Tag Archives: my ipod

My iPod #219: Pavement – Cream of Gold

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I am going to say something that will irk a lot of Pavement fans. But “Terror Twilight” is my favourite Pavement album. I said it, what.

The record gets a lot of scepticism by the majority of Pavement fans for many reasons. Reasons that I would try to list here, but would end up typing them very vaguely so you probably won’t understand. Basically this is the band’s last album, made at a time when relationships within the band were deteriorating. I think a lot of people sense that from the album’s sound. Stephen Malkmus’ vocals sound quite lacklustre and lack conviction, there wasn’t an “Unfair” or a “Two States” type song on there. In fact the writer of the latter, Scott Kannberg the guitarist and other songwriter in the band, didn’t get one song on this album. He had at least one song on the previous four albums. Thing’s weren’t looking good. Would Pavement split up? Their split later in 1999 answered that question.

Despite all that, I simply adore this album. It has such an airy, dream-like atmosphere about it. No doubt that is due to the production of one Nigel Godrich, who you may or may not know as the producer of most of Radiohead’s albums. Nothing sounds rough; all the songs are very soothing and pleasing to the ear. Yes Malkmus wrote all the songs, the songs sound too polished, Malkmus sounds bored but you know…. GET OUT OF HERE. I DON’T CARE. “Terror Twilight” forever.

That’s my album review. Now for the song.

So, “Cream of Gold” is the fourth song on “Terror Twilight”. It did take a while for me to eventually like this song enough to put it on my iPod. I didn’t just put it on there because “You Are the Light” segues into it when you listen to the album. I did grow to appreciate the song for its coolness.

I have no clue what the song is about. The lyrics are very abstract. Even the song title is just a longer way of saying “Beige”, which I only figured out a few weeks ago. I think it’s about some sort of bad relationship of a couple, and the narrator knew from the start but he still suffers through it.

Musically, it’s very gloomy. It rocks, don’t get me wrong. This isn’t some emo, goth type song or whatever. The songs starts to play when you’re outside, it’s really dark and you beginning to worry about your own safety. That happened to me some time ago when I was walking back to my house….. But the track just suits that type of atmosphere. It has quite a threatening tone to it.

The guitar tuning is not the ‘standard’, which Pavement were known to do for many songs from their albums. After two verses, two choruses and a few repeats of the last line of the chorus, Malkmus busts out a solo and repeats a phrase about six times before the track falls apart with some feedback. Not in a bad way to end. Good stuff.

My iPod #218: Sum 41 – Crazy Amanda Bunkface

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Quoted from songfacts: “Lead singer and guitarist Deryck Whibley wrote this about one of his old girlfriends.” From the title, you can already tell that this is not a track about the good times the couple had in that relationship.

No, it seems that “Bunkface” was asking too much of Deryck. Always going on about being together forever even when they’re only in their late teens, and generally talking about things that, although he appears to care, freak him out when they come into conversation. He tries to put on a smile, but wants out.So this song are basically all the thoughts going through his head while that’s going on.

Can’t say much about it, but I have it on the iPod so I must like it.

My iPod #217: Guttermouth – Cram It Up Your Ass

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Um…. Okay, I know this looks bad…. let me explain.

“Cram It Up Your Ass……. really? What the fuck.” That may be one of the thoughts that may have come to mind when you first saw the title. If you have come to this from my Twitter page, you may be even more confused and surprised. I couldn’t put a song title like that on my feed; people wouldn’t even want to click on the link otherwise.

Enough about that. “Cram It Up Your Ass” is the closer to Guttermouth’s first major release “Covered with Ants” and is one of the funniest songs I have ever listened to. And one of the creepiest.

The only reason I know of this song is because all I wanted to do, when I was ten and playing Tony Hawk on the PS2, was find and listen to “I’m Destroying the World” on the computer for minutes on end. However I could never do that; I always had to listen to thirty second samples instead on random music sites. Whenever it said ‘download’, the link would take me to a place where I had to pay… I’m not about that life.

“Cram It Up Your Ass” is on the same album as “Destroying the World”, and the title looked interesting so I decided to hear it’s sample. Nothing much happened, as you can tell. Just the lead singer singing the title over a bass that was playing the vocal melody. No big deal.

That was until, years later, I found out that it turns into a proper headbanger where all the guitars play the vocal melody in unison with frenetic drums rolling around all over the place. The dynamics are a very key part of this song. The last lines “Do you still like me?” are sung when the instruments come to a sudden stop, leaving the singer all alone. That part freaks me out a bit.

It doesn’t end there. After a few seconds of silence, a bloody grand piano comes in and plays the vocal melody over and over again for five minutes or so! I don’t know. I cut that bit out though, that part is unnecessary.

How could I even write so much about this track.

My iPod #216: George Harrison – Crackerbox Palace

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2011 marked ten years without George Harrison on this Earth and as a dedication, the BBC showed a new documentary detailing the musician’s life. It is very good, I recommend you see it if you haven’t.

The reason I talk about that is that there were these clips of Harrison, not during his days with The Beatles but what looked like in a time way after, joking around and goofing off with a lot of people in the gardens of his mansion.

What I thought were clips from a never-seen before film of George at his home, turned out to be clips taken from the music video for “Crackerbox Palace”, a song from his fifth solo album “Thirty-Three & 1/3“.

It took me a long time to find out where those video clips were from. Originally I saw the documentary in 2011, but didn’t see the “Palace” video until the summer of last year. I don’t know.

With a thunderous drum intro, the song suddenly starts with a Calypso-Carribean groove accompanied with a joyful slide guitar and fitful drums. Most of what you hear in the lyrics are based on actual events too, which may or may not be interesting to you.

Only feelings of happiness and loving life arise when I hear this song, and those are further increased when I see the video for it featuring cameos from Eric Idle, Neil Innes, and his wife who he had not yet married at that point.

All in all, fun tune.

My iPod #215: They Might Be Giants – Cowtown

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“Cowtown” is the second song from They Might Be Giants’ second album “Lincoln”. I first heard the track on the old LaunchCast radio/website that Yahoo used to own. I won’t go on about that; I’ve talked about it before in many posts that I can’t be bothered to link into this sentence.

I was probably about nine/ten and what instantly struck me, apart from the galloping clarinet introduction, was the overall tone and mood of the song when John Flansburgh starts singing the chorus and the rest of the instruments come in. There is something very warm, inviting, and full of pride about it. Almost got me thinking Cowtown was an actual place that existed somewhere, and if it didn’t could someone think of a plan to construct it right away.

Although primarily written by Linnell, both Johns sing the track which is great because their voices work of each other so well. And with so many rhymes in the lines and lyrical wordplay, it is a shoe in with the many They Might Be Giants tunes that rely on those kinds of things on… well, almost all of their albums. But the first four especially.