Tag Archives: my ipod

My iPod #560: Wilco – I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

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The story goes that Wilco were going through some inner turmoil during the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, particularly between lead singer and guitarist Jeff Tweedy and fellow guitarist and composer Jay Bennett. Their original record label weren’t so impressed with the final result of their work, rejected it and told the band to get out of their faces, leaving them with an album to provide but no label to release it. Eventually things all fell into place. Wilco got signed again. The album, originally slated for September 2001, was physically released to the masses months later in May 2002. Critics ate it up, fans loved it. Still do to this day. It has gone down as one of the best albums of the opening decade of this century.

‘I Am Trying to Break Your Heart’ is the album’s opener. It’s seven minutes long. It takes about a minute of that time for the song’s main chord progression to make itself known after a sort of instrumental prelude of pianos, percussion and organs. Tweedy’s mellow voice comes in with the album’s first (and possibly most quoted) lines “I am an American aquarium drinker/I assassin down the avenue/I’m hiding out in the big city blinking/What was I thinking when I let go of you?”, and it all goes on from there really. You have to listen to it for that full experience.

Tweedy doesn’t have the greatest singing voice. Not soulful, or belting from the stomach or whatever. But it’s just perfect for the whole mood of the track. And the album in general. The vocal melody is the most simple thing. But it’s great. It will get in your head. And accompanied by the very full mix provided by Jim O’Rourke, it’s an enrapturing listen. It’s hard to not find yourself in a bit of a trance when hearing this. You probably won’t feel it on your first listen. It’ll sink in.

Above is the supposed demo of the tune, as recorded by Jay Bennett before it went through remixing for the album. Some prominent smooth Rhodes(?) piano in there, but not quite the same.

My iPod #559: Chris Bell – I Am the Cosmos

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Working for a year at a music magazine gave me a lot of opportunities. I interviewed Tiken Jah Fakoly. Received free tickets to festivals. Some manual labour thrown in there. A space to get my creative juices flowing, generally. It was also there that I was able to explore my Discover Weekly playlist on Spotify which, to anyone not so familiar, compiles a two-hour or so list of songs based on a user’s preference of genres they listen to when using the application. It was one week that today’s song made it on there; had it not…. well, I wouldn’t be talking about it now. Funny how things can work out.

Chris Bell was a founding a member of the 70s power pop band Big Star, a group who didn’t get its just dues in its day but have since been recognised by many a cool musician person as one of the best of its time. Bell only appeared on the band’s debut album #1 Record, a great album and a favourite of mine but that’s talk for another time, before departing after its 1972 release to pursue a career of his own.

During this time he laid down ‘I Am the Cosmos’, a beautiful song concerning loneliness, longing and inner turmoil. The narrator of the track tries to come back around at the end of a relationship by telling himself that he is the universe and the wind, but knows that in doing so his partner is unlikely to return. It is a downer, but the production here shines. It feels like I’m flying through a California blue sky when I hear this song on some good headphones, especially when the guitar solo comes in. It sounds like the album cover. But there’s a lingering sense of melancholy to the whole thing which can make it hard to listen to on some days. I really appreciate this song. Love it to bits.

Sadly, Bell was never able to witness the acclaim his music would receive as the years rolled on, he passed away in a tragic car crash in the winter of 1978. The music lives on.

My iPod #558: System of a Down – Hypnotize

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2005 marked the return of Armenian-American alternative metal band System of a Down; three years after 2002’s Steal This Album! came the double Mezmerize/Hypnotize album, with the first half released in the spring and the second following a few months later.

“Hypnotize” is the title track of the second half, and funnily enough includes both album titles within its lyrics. The majority of songs created in the Mezmerize/Hypnotize sessions featured a bigger presence of songwriter and guitarist Daron Malakian on lead vocals; “Hypnotize” is no exception. He and Serj Tankian alternate every other line before singing in harmony for the song’s innocent chorus. I say innocent because despite the ominous and daunting presence of propaganda by the media, the narrator is only concerned with waiting for his girl to arrive whilst sitting in his car.

The song is actually one of the slowest on the album, though it catches you by surprise when – with just over a minute to go – rumbling tom-toms and a boosted guitar line signify a change in tempo before a Latin-South Eastern European style solo sets up the climactic ending.

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And that is it for the H’s. It has been a grueling two months or so, but it’s finally done. As for when the I’s will start, I can’t say. I’ve got myself a job, and I’m looking forward to starting it next Wednesday. This puts the blog in a very strange position.

This may be the start of a very blank period on here.

If that is the case, keep yourself entertained with the many other posts on here.

This is not the end. Maybe just a hiatus.

We’ll see.

See you guys later.

My iPod #557: Muse – Hyper Music

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“Hyper Music” is the fourth track on the band’s second album Origin of Symmetry. A track of ‘pure anger and disregard for affection’ as once said by Matthew Bellamy in Kerrang! magazine, it was released as a double A-side single alongside their cover of “Feeling Good“. The band decided to film two music videos for the two songs too; whilst that of “Feeling Good” had flower petals slowly falling from the sky, “Hyper Music”‘s features very unstable camera handling, extreme close-ups of Matthew Bellamy’s head, and a headbanging crowd for the final chorus.

Still, it is the perfect visual accompaniment to the song’s bouncing energy and aggression. It all begins with a plectrum scratch which becomes more and more distorted before the band enter to launch into the song’s riff. Similar to a lot of early Muse songs “Hyper Music” focuses its attention on a person who Bellamy couldn’t bare to take shit from anymore, this time he totally erases them from his life – regarding them as someone he never loved nor wanted in the first place. Bellamy holds this negativity and exudes it in his wailing vocal performance, with bassist Chris Wolstenholme pulling the strings throughout delivering a powerful ascending bassline that drives the song’s momentum.

A great track. One that, admittedly, I like a lot better when I was younger. But still a headbanging listen all the way.

Tomorrow comes the last of the H’s and I don’t know whether to feel relieved or saddened by this. Will keep you updated.

My iPod #556: Pull Tiger Tail – Hurricanes

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Pull Tiger Tail were a band that deserved a lot better. Forming at the tail-end of the indie/post-punk revival of the mid-2000s, the trio went on to release a few singles that received airtime on the TV and got the media talking too.

“Hurricanes” was one of those singles, released in 2007. It was the band’s fourth and supposedly last one before the debut album that should have arrived soon after. Singer and guitarist Marcus Ratcliff wails about getting away from his hometown for a while with his significant other, expecting that nothing about it will change in their absence. To their surprise, a lot, in fact, does, making him think about how he has grown as a person.

By the end of 2007, the awaited album had not arrived. It was not out by the end of 2008 either. Because of various circumstances, PAWS. did not see the light of day until Autumn 2009, a time when Lady Gaga and Akon were popular in the charts. Indie bands, not so much unfortunately. The band split soon after.