Tag Archives: my ipod

#1189: Soundgarden – She Likes Surprises

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For anyone who wasn’t living in the US and Canada at the time of the release of Superunknown, ‘She Likes Surprises’ could be found as the album’s final song as a bonus addition. The band didn’t think it really fit into the overall theme and feel of the actual record, which truly finishes with ‘Like Suicide’. But record companies back in the days of 1994 were really trying to push CDs out there, at the sacrifice of vinyl, and give an incentive for fans to buy them in stores. So Soundgarden’s record label requested ‘She Likes Surprises’ be on the editions released in Europe, Japan and Australia to compete with those available in North America. I don’t know who won in that competition. But for me, more music is an automatic victory. Might not match the vision of the artist, but sometimes you just have to let these thing pass.

I may have only heard this song for the first time a few years back. Maybe 2019 or so, when an urge to revisit Superunknown came to me. The album was already in my iTunes library, and I think after really getting into Down on the Upside the year before, it made sense to go back to what many would consider to be the band’s best. The way I remember it, I think I ended the album with ‘Like Suicide’ too and was quite hesitant to hear ‘Surprises’ out. Anytime there’s a bonus anything anywhere on a record, it’s usually the result of the record label’s request rather than the artist themselves. But after a while I thought “What the hell” and listened to it anyway. And I’m glad I did because at this point, I usually listen to ‘Surprises’ a lot more frequently than a number of other songs on the “official” album.

I thought the way it starts off was strange initially. A screeching guitar line alongside a plodding bass riff. It was a choice, but it’s how it goes. Matt Cameron’s drums come in along with Chris Cornell’s vocals. That guitar line carries on screeching before things get heavy for about two seconds before returning to normal like nothing happened. Things get heavy again as the band launches into the song’s chorus, with that ascending half-step scale on the guitar, and I think that’s where the song won me over. In fact, I like how much the song feels like it’s moving constantly from one direction to the other. It’s in 4/4 mainly, with maybe a bar of 5/4 and 10/4 here and there. But even in the standard time, notes are sometimes played on the upbeat to keep you on your toes. When it comes to the lyrics, it seems to be about a lady who doesn’t think too much of herself but gains gratification out of casual hookups. At least I think that’s what it’s going for. Saw an interpretation online that the ‘colourful disguises’ referred to in the song are condoms. Seems reasonable enough. The band never played the song live, but I’ve always appreciated the drumming in it, so I’ll embed this pretty accurate drum cover from YouTube.

#1188: The Flaming Lips – She Don’t Use Jelly

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The first time The Flaming Lips came into my consciousness was around the time that At War with the Mystics was their “new” album that was going to be released soon. Guess that places us in 2006. The video for ‘The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song’ was a regular in the mornings on MTV2. It was a strange video. It was a strange song. But I dug it. To the 11-year-old child I was, it scratched that weird internal itch that I think all young ones have at that age. Because there was this hype for The Flaming Lips going around, their older videos would be played on the channel too. Through this, it’s how I came to know songs like ‘Race for the Prize’, ‘Fight Test’, ‘Do You Realize??’, and today’s featured track ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’.

I was a younger, foolish kid back when I saw the video for ‘Jelly’ for the first time, and I think I cared more about appearances than the music. The first thought I had was how different Wayne Coyne looked compared to all the other videos I’d seen him in. In fact, the whole band looked completely unrecognizable. It appeared to be a much older music video than than the ones for the songs from Bulletin and Yoshimi, so obviously they were younger. They just also happened to look like completely different people. Plus, there appeared to be this other person in the band that by 2006 was not in there anymore. I had a lot of research to do. The track just seemed weird to me. The combination of the audio with the visuals, my little brain couldn’t handle it. I got over that bridge eventually.

The Flaming Lips could have easily been known as the band that did this one song. and then dipped, never to be heard from again. As we all know, they went on to do great things which I think we’re all very grateful for. But there are a lot of one-hit wonders who have worst tracks than this one. ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’ is about three kooky characters, two girls, one guy, all described in three respective verses, who use unusual objects for the completely wrong purposes. There’s choruses per se. Where the choruses would usually be are instead replaced by the crunching guitar riff and loopy slide guitar refrain, which also start the track off. And I like Coyne’s vocal in this too, all bare and untampered with. He’s not the strongest singer, but he gives it feeling, even if the lyrics aren’t meant to be taken all seriously.

#1187: The Beatles – She Came in Through the Bathroom Window

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Well, this track comes as a bit of a weird one to talk about. It’s The Beatles. ‘She Came in Through the Bathroom Window’ is from Abbey Road. Everyone likes that album. When I think about it, it’s not the one I return to when I want to hear a Beatles album in full. That would probably go to Revolver or Rubber Soul or something. But I won’t argue that it has some of the band’s best songs on there. ‘She Came in…’ is a part of the medley that makes up the majority of Abbey Road‘s second half, kinda closing out its first part, and was performed in one take alongside ‘Polythene Pam’ whose closing solo segues right into the introduction.

For the longest time I looked at the medley with a bit of a side-eye. Blasphemous to say, I know. This was the masterstroke that marked the ending of the Beatles’ recording career. But seeing as it was made up of tunes that John Lennon and Paul McCartney had in the can going back to 1968, the album was released in Autumn 1969, I used to see it as the guys sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel for material and shmushing them together. Although I appreciate it a lot more these days, I do usually have that feeling lurking in the back of my mind. As a result, I like some of the parts more than the whole. And I can’t say that I have a deep, deep connection with this particular tune other than I found myself singing it to myself whenever I was out shopping or in the shower. If I was singing it in those situations, that probably means I’ve liked it somewhere along the line.

‘She Came in…’ was inspired by a real-life incident where a fan broke into Paul McCartney’s London home, literally through the bathroom window while he was out. The parts about being ‘protected by a silver spoon’ and sucking her thumb ‘by the banks of her own lagoon’ I have no idea about. Only McCartney could tell you if he asked him. But being a grandmaster of melody that he is, he makes the whole two minutes the song goes on for sound rather good. I guess he just let his imagination run wild about this particular person, wondering what she does as a job and what her aspirations may be. It’s all a bit up in the air, this one, regarding the lyrics. But regarding the harmonies, the backing vocals, Harrison’s guitar licks, the sort of half-time tempo McCartney’s bass takes for the second verse. That’s all good, good stuff. One of my highlights out of the so-called ‘Long One’.

#1186: Feeder – Shatter

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At the time of the release of ‘Shatter’ in October 2005, Feeder’s most recent album had been Pushing the Senses. Looking at scores and reviews of the project, it seems that critics just weren’t very impressed with it. I’m sure a lot of Feeder fans dug it though. Though I want to say there was one take on the LP I witnessed that more or less said that the band hadn’t got over the death of their drummer Jon Lee and were just making the same old sad songs like they did on the album that came before. A bit of a morbid way to look at it. Insensitive, to say the least. I couldn’t say, really. I’ve never heard it in full. Though I do remember seeing the video for ‘Feeling a Moment’ on TV the one time, the only Feeder songs I knew as a whole were ‘Buck Rogers’ and ‘Just a Day’. So when the video for ‘Shatter’ started making the rounds on MTV2, I was kinda surprised.

This song was nothing like the two songs I was used to. ‘Shatter’ was darker, brooding, had a harder rock edge to it. Contained a sound that left me feeling that there was something unknown lurking around the corner. I think that specific thing’s more reinforced by the music video it got, which contained clips from a Russian movie called Night Watch. But I knew immediately that the song was one that I wanted to hear constantly, and if ever the video came on the TV, I had to make sure I watched the whole thing. It might even be one of the main reasons I got the band’s Singles compilation for Christmas 2006. The song had been released as a single – a double A-side format with fellow song ‘Tender’ – and I’d completely missed that. So the compilation was the only way to ensure that I could hear the track whenever I wanted and not by the judgement of whoever was managing MTV2 in those days.

In fact, the song had originally been released as the B-Side to ‘Tumble and Fall’, when that came around as the lead single for Pushing the Senses in January of 2005. It also would have been familiar to followers of the Gran Turismo series, as the track appeared in the soundtrack of Gran Turismo 4 albeit with a different mix. Word got ’round among fans regarding how good of a song ‘Shatter’ was, and so, after a successful petition, it was promoted from being a song that maybe no one would have gone on to think twice about to being one of their top, top singles. At least, in my eyes. If only I knew what the song was truly about. Think it’s generally about depression. There’s probably more to it. What I know is, it’s been in my library for almost 20 years now and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. My particular favourite bit is the instrumental break before the final chorus with the frantic chord changes underneath the spooky synth(?) solo. Gets quite intense before exploding into the song’s last moments. I like this one a lot.

#1185: Test Icicles – Sharks

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Maybe someday Test Icicles will get that unexpected burst of attention. Whether it through some strange trending sensation on TikTok, or a featured song in a very popular film or advert on the TV. Whatever happens. It would be nice. I remember initially being really turned off by the band when the first came round in 2005 with ‘Circle. Square. Triangle’. I was 10 at that point and thought it was a bunch of noise. But then my sister got the band’s album as a loan from a friend later on that year. I still didn’t get it. But, from what I remember, she did. And I particularly remember her spontaneously busting out lyrics from ‘Catch It!’ and ‘Sharks’, which as you can see, is today’s subject.

For Screening Purposes Only, Test Icicles’ one and only album, carried a name taken from the 1999 film Thicker Than Water, in which the phrase would appear onscreen whenever any violence happened. Never seen it, just going by what Wikipedia says. So in my head, I’m thinking that the three member must have been into films, they must have watched Jaws one day and, with a spark of inspiration, got to writing a new song. You won’t find official sources to back this up, so I’m going with this until that changes. ‘Sharks’, written by Sam Mehran or ‘Sam E Danger’ as he went by in the band, is about… well, sharks. Particularly how frightening they are. Maybe Mehran had a nightmare about being attacked by one. Though there might be a whole metaphor I’m missing out on here. All these theories I have, I mean, they sound plausible. They may be completely wrong too. Anyone out there, please correct me if so.

The track has a hidden introduction at the end of the song that precedes it on the album. A definitely Jaws-inspired motif played on a bass guitar is joined by a programmed drum pattern before launching into the official start of the song, a minor-key surf rock riff that properly gets the serotonin going. Mehran, Devonte Hynes and Rory Atwell bark out the track’s opening words, ‘Sharks. Sharks. Bite. Kill. Sharks.’ And a lot of screaming ensues. There’s plenty of that throughout actually. But things change musically from one section to the next. The surf-rock vibe switches out to a slower, more creeping part after what I guess you call the chorus. The song doesn’t really have one. But then after the sort of glitchy instrumental break, the initial riff comes in with a vengeance and brings it all to definitive close. Very impactful. The music’s better than the description.