Tag Archives: my ipod

My iPod #336: The Pigeon Detectives – Everybody Wants Me

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Turns out The Pigeon Detectives released their fourth album just a few months ago. Their fourth. I did not know the band were still together. It is a shame how the indie band from Leeds seemed to fade away after they got so many people excited with their debut album “Wait for Me” released back in 2007. That album, filled with anthems about relationships, got very popular managing to peak at number three in the charts. How could they follow it up? Quite quickly, ‘cos a year later came the second album “Emergency“. People liked that too. Not as much as the first though. Got to number five. And the singles released from it didn’t grab people’s attention like those from the debut too.

“Everybody Wants Me” was the second single from “Emergency” which, I think, is unusual for a track that closes out an album. It is a very easy song to play. Before typing this, I literally learned how to play the track on the guitar because it only consists of four chords (A-B-D-E if you want to know, A-B-D for the verses and E-D-A-D for the bridge in that order).

Overall, “Everybody Wants Me” is a nice song to listen to. Just a standard verse-chorus-verse-bridge (etc etc.) structured track, where the singer moans about all the girls wanting him now he’s famous. He doesn’t want them though. He wants a certain someone. Who that someone is is not told.

My iPod #335: Nine Black Alps – Everybody Is

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Here’s another one by Nine Black Alps. Just when you started to think they were never coming, you get two on the trot.

This time though, it’s the almost-title-track “Everybody Is” from the band’s debut album “Everything Is“. I believe that it is not available on some editions of the 2005 release, maybe it wasn’t on the American edition or something, but I was lucky enough to get the limited edition which did have it. It is also on the “Shot Down” single if anyone has that.

The track arrives near the back end of the album coming after you have experienced the pulsating energy that pours into your ears from listening to “Just Friends”. Looking back now, I don’t think it took me that long to get into “Everybody Is”. There’s something that’s very reassuring and comforting about it. Even though the song clearly states that people are liars and hypocrites, the track is the expression of someone’s acceptance of this situation. It’s probably one of the most happier songs on the album, actually.

Like every other song on “Everything Is” (bar two), it’s loud. Very big sounding guitars, and quite a busy bass line too.

If you have the version of the album that doesn’t have this, you’re missing out bruh.

My iPod #334: Nine Black Alps – Every Photograph Steals Your Soul

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(Skip to about 6:10)

Now I always feel as if I have to be careful about what I say about Nine Black Alps songs. The band follows me on Twitter, you see, and I think it was because they read one of my posts. Whether they liked it or not is a mystery to me, but I guess they want to see more. I haven’t talked about a Nine Black Alps track in a while.

Well, here is one now. It’s “Every Photograph Steals Your Soul”, the third track from the band’s third album “Locked Out from the Inside” released way back in 2009. I first heard it when the album was exclusively put up onto we7.com. If anyone remembers that site, isn’t it a shame what happened to it? It started to change by becoming a radio only site in 2012, and then it changed companies altogether. A real shame, I liked that site.

But anyway, I was excited as fuck to be listening to that album. Was hyped from the day “Buy Nothing” was revealed a few months earlier, but when I heard the first strum on “Vampire in the Sun” I knew I was in for something special. Nine Black Alps were heavy again after “Love/Hate”, and were bringing back the noise.

The topic of the track is really all there in the title. The song is from the perspective of a photographer who is all about the money and stealing people’s innocence for their own personal gain. Well, I’m thinking that’s what the band intended to make out this person to be. There is low, sinister guitar playing during the verses which give me an image of some sleazy man taking pictures of somebody, and then the volume increases for the chorus; the guitars get loud and Sam Forrest yells the title phrase with a few ‘yeahs’ thrown in there for good measure.

Just throwing this in, but the part which gave me goosebumps on my first listen? The part where everything stops for a split second before a ear splitting “YEAH” brings everything back in again. That was when I realised that this album was the shit.

My iPod #333: Paul McCartney – Ever Present Past

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In 2007, Paul McCartney released his fourteenth solo album “Memory Almost Full“. Also at that time I was twelve years old almost finishing my first year of secondary school, and not caring that much about anything in particular.

I guess it is a big deal when Paul McCartney comes out with something new just because he is who he is, but thinking about it now I can’t remember that much being said about the album’s arrival. Although, most of the time I was watching MTV2 where McCartney’s videos were never played anyway. The first time I knew that his new album was coming was when the ‘exclusive premiere’ of the video for his new song “Dance Tonight” was shown on TV late at night.

I feel like I’m telling you my life story just reading this through. Basically, “Ever Present Past” was the second single from that album. Heard in on the car radio when my mum was taking me somewhere. Then it played on we7.com, and I started to really like it.

In the track Paul sings about feeling old, how life goes quickly and how he’s never able to quite get over his past because he’s constantly reminded about it, and because he thought it would last forever. It’s a good tune.

He dances in the music video, which may be cringing for some. Not me though, I don’t care.

My iPod #332: Supergrass – Evening of the Day

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While being a fantastic bass player, probably one of the most underrated during the Britpop era, Mick Quinn of Supergrass was also a decent singer. He did occasionally take on lead vocal duties on many Supergrass songs such as “You Can See Me” and “Sometimes I Make You Sad” from “In It for the Money“, “Beautiful People” and co-lead vocals on “Mary” from their self-titled album. But it is on the 2002 album “Life on Other Planets” where fans get to hear a lot more of his singing, as he takes on lead vocals on four of the twelve songs on there including today’s track “Evening of the Day”. I asked the man himself if he did take the lead on this one, thinking that he wouldn’t reply……. and to my surprise he did only a few hours later.

Positioned right in the middle of the album, “Evening” begins with some smooth bass and piano. Sounds really laidback, and cool. There’s a very lounge-y/jazzy tone about it all. Quinn enters with his lower register vocal (which is what got me confused about who was singing it in the first place) and goes on to sing about how, during the evening of the day, he waits somewhere (possibly a location of a high altitude) for a person who is very important to him. While he looks at the view, all he can think about is that person. The song’s chorus is a line from a Spinal Tap track “All the Way Home” which is as follows: “If she’s not on that 3:15, then I’m gonna know what sorrow means.”

It is at 3:15 of “Evening of the Day” when what I have described to you above finishes in a minor and rather messy fashion. I can’t tell whether it was supposed to be a different song altogether and the band decided combine it with the first three minutes or if it was all planned. But in this particular part, the band members sing about someone being stoned and not knowing what they’re talking about. Whether they’re referring to the ‘narrator’ of the first part of the song, I’m not sure, but it does bring a light and comedic end to a very good song.