Tag Archives: my ipod

#1209: Big Boi ft. Cutty – Shutterbugg

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I wish I could say I was there and witnessed all the hype leading up to the release of Big Boi’s Lucious Left Foot album. I would have been 15 at the time, I was a functioning person then and aware of my surroundings to an extent. But, being a teenager, I was a lot more excited by Eminem’s new LP that had been released a couple weeks before. Back in school, Eminem was everyone’s favourite rapper. The music gave us something to talk and rave about. Yeah, Recovery hasn’t aged all that well. I was personally going through a real Beatles phase too. So I mention all of this to say I missed out on the obvious excitement there must have been, leading up to the first solo release by either of the members of OutKast.

But I did see the music video for ‘Shutterbugg’ one day around that time. Where it was, I couldn’t tell you. MTV Base, The Box. I want to say the latter channel. It might have actually been the day it premiered on Big Boi’s YouTube channel. Whatever it was, it was through the video that I heard the song for the first time, and the hyperbolic kid I was then thought, “Wow, we’re really living in the future now.” It was the start of the 2010s, it was an exciting time. The camera quality looked HD before HD was existing. Big Boi was looking clean. There’s a kaleidoscopic Cadillac in there at one point. In general, a wide variation of very cool imagery occurs in the video’s duration. It really holds up today. One of those prime examples where it somehow heightens the listening experience. And even without the video, ‘Shutterbugg’ has always been a hit. Not in the mainstream, commercial way (although if it wasn’t that, it shoulda been), but in the way that it immediately caught my attention ’cause of the musical elements and all.

The track’s an ode to the good times had by the ladies and gentlemen of the nightclubs, with Big Boi calling out to all them to get to dancing, “throw [their] deuces” (make peace signs) for the titular “shutterbuggs” (paparazzi). Big Boi delivers two great verses, the first in which he tells us how he’s the coolest person you know, with the second taking place from his point of view while in the club. Not sure if Cutty ever did anything after this song, but he has a nice little feature for the bridge. But what I always thought was the real highlight of the whole thing was the predominant use of the talkbox. In the 2000s, I don’t think anyone was using the talkbox anywhere in any kind of music. But suddenly here it was and used to great effect. The whole track is a sort of throwback in terms of the instruments used, and yet has always continued to sound so, so fresh.

#1208: Foxygen – Shuggie

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Been a long while since I listened to We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic. That’s the third album by indie rock duo Foxygen. It’s now more than 10 years since it’s been available for listening and heard it for the first time myself. 18-year-old me was all for it. I thought, “This could be a band that I’ll be listening to for years to come.” It didn’t really work out that way, more my own fault than theirs. This is all a story I’ve told once before. I should properly go through the discography one of these days. There’s still time.

‘Shuggie’ is the sixth track on Peace & Magic. Obviously I would have heard it when going through the album initially all that time ago. But it wasn’t maybe until around 2018 when I heard it again and truly came round to appreciating it. I was in my first job out of uni, working in a little music studio in London. My colleague was on the reception desk handling payments and all the good stuff. She had Spotify on, which was playing through the speakers, and was on a playlist of some kind when ‘Shuggie’ came on. I knew it was a Foxygen song, but by that point it really had probably been five years since I last heard it. Hearing it at a suitable volume for an indoor waiting room environment and listening to its various tempo and mood changes, it got me thinking the song should have been a favourite of mine for that time.

Lyrically, the song’s a short tale about unrequited love. But though these feelings between the narrator and the person they fall for are unreciprocated, the song takes a more optimistic note and makes a point to realize the person within yourself and be happy with who you are in order to overcome adversity. Or something like that. Or maybe it’s all some sort of defence mechanism to distract the narrator from how they really feel. Whatever the message, I’m all for it. Sam France’s aloof vocals are a treat. But what I think is the highlight of the entire thing is the movement of the music from one section to the next. It’s all very ’70s chamber-pop inspired, before changing up the energy for almost-soulful choruses, then switching back and slowing down into the contemplative verses. There’s a little groovy interlude that comes to an abrupt end, which then suddenly shifts to the swinging, upbeat “ba-da-da-da” outro then fades on out. It’s a little rollercoaster of a song, all in a radio-friendly 3-and-a-half minutes. One of the duo’s most popular numbers for a reason.

#1207: The Sea and Cake – Showboat Angel

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Let’s all go back to the year 2017. If only, eh? Was an all right time for me. Specifically for today’s post’s context, I had finished my last uni exam but was still living in the accommodation. A lot of free time was on my hands, a lot of fun time was had. In that period, I remembered that ‘Jacking the Ball’ by The Sea and Cake existed after initially a year or two prior through Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist. It became my favourite song for a moment there. After playing it a multitude of times, it got me wondering whether the rest of the album the track was on sounded much like it. The album being the band’s ’94 debut. In a roundabout way it did. You can tell all of the tracks on there probably originated from jamming sessions between the members with the lyrics probably coming as an afterthought. But then there also weren’t a lot of songs on the LP that were as immediate in the ‘poppy’ kind of way like ‘Jacking the Ball’ was.

The big exception though was, the album’s eighth song, ‘Showboat Angel’. For a lack of a better word, the whole track is certainly a vibe. Images that come to my head when listening to it usually centre around a cozy barbecue in the backyard with friends on a sunny afternoon, with this song playing on a stereo in the background. It’s a very specific thing when it comes to me. But I hear those guitars and that light keyboard on the left, and that situation is all I can think of. Thos guitars come in, singer Sam Prekop vocally riffs over the top for a moment which falls into the “Ooh, yeah, aw” chorus which, simple as it may be, hits a very sweet spot. There are times throughout where it sounds like Prekop isn’t even singing proper words, but in the parts where he is it seems to me that this ‘showboat angel’ character is most likely a girlfriend or something who generally makes the narrator’s life better amidst the unhappiness that lingers on both the east side and the west side. A good-time song for good-time moments.

I was intrigued enough by the album that when I was going through a phase of listening to full discographies by various people, The Sea and Cake were a band that I thought would be an interesting one to go through. I can’t remember which one I made it to. But I’m quite sure that I didn’t fall quite heavily for the albums that followed compared to the first one. I seem to remember the tracks on the other albums being less riff/jam driven, putting more focus on the vocal melodies that Prekop was delivering. And I don’t know, I just didn’t fall for them as much. But then again, that was quite a few years back. Maybe if I were to listen with these older, kind of wiser ears, things could be likely to change. Though that’s something for me to figure out. Anyone reading who hasn’t heard of the band, I’d say give them a go. They’ve got quite a few albums to their name, it could just be worth the time.

#1206: Big Thief – Shoulders

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The story of how ‘Shoulders’ came to be on Big Thief’s Two Hands album – which has now been out and round for five years, it’s crazy stuff – is very, very similar to how fellow track ‘Not’ ended up on there too. ‘Shoulders’ had been performed live by the band before the LP was released. It goes further back than even I thought it did, as judging by this live take from 2015, the band were already in the process of working on it during their Masterpiece days. Probably even before then. They played it in various places between 2017 and 2019. And it got to the point where the fans wanted to know when the studio version would be available. U.F.O.F. arrived. It wasn’t there. But to everyone’s surprise, Two Hands was announced a few months later, and there was ‘Shoulders’ in the tracklist.

A lot of comments on Big Thief videos made note about ‘Shoulders’. There was a lot of excitement for it, from what I can recall. Even in the videos where the song wasn’t played. So maybe subconsciously, I don’t know, I avoided the song altogether and didn’t hear it until it was officially a part of the Big Thief oeuvre and situated in an album of some kind. Fancy word there, “oeuvre”. I heard it, and I was quite pleased. It was indeed a good song, the people of YouTube weren’t lying. I think it was more or less stated in an interview around the time that the album was to have a rawer, one-take feel to it, in contrast to the more produced and constructed style of U.F.O.F. And ‘Shoulders’ is just another that exemplifies the aesthetic. If you’ve seen the band live, it’s very easy to pick out who’s playing what here. You get some good speakers, play it loud, and it’s like the band are in your room. Gotta appreciate inviting stuff like that.

Now here’s where I usually lay out my interpretation of a song. Sometimes I feel certain, other times not so much. When it comes to ‘Shoulders’, I must admit I’ve dug the music and sung along through the years I haven’t come to make the time for any thinking behind it all. Those descending guitar chords by Buck Meek (on the right) during the choruses scratch an itch. And Adrianne Lenker never disappoints on the vocal front. Always just that bit breathtaking when she increases the intensity on the “kiss the bad ways I have been” line. But having a look through the lyrics and knowing the themes Lenker tends to touch upon in them, I’ll make a strong suggestion and say it’s a song about her mum. I’ll leave you with that to think upon.

#1205: Nine Black Alps – Shot Down

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2005’s the year I came to know Nine Black Alps. It’s a story I’ve told before, last time in the post for ‘Not Everyone’. But the summary is, couple videos appeared on MTV2, I wasn’t into them. ‘Not Everyone’ appeared on the radar. I really got into that. And then at Christmas, I got FIFA 06 and Burnout Revenge as presents. The band were on the soundtracks for both games. ‘Cosmopolitan’ on the former and today’s song, ‘Shot Down’, on the latter. Someone at EA Sports must have been a fan. And because of countless hours of playing both games on my part, singing along to either tune in the process, I eventually became one too. Still got my physical copy of Everything Is sitting on a shelf. One of my favourite albums, and I don’t think anyone knows about it.

To a ten-year-old, there’s not much more fun you can think of than crashing cars without having to consider the consequences. And that was essentially what Burnout Revenge was all about. The soundtrack was killer. You had the ‘Red Flag’ demo by Billy Talent which was always better than the final version. OK Go’s ‘Do What You Want’. ‘Helicopter’ by Bloc Party, which funnily enough was in FIFA 06 as well. I could go on. It was stacked. So many great hits. And it always felt so cathartic when you crashed into a car on a specific downbeat or emphatic moment in a tune. Oh, what a thrill. Those were the days, man. Getting choked up just thinking about it now. If ‘Shot Down’ appeared during a race or whatever, it never got a skip. It was another track that added to the pent-up energy the game already provided. I came to later find out that the song as it was in the soundtrack was censored by EA, with the mention of guns and killing sons being slightly altered. It’s funny to hear the EA version now. My mind was made up. I had to get the Nine Black Alps album that all these songs were on. And I did, wanna say a few months later.

‘Shot Down’ is the eighth track on Everything Is. The record up to that point is a whole heavy but melodic affair, bar for the one serene acoustic moment, and ‘Shot Down’ carries on the same feel. Some people listening to the track for the first time may get a sense of rhythmic displacement. Feeling like singer Sam Forrest begins singing too early or something. Explanation is, during the intro, the guitars are struck on the upbeat rather than the down. Knowing this, I can still lose the timing sometimes. Usual guitarist David Jones and then bassist Martin Cohen switched roles on this tune for whatever reason, but the results are still A1. References in the song regarding laying low, saving oneself, hiding guns and killing sons (like I said earlier) reinforce a feeling I’ve always had that the LP had a concept about living during wartime. There’s lots of other references of the like scattered in other songs on there too. So I’ve always thought ‘Shot Down’ is more or less part of that story. What that story is, I’m not sure. I could maybe tweet Sam Forrest about it one day. But I feel there’s a thread there. The music video for it, above, was also the first one the band ever made. So that’s a nice note.