Tag Archives: my ipod

#743: The Knife – Like a Pen

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Silent Shout is another album I found while exploring new music in those years when revising for my A-Levels would have been the more advisable option. Pitchfork had named it the best album of 2006, and seeing as that place was meant to be seen as the top critic for indie music – I thought I would give it a listen. I did. There were some songs I liked, and others that I didn’t much care for. ‘Like a Pen’ took a while for me to get into. But once I did, it’s been a mainstay on the brain since.

The track was released as a single in ’06, and came out with a music video with an edit that made the song about three minutes shorter than the album version. I much prefer it the way it is on the album. The building and the adding of layers during the introduction, as well as the lengthy instrumental outro, add so much more to the energy of the track that is missed from the video edit. I’ll put the music video down below though.

An aspect of Silent Shout that always stuck out to me was singer-songwriter Karin Dreijer’s voice. There’s a tone to it that sticks in my head. The fact that her accent heavily affects its delivery may have something to do with that feeling. And her vocal delivery mixed with the video-game like production makes for a catchy listen, although it does manage to give off this slight ominous quality that gives the track that slight edge. Genius said it’s about body anxiety, ‘with the narrator wanting to minimize their body to something visible’…. I think it’s about something a lot more personal. If you were to see the lyrics, you could take a guess.

#742: The Used – Light with a Sharpened Edge

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It’s been a while since I’ve discussed The Used on here. The last time I did was concerning the song ‘Hard to Say’ from In Love and Death. Though that is still my favourite album by the band, I removed that track from my iPhone quite a while ago. Plus there’s something about the tone of my writing before that two year break I did from here that I cringe about. Seems to me like a completely different person.

In that post I say “I don’t know how it happened, but I somehow listened to [this album]”. Thinking about it now, I remember exactly how I came across Love and Death. The video for ‘Take It Away’ was on MTV2 once upon a time and I thought it was one of the greatest songs I’d ever heard, being the teenager I was at the time. I downloaded the album not too long after. It was my go-to for a some time. Now, there are a few songs that I can’t make it through seriously. There are some tracks on the record where a lot of screaming is involved and I’m not emotionally attached to those in the same way I was in my adolescence. But some songs on there are just great and I have no problems with listening to them today. Two of them I’ve already written about. ‘Light with a Sharpened Edge’ is another.

This is my favourite track from that album. It’s that piercing guitar riff of the introduction that just gets me every time, it’s an instant hook. It’s in 6/8 (or 3/4, however you want to look at it). The strings on here are a thing of beauty. Vocalist Bert McCracken sings really nicely on top of it, easily reaching those higher notes with the natural register of his voice. Again, it’s another case where I’m not too sure what he’s singing about. Skimming through the lyrics in my head as I type, I’ll say it’s him having some sort of self-identity crisis and trying to find a place for himself in this world. And another thing I’ve always admired about this album is its production. It is an emo album to the full; there’s no two ways about it. But there are these little oddities and samples thrown into each track that make themselves apparent with each listen. Very atmospheric too. If there was another album I would compare it to – t’would be Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge by My Chemical Romance. The same themes of love and death are explored in both albums. They were released a few months apart from each other. It’s a strange coincidence. I’ve always preferred The Used’s album by a mile.

#741: Radiohead – Lift

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For a long time, ‘Lift’ by Radiohead was considered to be one of the best songs the band never released. In 1996 the band would perform it live, and it grew to be a very popular track among fans. Their take of it at Dutch festival Pinkpop that year seems to be the one where fans go ‘Yeah, that’s how the track should always be played.’ The group revisited it during a live route in 2002 when they were getting to ready to work on what became Hail to the Thief. It still never saw the light of day on any album of theirs.

That was, however, until 2017 when the band revealed that it would finally be officially released on the OK Computer 20th anniversary reissue alongside two other unreleased songs, ‘I Promise’ and ‘Man of War’ (also known as ‘Big Boots’ to many). Fans were shocked and stunned and, as you can see, very welcome to this announcement. If you care to know I felt at the time, I did feel that it was pretty cool that this was happening. It was always clear that the track was a very good song, and it was worked during the sessions for OK Computer. There probably would have been some kind of outrage if it hadn’t been included.

The big difference though is that the ‘Lift’ we got didn’t have the same energy and power that those live performances did. It was much more calmer, seemed a lot more resigned and sadder as a result. Still, I believe Thom Yorke – or at least another member of the band – said that this was the way the song should always have been played. Despite its restrained performance and almost raw mixing, it definitely still retains the anthemic quality that endeared it to so many Radiohead fans in the first place.

I lurk on the band’s subreddit, and I recall seeing a few fans who were still just a bit let down by the version that was released. So when 18 hours of the band’s sessions for OK Computer which included this other version of ‘Lift’ leaked onto the Internet last year….. well it was like a birthday and Christmas rolled into one.

#740: Nas ft. AZ – Life’s a Bitch

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Long ago from now, can’t even remember what year it was but I’ll hazard a guess of 2010/2011, I was watching this film called Fish Tank while in bed. Why this was I wasn’t sure. I think I wasn’t sleeping very well, so what do you do when that happens? Turn on the TV, I guess. To put it simply, the film is about a girl who has ambitions but has a not so great life at home and also rocks up into this strange relationship with a man. At the end, she eventually leaves home and, after playing once in an emotional scene near, this song played again over the credits. It struck a chord with me. A bit of a dramatic thing to say. But I got quite invested in the film by the end of it, and the track seemed to sum up its sentiment very well. Plus the instrumental was calming to the ears. It wouldn’t be for another few years that I would listen to Illmatic in full though.

I still prefer ‘Life’s a Bitch’ to a lot of other songs on that album. Maybe because I had already heard it before. But I definitely think it contains one of the best matches of lyrical content with production on there. It opens up with a little introductory skit in which Nas and AZ shoot shit about sorting out the money they’ve earned so far, and once that’s done AZ bursts out the gate with, arguably, one of the greatest verses from a featured artist on a hip-hop song to date. I’m sure that a lot of people probably know his verse more than Nas’ which follows after the song’s hook. It’s just the energy with which he comes in and starts flowing over the beat that’s an instant hit to me.

Both rappers do their thing though. While AZ comes in with the energy, Nas follows on a calmer wave and on a positive note – feeling comfortable with the way life was at that point (he was 20 years of age and feeling good to be alive) while also pondering on the not so good stuff he did in his past. Ultimately, the aim for the two artists is to make as much money as they can and focus on the good times of today because it could all end in a split second. And then after the final hook comes that cornet played by Olu Dara, Nas’ father, that caps it off on a sweet and almost sad note.

#739: David Bowie – Life on Mars?

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Ah, 2016. Seems like such a simpler time. It was one of the best years of my life. I turned 21; I was on a hiatus from this blog but was working at a music magazine as an intern; I got to go to Glastonbury for free; I went to the USA on a long trip in the last few months that Obama was still president. It was a great time for me. But all the while that year will always be remembered as the one where everyone you loved in the entertainment industry suddenly started passing away. George Michael. Muhammad Ali. Gene Wilder. Prince. Alan Rickman. Leonard Cohen. Carrie Fisher. Debbie Reynolds, Fisher’s mother, who died the next day. There are many more I could mention. It seemed like every week of every month someone of notable fame was suddenly gone.

And it all started when David Bowie, who had just released his album Blackstar and looked like he was making a musical comeback, passed away from cancer just two days after the record came out. 10 days into January that happened. But it wasn’t until the 11th that the news came out. I was on the way to work on the underground flicking through the socials as you do, and there was a post that more or less said ‘RIP Starman’. That was how I found out. And coincidentally, the track ‘Life on Mars?’ was lined up on shuffle on my phone while I was listening to my music library. No lies. It was a sad day. And I just so happened to be working in Brixton of all places while this was going down. I just wanted to get home from work that evening. Hours later, the route I usually walked down to get to Brixton station was packed with fans paying tribute to him.

So this is ‘Life on Mars?’, and it’s on Bowie’s 1971 album Hunky Dory. It’s very much a classic. I think it’s known that Bowie took the chords of ‘My Way‘ and put his own spin on that track, adding surreal lyrics about a mousey-haired girl and Mickey Mouse turning into a cow. I don’t know what the song’s about, really. Though I think the things he describes in there are basically a way of saying, “Well if all this crazy stuff is happening here, couldn’t it be possible that there’s life on Mars too?” It’s probably much more complex than that. Even if the lyrics are quite strange, there’s no denying the beauty of the music. Rick Wakeman’s piano and Mick Ronson’s string arrangement lift the song to an entirely different level. It’s no surprise that this song is considered to be one of Bowie’s greatest, if not that, one of the greatest songs of all time.