Tag Archives: my ipod

#1085: Eels – Rags to Rags

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I’m not sure if this is something I’ve ever talked about on here. For now, let’s say I haven’t. I had a YouTube account from 2008 – 2011 where I uploaded full albums and other various musical related stuff on there. This was back when you could actually get away with that stuff. But one day I went a bit too far, got my final strike and the account was shut down. Terminated. I was devastated. Three years of my life sorta gone just like that. My own fault, I know. Looking back on it, I think it caused slight bout of depression that coincided with my final two years in secondary school. It wasn’t a fun time. I was still going through that when listening to Eels’ Beautiful Freak album in September 2012. How am I so specific with the month? Well, ’cause it was a year on from when YouTube took my channel down. ‘Novocaine for the Soul’ I’d known prior to that first full listen to the album, but it was ‘Rags to Rags’ that seemed to capture how I was feeling at the time.

The track is written from the perspective of a guy who looks in the mirror, doesn’t think much of what he sees and has something of an existential crisis despite having gone through the ideal American Dream of coming from nothing to suddenly having everything he could ever want. All this is spurred on by the sight of a lone spider crawling on the reflection of the narrator’s eye. Singer/guitarist E might just be singing about himself on this one, correct me if I’m wrong. He’s fulfilled his dream, but still feels worthless like a bunch of rags and rust, coming to the conclusion that this ‘dream’ was ultimately pointless. The only time he gets some solace is in his dreams when he thinks of his hometown, reminiscing about the railroad tracks (something he’d sing about again later in the band’s material) and the pussy willow (something I didn’t know existed until I heard this song).

It’s been 11 years now since that first listen. Some ways it really feels like that amount of time has passed, in others it feels like it was just last week. Either way, the song still provides that feeling-down comfort, even if its lyrical subject matter is a bit of a downer. Some good alternative rock music right here. ‘Rags’ was released as a single in 1996, and from what it looks like a music video was made for it, but the complete version of it seems to be wiped off the face of the earth. You can see a good portion of it, but its beginning and end are missing. Funnily enough, the video finishes before E delivers the line about the American Dream not meaning ‘a fucking thing’. Surely that’s just coincidental, right? If anyone from Eels is reading, let’s get the video back.

#1084: The Who – Rael 1

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Around the summer of 2010, I properly started listening to The Who. The months up until that period of time were those in which I discovered the Beatles and really began my fascination with their music that continues to this day. So I’m thinking that my decision to check out The Who came from a throwaway thought of “What’s another ’60s band that people talk about? The Who? Wouldn’t do no harm to try them out.” And so I did. I was 15 then, and now at 28, albums like Quadrophenia and Who’s Next are such that I can’t imagine my life without. But really I think the first of the band’s albums that I sought to listen to was The Who Sell Out, the group’s third album, released in 1967. I saw its professional ratings on the Wikipedia page and the time and was surprised at how highly rated it seemed to be among critics and the like. Couldn’t be that great, surely? Well, it actually is. And its 1995 remix/reissue that added 10 more songs to the original tracklist further showcased just how on a roll the band appeared to be during those sessions. That’s the version I’m most accustomed to.

‘Rael 1’, originally titled ‘Rael (1 and 2)’ on the original 1967 release, would usually be the album’s closer, though with the 1995 issue there’s an added selection of bonus material recorded during the record’s production. The song was the result of what was initially going to be a much larger project – I believe, a rock opera – conceived by Pete Townshend, but pressure from the band’s record label to produce hit singles at a faster rate ground whatever plans Townshend had to a halt. So what we get is the much compressed version of his vision. Like the Who’s album closer on Sell Out‘s predecessor, ‘Rael 1’ is another mini-opera, consisting of separate musical movements to create one whole piece. But unlike the domestic relationship situation explored in ‘A Quick One…’, ‘Rael’ takes the subject matter to broader horizons, exploring a world in which China is the main power of the world and is on its way to conquer Israel. The track is told by an Israeli protagonist who wishes to return to his home and save his country against all odds.

Shame the idea didn’t get the full album treatment it needed. However, the whole idea of a rock opera was something that was very much on Townshend’s mind. We all know what arrived a couple years later. And if you don’t, well, the band made Tommy, which took the band’s popularity to a whole other level worldwide and took the group’s success to the greatest heights when for a moment it looked like the band were at a crossroads when Sell Out didn’t meet commercial expectations. There are plenty of musical ideas subtly presented in Sell Out that would appear again in the music of Tommy, and none arrive quite as clearly as they do here on ‘Rael 1’, with its final instrumental section being reused for ‘Sparks’. I’m sure Who fans got a kick out of hearing music that they were sure they’d heard before and revisiting Sell Out to find that it was there all along. Even though the music gets its own highlight in the form of ‘Sparks’, I recognise it more as the exciting instrumental passage that brings Sell Out to a cosmic end.

#1083: R.E.M. – Radio Free Europe

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Well, well, well. You didn’t think this was ever going to come back, did you? I was honestly thinking that way for a while too. Hey, remember back when I started on the P’s and said that I could aim to get whole series done by the time I turned 30? Yeah, very unlikely that will happen. I’ll definitely be in my 30s at the least, though. With the breaks I take, it was definitely going to be a effort to try and force that. And I’ve seen the number of songs I have up beginning with ‘S’ and ‘T’. Just those two letters would fill up two separate years themselves, I tell you.

But I’m back. I’m here. It’s time to get started again. And it’s with R.E.M.’s ‘Radio Free Europe’, the opening track on the band’s debut Murmur album from 1983. This isn’t the first time I’ve written about a song from that record. It’s been some time, but I think I’ve written the summary of how I came to know Murmur and the immediate effect it had on me. Probably not worth repeating. We’re here for the track. It’s a fine one. A great way to kick things into gear. It introduces the musical structure that happens a lot through the album, where the song starts with the verse and goes into the pre-chorus, and when usually you think the chorus will come immediately after, the second verse begins. The band holds out on you, so when that chorus eventually does arrive, the weight from all the building tension’s released. The choruses are the best parts on every Murmur track, that’s just a fact.

The song also introduced the lyricism of Michael Stipe, who before he found he could use his voice to speak about things that were important and actually mean something (I’m sure I read that he said this about himself somewhere), wrote words and melodies that were to mainly compliment the musicianship of Mike Mills, Peter Buck and Bill Berry and not meant to say much of anything at all, leaving it to the listener to come up with their own interpretations. What I would guess the song is about is… the importance of the the radio in modern society and its global reach to whoever’s listening out there? I don’t think about the meaning that much, but that’s fine. I don’t think Stipe wants you to either, which is great. There’s no pressure. If you’re not too into the version in the video above, the band previously recorded the track on another label a couple years earlier in 1981 and released it as a single. It’s a bit faster, some people prefer that sort of thing.

#1082: Cloud Nothings – Quieter Today

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Well, I guess from this day onward, things will be a bit quieter around here. It’s the last song of the P (and Q) section. It’s the last Cloud Nothings song that will feature on this whole thing too. They had a good run. The first one I wrote for the band came in 2014 with ‘Fall In’. Had I known the band earlier, ‘Cut You’ would have got its own post too. Bit of a shame though because since they released Here and Nowhere Else all those years ago, there haven’t made another record that hit me the same way as it and Attack on Memory did and still do to this day. I did think they would go on to take the rest of the 2010s by storm. Wasn’t meant to be it seems.

‘Quieter Today’ is the second song on Here and Nowhere Else and keeps things rolling on very swiftly after the album’s mood is somewhat established by its opener, ‘Now Hear In’. Guitarist and vocalist Dylan Baldi described it as ‘almost like a pop song’, and I see where he’s coming from. In terms of the structure, you’ve got the standard procedure of verse, pre-chorus, chorus (x2), bridge and outro. So, in that way, it’s easy to follow like a pop song. Though where it differs greatly is that obviously it’s in a noise-rock context where the drums are thrashing, moving almost ahead of where each beat is supposed to go, and where the guitars are playing chords and hooks at a frenetic pace. My favourite moments aren’t even brought on by the performance here. They arrive in those short pauses that occur in between the pre-choruses and the choruses themselves. All the tension built in the former is released in the latter with this great release; it’s so cathartic every time.

Gotta say I have no idea what the lyrics truly are. Genius appears to have what would be the closest-sounding to what can be heard, but I’m still skeptical about them anyway. Though Baldi also stated that the song is about being comfortable in just observing and keeping quiet when around people who talk just for the sake of talking. This is a sentiment that I am on board with all the way. If I didn’t already like the song, that just added a few bonus points in my eyes. Not that I don’t want people to talk all the time. It’s just fine to have those moments of silence where no one feels like they have to fill it with something to avoid things being “awkward” or whatever. Hats off to Cloud Nothings for this song and addressing this topic.

Annnd that is it for now. My goodness, that was a lot of songs. For a bonus, I’ll throw in ‘QYURRYUS’ by The Voidz. It won’t get a post, but I just want people to know that it’s a bop. It’ll feature on the Spotify playlist too. The series will come back, and I’ll be tackling the R’s. See you then.

#1081: System of a Down – Question!

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Remember when System of a Down released those new songs a few years back? That was definitely an occasion. It was cool to hear some new stuff after so many years of not releasing anything. It definitely sounded like they were starting right from where they left off. Unfortunately though, both Mezmerize and Hypnotize are my least favourite albums by the group. I do prefer the former than the latter by a small margin. I’m a big fan of the usual back and forth and harmonizing dynamic between Serj Tankian and Daron Malakian, a usual feature on SOAD albums. But there was a larger presence of Malakian that I’ve never been to fond of. When it was revealed that Tankian actually wanted to leave the band prior to the album sessions and sort of went through the motions for the recordings, that presence made much more sense. So I do have to hand it to Malakian for holding the reins to get the albums done. Still, just not for me so much.

Over the two albums, there’s only one that’s solely credited to Tankian in terms of the music and lyrics*, and that is today’s subject, ‘Question!’. While everyone else trips over ‘B.Y.O.B.’ as the overriding highlight of Mezmerize, I’m listening to ‘Question!’ with as much attention and focus as I did when I first saw the music video back in 2005. The song’s a very dramatic affair, concerning (I think) a narrator who’s about to commit a double-suicide by eating poison berries with their significant other and questions (want to say this is the basis for the song’s title) what will happen after they consume them. Will they actually die? Cease to exist? Or will their spirits live on in another form? As I said, quite dramatic. And that feeling is only intensified by the impassioned wailing harmonies of Tankian and Malakian during the choruses. Like it alludes to in the music video, there’s almost an operatic/theatrical tone to how they’re belting out these notes.

Not only are the vocals something to marvel at. The track is propelled by changing time signatures and shifting moods. You never know what’s coming around the corner. Starting as the album’s previous song is still fading out, the track comes in with a soft acoustic guitar playing in 9/16. The 5/8 main hard rock riff smacks you in the face once that’s over. Then the choruses come in with a waltz-time. There’s a lot of switching between those sections that happens throughout. How Tankian managed to get a beautiful melody into all of this is beyond me. Some would maybe be so focused on the musicality that any sort of melody you’d want to at least hum to would surpass them. But that’s not how it happens in System of a Down. I think I said in the last System of a Down post that sometimes their unusual delivery can be quite overbearing and a little tiring. Something along those lines. You’d think ‘Question!’ would be a prime example. But I never get tired of it. It’s real good stuff.

*25/02/26 – Daron Malakian also contributes to the music in the song. My fault.