad day.

#1307: Radiohead – Sulk

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Now, I do know how Radiohead fans tend to feel about ‘Sulk’, which is that a large majority of them consider it to be one of the worst tracks on The Bends. Not because it’s bad. But when in an album including songs like ‘Fake Plastic Trees’, ‘Just’, ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)‘ and others that I would have covered on here, it seems to pale in comparison. A comment I can remember being agreed was that it sounded like a leftover from the band’s debut album Pablo Honey, or could have fit better on that album. It’s too normal. Sounds like any other ’90s alternative rock song that bands were making at the time. ‘Sulk’, in general, in my opinion, is much, much better than… probably 10 out of the 12 tracks that make up Pablo Honey, so I disagree with that particular take. And, yeah, it follows a pretty normal song structure for Radiohead song. Doesn’t stop it from being pretty darn good, I tell you.

I got The Bends as a Christmas gift in 2006, my request inspired by the number of times I’d seen Radiohead’s music videos on MTV2 up to that point. I might have said it was a birthday gift in a previous post, but my “xmas list” sent to my cousin in my Outlook email says otherwise. Back then I was 11 and merely asking for albums just for the singles, which is what I got from The Bends and sort of left it on the shelf. I may have listened through on my PlayStation 2 when I was 12 or something too. It wasn’t really until 2016 when a new Radiohead album was on the horizon, that I was at my desk at work and decided to listen through The Bends from front to back and really pay attention to it. It was honestly though that one playthrough that ‘Sulk’ seemed like an obvious track that I should have been liking for years up to that point. I extend that notion to fellow album tracks, ‘Bones’ and ‘Black Star’. If I could do all this again, they would have their own posts too.

‘Sulk’ was apparently written in response to the 1987 Hungerford massacre that happened in England. You never would have guessed it. I certainly didn’t. Listening to this earlier live version of the track does seem to reveal that origin of inspiration a lot more. The final lyric being “Just shoot your gun”. Clearly, some changes in the words happened along the way. In its final iteration, it seems to be about the universal feeling of depression, the hold it can have on a person and a wish for it to subside. Just so happens that the band provide a really upbeat performance behind it. There’s a key change and everything that occurs at the instrumental break and lasts through the final chorus, where Thom Yorke sings a high B note without falsetto. It’s a pretty magical moment. Unfortunately though, the song as a whole came to be the one the band themselves disliked the most. This probably also plays into fans’ opinions on the song as well. As a result, it hasn’t been played live since 1995. I’ll have a lot of love for it for a long time.