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My iPod #437: Mac DeMarco – Go Easy

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Salad Days, the second album by Canadian goofball musician man Mac DeMarco, was easily one of my favourite albums of last year. I wrote a separate post dedicated to how much I was enjoying it at the time. If you’re in a hurry and can’t read it, I basically said the melodies were great, every song is memorable, the sound he gets on his guitar is a thing of gleaming beauty, and the album’s overall chill and casual vibe makes for some very easy listening. I certainly became a DeMarco fan thanks to it and I hope to see him, God willing, in Manchester in the summer when he plays at the Parklife Festival.

“Go Easy” is the last ‘song’ on the album, in that it is the last one in which Mac actually sings in before the album’s closing instrumental track “Jonny’s Odyssey”. It carries on the trend established by the nine tracks before it of consisting of a steady beat bathed with DeMarco’s shiny guitar licks and fills. The track also concerns DeMarco’s feelings on the pressures of his girlfriend moving to a new place, a subject which is also referred to in other songs on the album. And again, like almost all of the other tracks, it follows the simple structure of a verse, a chorus, a verse and a few reiterations of the chorus before it comes to a close. May not sound very interesting, but you have to hear it order to believe for yourself. Salad Days is too good to miss out on.

Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day.

My iPod #436: Steriogram – Go

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Today’s song is by New Zealand based punk rock/rap band Steriogram. The group had a lot of their success about a decade ago with the song “Walkie Talkie Man” which featured in an iPod advert and had a creative video made for it with Michel Gondry as director. That’s probably as much as we know about them over in the UK. But they were still very popular in their homeland, and released a few other songs as singles from their debut album Schmack! – “Go” was one of them.

The narrator of “Go” expresses a desire to leave a boring, monotonous ‘country town’; despite the sulking and complaining he doesn’t follow this wish through, realising that moving this decision will possibly be a big step for his life. Eventually the repetitiveness of life becomes too much, and the song ends when the narrator finally decides to leave.

I’ve known this song for a long time. Probably since about the summer going from Year 7 to Year 8. I can’t really remember why I was looking for Steriogram videos then, seeing as they hadn’t been heard from for years. But there you go. I would say that “Go” is one of the most safer tracks on Schmack!, it has a steady and chill tempo to it but it never really veers in any direction except for when the chorus hits. But I still like it, just because I’ve heard it many a time. It’s alright.

My iPod #435: The Who – Glow Girl

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“Glow Girl” closes out the 1995 reissue of The Who Sell Out, The Who’s third album which was originally released in 1967. The song was recorded during 1968, and was planned to be on an album entitled “Who’s for Tennis?” which obviously never came to be. It captures the band at their most poppy phase with jangly guitars and sweet vocal harmonies that last throughout the song, but still manages to contain that rock edge via the swaggering basslines and erratic drum fills.

Despite the light and heartwarming tone the song details the scene where people are getting on a flight which unfortunately crashes shortly after taking off. But after an instrumental break of guitar string scrapes the song comes to the pleasant conclusion in which the “glow girl” is born. To a “Mrs. Walker”, funnily enough. That caught me by surprise when I listened to it for the first time too. Does that mean Pete Townshend just stole bits from this track and “Rael 1” and inserted them into “Tommy”, or did he have that music planned all along? Who knows.

The thing I know is, after more than an hour or so of great music and a few mock adverts, “Glow Girl” with its pleasant overtones and silly mock-Sgt.Pepper locked groove is the perfect way to cap off the “Who Sell Out” listening experience.

My iPod #434: Blur – Globe Alone

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“Globe Alone” is the twelfth track on Blur’s fourth album “The Great Escape” in 1995. I like that album; I think it’s okay. But there are plenty who wouldn’t put it at the top of their favourite Blur album list due to the ‘faux-grandiosity’ or ‘pomposity’ some sensed in the lyrics and music. Brass is used in a lot of tracks too. Though being recorded at the height of the band’s success during the Britpop ‘movement’ during the mid-90s may have had something to do with it. But it’s on “Globe Alone” where, apart from the presence of a synthesizer and an organ in some parts, the guitar, bass, and drums take full control of the song’s momentum.

The lyrics in this case detail the life of a person who is only interested in the latest trends and what he sees on television adverts which is all well and good, but the music they are set against makes the second-shortest song on the album one of the craziest ones on there to listen to. Graham Coxon provides a wild performance with a roaring delivery during the choruses with vigorous string bends and messy guitar lines, Damon Albarn yells out every lyric from the high chest with barely any breaks, Dave Rowntree pulls off some of his best drumming in the track with a constant thrashing of the high-hat and several quickfire drum rolls, and Alex James ties it all together with a smooth bassline.

Blur changed their style for a more guitar-oriented aesthetic on their next album in 1997, and it is “Globe Alone”, which tends to be overlooked by, that could be seen as the precursor of that evolution. One of the most enjoyable to listen to from “The Great Escape”.

My iPod #433: Dananananaykroyd – Glee Cells Trade

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“Glee Cells Trade” is the penultimate song on ex-Scottish indie ‘fight pop’ band Dananananaykroyd’s second and final album “There Is a Way“. It comes after one of the cathartic tracks the band ever recorded, and before their grand finale of “Make a Fist” so it does the essential thing of relieving some of the tension of what you’ve just listened to, as well as settling you in for what is to come.

The track features co-lead vocalists John Baillie Jnr and Calum Gunn’s alternating their lines during the verses with tremendous ferocity before singing in unison for the emphatic choruses amongst guitar phrases which stop and start regularly and a springy bass which likes to fill in the gaps with a lick here and there. At two minutes and thirty-seven seconds it is the shortest track on the album, though it is one of the most easy-going ones on there however ear-piercing the singing tends to be sometimes. There’s something assuring about it when the two guys belt out the lines “You can’t set the way/A new baby’s meant to play” during the chorus, which also seem a bit prophetic seeing as the band would split up only a few months after the album’s release.

Admittedly it was one on the album that took me a while to get into; but, as you can see, I eventually did. And I’m glad.