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#637: Super Furry Animals – The International Language of Screaming

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Super Furry Animals are known to have one of the most solid discographies for a British rock group. In about late 2014 I made it a goal to go through it from their debut Fuzzy Logic to whatever their most recent album was at the time. I only made it to their second album. Guerrilla I had already listened to years prior. I gave up on that task very quickly. But now I knew three albums by SFA. Radiator is the band’s second album, released in 1997, and is where you can find today’s song tucked in near the beginning of the record.

If you’ve listened to Radiator from front to back, you’ll know that the track follows ‘The Placid Casual’ which is very keyboard-led, Gruff Rhy’s vocals are packed in the middle and the drums crash with a vengeance. On ‘Screaming’ almost all the instruments are packed in the centre, with Rhy’s vocals separated in the left and right with very open guitars. It makes a great contrast, and is a great one-two punch at the start of the album.

‘The International Language of Screaming’ was released as the album’s second single way back when. It lasts for only two minutes and fifteen seconds but is packed with a lot of elements that make it very enjoyable and hard to forget. The main vocal melody almost never changes throughout the thing, and I’ve also like how it rises and rises before dropping down again and returning back to its beginning again. There are these weird wailing/cooing noises that I’ve only began to hear that surround all the music. But at the base of it are these overdriven guitars that lead the track along. I feel this track is just about boredom with life. Becoming stagnant at some point and needing to way to break out of the funk. Singer Gruff Rhys finds that the best way to do this is by screaming, which he obliges to do as the final choruses repeat and the song finishes with a soundscape of swirling electronic noises.

#636: Nine Black Alps – Intermission

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‘Intermission’ is the second of two mainly acoustic numbers on Nine Black Alps’ debut Everything Is from 2005. An album that is a proper onslaught of heavy guitars, thrashing drums and Sam Forrest’s growling vocals, ‘Intermission’ and fellow acoustic track ‘Behind Your Eyes’ arrive at points when the momentum has to be brought down a little before picking back up with a rapid change on the next song.

Because I was so into the intensity of the other ten tracks, it took me a while to get into ‘Intermission’. Anything with an acoustic guitar in I just switched off for. This was when I was eleven. But it didn’t take long to realise how good a song it was. The only track on the album not to be recorded in a proper studio – it was instead recorded in Sam Forrest’s flat in Manchester – ‘Intermission’ is a real downer. The main refrain or hook or whatever you want to call it is led by forlorn slide guitars that weep in both headphones. Like a lot of other songs on the album, the lyrics evokes imagery of war and weaponry with a cynical twist to them. ‘Intermission’ is very much anti-war. It details people who carelessly laugh at it when the misery is going down.

The album could easily have ended here. But the band reel you back in again with a raging closer. That’s for another time.

#635: Feeder – Insomnia

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‘Insomnia’ was initially released on Feeder’s second album Yesterday Went Too Soon in 1999, gaining further promotion as the record’s second single in the same year. I was four at the time. It was years later, seven to be exact, when I heard the song for the first time on the band’s singles compilation – aptly named The Singles.

There’s nothing much to try and pick apart here. The song is about Grant Nicholas trying to cope with insomnia by drinking himself to sleeping and taking pills. Throughout, he lists ways in which he tries to get some sleep: reading magazines, counting sheep, daydreaming of the days when he was young and didn’t have to care about many things. It’s simple stuff. It’s very pop punk in its delivery. A lot of power chords and forceful drums to boot, but a straight up catchy melody that’s memorable and easy to the ear.

Think I made it clear once upon a time that Feeder had a lot of great singles. There are more to come in the future. On this blog, I mean. They have released some stuff recently though.

#634: The Beatles – The Inner Light

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George Harrison began work on what would be his debut solo album in late 1967. Those sessions resulted in Wonderwall Music, released a year later. He travelled to Bombay in order to work with some musicians, and back to London to record some vocals. In that time, today’s song – ‘The Inner Light’ – was recorded. It was the last of Harrison’s songs during his time in the Beatles to explore the Indian influences that had been something of a trademark for him since 1966.

There’s a lot of information on its Wikipedia page that I don’t want to regurgitate. I’ve basically come to take it as an ode to meditation. Feeling content and peace within yourself and those around you. He took a lot of the lines from the Chinese Tao Te Ching text, putting a glorious melody on the words which are backed by a strong harmonium drone and floating Indian flutes.

Upon completion, it was made B-Side to ‘Lady Madonna’ and released in March 1968 while The Beatles went to India for some Transcendental Meditation. It was the first Harrison song to appear on a single. Harrison was proud of it, Paul McCartney held it in high regard. It worked out well in the end. For the song at least – the band were never quite the same from this year onwards.

#633: Dananananaykroyd – Infinity Milk

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About 10 years ago, my sister went to university. I was 14 years old, a teenager in year 10, and mother went to work every day usually. Whenever she wasn’t home, I would be in the house by myself…. Every teenager’s dream, right? There was a limitless amount of things I could do without either of them having to know. So what would I do? Stayed in and play FIFA all day. Really. I didn’t get out too much, no friends were really around my area. Weeks and weeks of that can take its toll. There was only so much of that game’s soundtrack (FIFA 09) I could take after a while, so I would usually put my iTunes library on shuffle and listen to that while I was in the game’s menu. It was during those times that today’s song randomly played and I realised how much of a belter it is.

I gave a somewhat curt backstory as to how I found out about the band in my post for ‘Black Wax’ six years ago. I just found that and laughed at how I worded that thing. But anyway, I downloaded the album and listened to it but probably didn’t pay much attention to all of the tracks apart from the aforementioned song and ‘Some Dresses’. Those were the only two I knew prior. ‘Infinity Milk’ I properly listened to when playing FIFA. It’s pretty mental. Comes out of the gate with a forceful ascending guitar riff that’s surrounded by two drum kits falling down the stairs in the left and right channels. It goes quiet with another sole guitar lick that alternates between sudden explosions of noise before ending in a call of ‘OH! MY! GOD!’ and finally going into the first verse.

Calum Gunn is the lead vocalist throughout most of the album. On here, he trades lines with the other vocalist (and then-drummer) John Baillie Jnr. Makes for very active listening. Gunn’ll say one line, Baillie will scream the next and by the end they’re both yelling until their lungs give out. The track pushes and pulls, emphatically slows down and thrashes for its choruses before speeding up again for the verses. It’s a rollercoaster. You don’t know where it’s going to go next. I don’t know what it’s about. The lyrics are very descriptive. Quite violent too. Mentions of blood, cutting out gums with knives, and murder in there. It’s hard to make sense of it. I read somewhere that it could be about losing your virginity(?) I can go with that. What matters is – this song is ferociously optimistic. You should give it a listen.