Tag Archives: my ipod

#738: The Dismemberment Plan – A Life of Possibilities

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Think it was 2013 when I tried to listen to The Dismemberment Plan for the first time. I was on my Pitchfork tip during that time, trying to hear ‘new’ albums particularly in the indie scene. And Emergency & I, the band’s album released in 1999 is considered to be something of a classic in that genre. I went onto YouTube, searched for this track, listened to the first few seconds and really wasn’t into it. Why was this man singing like that? And what was with the squirty keyboard bass? Get that outta here. That was more or less my line of thinking from what I can recall. This was a major error.

Fast forward a few months later. I was in my first year of university and decided to really sit down and give the full album a listen. ‘A Life of Possibilities’, if you don’t know, starts Emergency off so there were the strange vocals and the keyboard bass again. But this time those two things sounded great together, and were backed with an undeniable groove too. This is what happens when you give a song more than a mere few seconds of your time. Then the dueling guitar hook came in and I was instantly hooked. If there is one thing about Emergency & I that I appreciated straight from the bat, it’s that almost every track has a great chorus. There’s no proper chorus in ‘Possibilities’ but those harmonizing guitars act as one, coming in between each verse in which singer and lyricist Travis Morrison goes on about – I think – someone who isolates themselves from society but finds that at some point they’ll have to get out there to truly live their life.

So yeah, do check out Emergency & I if you have the time. Don’t be like me when I was seventeen and disregard it because you don’t like a few sounds on it. The record is suitable for those going through their quarter life crisis, or just those who have hard times growing up in their 20s. That’s a large demographic.

#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.

#735: Billy Talent – Lies

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From the age of ten to about seventeen, Billy Talent was my favourite band. It’s a long story that I could go into. I may have already done so in a previous post of a song by them. I’ll probably save it when I get to ‘River Below’ because that’s the first song I ever heard by them. I’ll gush all about them then. To put it short though, every time Billy Talent put out a new album I thought they could do no wrong. Dead Silence was the last new album of theirs I’ve listened to in full, I’ve never had the urge to listen to Afraid of Heights. I think my interest has obviously dwindled a bit. It’s their first two albums, though, that I can still play in full today and still feel the same way I did when I was younger when listening to them.

‘Lies’ is the fifth track on Billy Talent’s first album and is probably the hookiest one on there, with a very memorable and repetitive chorus that is also mimicked by Ian D’Sa’s guitar playing. The one aspect of Billy Talent that impressed even when I was ten was how D’Sa was able to use his guitar in a way that sounded like there were two guitarists playing at the same time and that is on show here, as he plays the song’s main riff while also keeping rhythm on the lower pitched strings.

Since I was ten years old when I heard this song for the first time, I’ve been singing along to it for all these years without really taking into consideration what it’s about. The melody of the chorus is so earwormy, it’s like one of those teasing ‘you can’t catch me’ taunts that schoolchildren sing. Not as annoying though. A quick look through the lyrics will more or less show that the track is about how lies can be disguised and come in all shapes and sizes, how they are essentially a part of life, and how they can come back to bite when someone finds that liar out. I don’t know what other Billy Talent fans think of this song. I’m not sure if the group have ever had the will to perform it in recent years. I think it’s a great album cut though. I feel like it could have been a clear single for a lot of other bands, but that would have been the easy route for this lot.

#734: They Might Be Giants – Letterbox

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One of my favourites from They Might Be Giants’ album Flood from 1990, ‘Letterbox’ sees John Flansburgh and John Linnell sing in unison with a rapid pace amidst a backdrop of a warm synth bass and quick acoustic guitar strums in a waltz time. It’s one of the shorter songs on the record, coming in at a minute and 25 seconds, but still filled with the many things that make a Giants song great. It’s all about those melodies, man.

It’s been about nine years that I’ve had Flood in my iTunes library now, and the songs I enjoy most from it I could serenade you with as easily as I could recite the alphabet. Though this one starts with a little difficulty. Flansburgh and Linnell are able to cram a large number of syllables into a matter of seconds with each line during the verses, delivered to you like a musical tongue twister. The two known to be quite reluctant/secretive when it comes truly revealing what some particular songs of theirs are about. Not a lot is known about this one. I definitely couldn’t tell you. But it sounds fantastic to the ear.

Not only do the two Johns sing in unison; they also switch things up by providing harmonies to one another. Linnell sings a falsetto harmony in the left channel during the second verse and then sings the bridge by himself, before Flansburgh comes in with an emphatic higher harmony during the final verse at which things come to a thudding stop. I sometimes wish this song was longer; it really doesn’t need to be. It does its job.