Tag Archives: my ipod

#1007: Radiohead – Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box

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It’s P time. Everytime I start a new section of this, I’m always weary of the amount of typing that I’ve gotta go through. But it has to be done. I’ve had this voice in my head telling me to have this done by the time I’m 30. That gives me just over two years. Maybe that’s pushing it. There’s still so many songs to go. But it’s worth a try. So let’s get restarted.

‘Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box’ is the opening track on Radiohead’s 2001 Amnesiac album, the second in the group’s iconic – for lack of a better word – left-turn experimental phase after Kid A preceded it a few months before. I want to say that it acted as a bit of a message on part of the band that if people who thought Kid A was strange, then they had no idea. No better way to start of an album with looping metallic chimes and electronic bleep-bloops to keep rock fans on their side. As I’ve come to know it though, that wait for some sort of melody or settled rhythm to kick in is well worth it once those (keys? synths?) come in at 36 seconds.

I’ll always remember where I was when I ‘listened’ to Amnesiac for the first time. ‘Listened’ being in quotation marks because I was asleep for the majority of it. It was a tiring day after A-Level preparation in year 13 days, I think I may have been feeling down at that point too, and Spotify had this free trial offer going on. Though I more or less missed the middle part of the record, I remember still being sort of awake during ‘Packt…’ and digging Thom Yorke’s pitch-corrected vocals and the overall glitchy vibe of the entire thing. Then my consciousness faded away gradually, but then suddenly perked up when ‘Life in a Glasshouse’ started. As a result, those two tracks were the ones from the album that I considered its highlights for some time. I’ve come to appreciate a couple more songs from it, but the record isn’t up there in my personal Radiohead album ranking, to be frank. Doesn’t have that good a flow, I feel.

But, ah, the song. What is ‘Packt…’ about? Well, if you’ve been a longtime reader here, you may have come across a few posts where I’ve flat out stated that I’m not much of a lyrics guy. Even when it comes to writing these, I usually see what other people have said and see whether I agree with it or not. In rare cases, there are some tracks where I’ve felt I got the meaning down, which makes sense to me. This isn’t one of those times. Knowing that during the making of Kid A/Amnesiac, Thom Yorke utilised a method of cutting up lyrics and randomly linking them together, there’s a good chance that there isn’t a truly deep meaning to pick up from these sets of lyrics at all. They do sound great together, though, which to me is really all that matters. Oh, actually the main message is Thom Yorke wants some peace – leave him alone. There we go.

#1006: The Vines – Outtathaway!

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My relationship with The Vines doesn’t go into much depth. I’ve never dug very deep into their discography, and have lived life being content only knowing the songs they made music videos for. The last song of the band’s that I had sort of an interest to check out was ‘He’s a Rocker’, and that was released almost 15 years ago. The videos that would be in regular rotation, at least whenever I was watching various music video channels on the TV, included ‘Get Free’, ‘Gross Out’ and ‘Anysound’. ‘Ride’, I’m very sure was used in advert that was endlessly repeated, but I don’t think I saw the video for that until years later. Out of those though, the one that ended up being my favourite was today’s track, ‘Outtathaway!’, the third single from debut Highly Evolved.

Song starts off with a stompin’ beat, nicely accentuated with the visual of a guy slapping himself in the face with a shoe in the music video, Craig Nicholls comes in with the guitar riff before letting out an indecipherable howl of an opening lyric – one that I still don’t think anyone really knows despite what any lyric website may say. The lyrics throughout aren’t very important, nothing to dwell upon, what really counts is the way they’re delivered, with Nicholls singing a phrase and bassist Patrick Matthews echoing in response. If I was to guess what the track was about, I would say it’s a general ‘fuck you’ type of song addressed to people who Nicholls doesn’t have a particular liking for. Who those types of people are aren’t disclosed in the track, but he doesn’t have the time for them, so this track is just a way of asking them to leave him alone.

But yeah, this track’s a rowdy one. Patrick Matthews provides a melodic bassline during the verses to counteract with the yelling both he and Nicholls do on the vocals, but then the wall of guitars slam into the mix for the choruses to fire the huge rush into the track. I assume what would be everyone’s highlight from this song is the tension building instrumental break which, after a repetition of ‘Come on’s among ‘aah-aah-aah’ backing vocals, the track reaches its freakout climax where Craig Nicholls just goes mad and screams as the guitars rise in intensity. Like Nicholls does in the music video, this song is one to let loose and maybe throw yourself into a wall to. And with that the O’s are over now. Didn’t we all have a good time? Probably won’t post here again before the year’s out, so wishing you all happy holidays. I’ll be back next year with the P’s. Maybe even the Q’s. R’s might be pushing it. But we’ll see how it goes.

#1005: Adrianne Lenker – out of your mind

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2019. Was a new year, and I had recently been laid off from my first job out of uni. To pass the time, while mind-numbingly scanning through applications, I listened to a bunch of albums that the Indieheads subreddit page had listed as ‘Album of the Year’ for 2018. There were 30 of them. There was only one I properly liked. It was abysskiss by Adrianne Lenker. You see the Wikipedia page I just linked to? I created it. I couldn’t take that a page hadn’t been made for it. Last year November I created a Wikipedia account just to make the thing. Listening to that album began a whole domino effect. I sought out Big Thief, listened to Capacity and Masterpiece. Kinda dug them both. But then ‘UFOF’, the single, came out, followed by ‘Cattails’, ‘Century’ and then U.F.O.F. the album, and just like that, Adrianne Lenker became a new favourite songwriter of mine.

‘out of your mind’ arrives as a bit of an odd one when going through abysskiss. After the four mainly acoustic folky, synth-tinged numbers that come before it, ‘…mind’ opens with a grungy electric guitar. Sprightly acoustic guitars take up the rest of the soundscape in both channels, but what I think the track is based around is Lenker singing the vocal while playing that electric guitar in one take. I’m not much of a lyrics guy, but what I gather is that there is a relationship involved. The whole time you’ll think Lenker’s singing about the person she’s seeing, but it’s when she uses her ‘Annie’ nickname in the last chorus that it becomes clear she’s actually taking on the perspective of her significant other. In that way, she’s reflecting on the way she acts as a person and how her partner may perceive her. It’s certainly a different way of approaching a narrative, particularly in a song.

This track is one of most recent I’ve heard when I had a sort of “eureka/a-ha!” moment. For a long while, I was having some major rhythm displacement with it. Every time I was singing along to it, I always found that the “Is it aaaannyyyy…” line for the chorus came in a beat too late. Everything was all 4/4 until that last bar before the chorus. Turned out I was missing the count-in completely. It sounded to me like the downbeat came on the very first strum of the electric guitar that starts the song. It actually starts on the second. So instead of 1-2-3-4, it’s “and, 1-2-3-4”. It would be a lot handier to visually explain it. But once I realised it, it was like ten lightbulbs going off in my head. I liked the song even with my off-timing, but with it all coming together, it truly secured itself as a favourite.

#1004: Blur – Out of Time

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The beginning of the new millennium was a weird one for Blur. They were all over the ’90s. The band’s singles and albums were a mainstay in the charts, and that whole Battle of Britpop thing with Oasis happened. But then that decade ended, they were all sort of dishevelled and in their ’30s. The band members weren’t sure which direction to go in. The band released a ‘Best of’ compilation (with great artwork), released a new single, and did some promo appearances. Search up ‘Blur 2000’ on YouTube, and it’s a bit of a trip. Kinda strange seeing the band performing ‘Girls & Boys’ with Gorillaz very much around the corner. By 2001, it was all about ‘Clint Eastwood’ and Gorillaz shot off into the stratosphere.

Couple years later, Blur got back together. Much to Damon Albarn’s hesitance as he stated in the No Distance Left to Run documentary. Graham Coxon left the band because of miscommunication, his own problems with alcohol and some strange handling by their manager. Blur continued as a three-piece. ‘Out of Time’ was the first taste of this new lineup as the first single from the then upcoming album Think Tank in 2003. I was eight years old at the time, I didn’t have a clue who Blur was. I didn’t hear Think Tank until 2013, going through Blur’s discography. I wonder how people must have felt hearing the track upon its initial release. It’s such a lowkey, very minimal track to choose as a first single. It does have a breezy groove, the percussion’s light and very tasteful. The thing that blows me away every time I hear it is Albarn’s vocal. Just so pure, clear and sincere, could bring a tear to your eye.

Released at the beginning of the Iraq War, the track asks the question of where civilisation is going with all the madness that was going on, stating that humanity was forgetting how beautiful life can be and that we may have gone too far into the deep end to recover from the devastation. That specific war’s over, but things aren’t going so well these days for anyone, so I think the song’s message still has as much poignancy now as it did then. You may across comments that harp on Think Tank because of how unlike Blur it sounds. To be fair, those may be justified. Coxon did play a massive part in the band’s sound. But this track came out of it, so I don’t complain too much. Contains a couple great ones that I’ll never be able to post about, and a few more that I will.

#1003: Cloud Nothings – Our Plans

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Cloud Nothings’ ‘Our Plans’ is a song of few lines. “Original – it’ll never get old”, “Essential – it’ll never get old”, “There’s no time for another try”, “No one knows our plans for us”, and “We won’t last long”. Five in total, that’s all. I mean, they are each repeated in various sections of the track’s structure. That’s very much what makes the track succeed. The reliance on repetition. Makes it just that bit more memorable. From the band’s 2012 album Attack on Memory, the song is in the penultimate slot. While listeners may just be waiting to see how the whole album ends at that point, I’d put in my two cents and say that ‘Our Plans’ is worth a close listen.

The track overall showcases a tight performance by all band members involved, and with Steve Albini’s production, the drums in particular sound absolutely chaotic and incredibly powerful. Even with the limited number of lyrics available to work with, I think I’ve been able to come to an understanding on the sentiment of them. Assuming they’re frontman Dylan Baldi’s lyrics and his alone – all of their tracks are credited to the band as a whole on the album, so it may not be the case – they seem to basically highlight the pressures of being in a band and making music. The pressure of being essential, original, timeless, getting things right in the least amount of takes. With the final chorus lyric being, “We won’t last long”, it seems that Baldi doesn’t think the band will be able to withstand all of these things that are asked of them. Luckily, this was about 10 years ago, and the band are still going strong today.

And that’s it for Cloud Nothings material from Attack on Memory unfortunately. ‘Cut You’ would have had a post for itself, but I had started writing posts for songs beginning with ‘D’ before I even knew who the band was. There was once a time when I really liked ‘Stay Useless’ too, but after a while each subsequent listen had less and less of an effect on me. Here and Nowhere Else is still my favourite album made by the band, and there’s still one more track to write about from that.