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#637: Super Furry Animals – The International Language of Screaming

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Super Furry Animals are known to have one of the most solid discographies for a British rock group. In about late 2014 I made it a goal to go through it from their debut Fuzzy Logic to whatever their most recent album was at the time. I only made it to their second album. Guerrilla I had already listened to years prior. I gave up on that task very quickly. But now I knew three albums by SFA. Radiator is the band’s second album, released in 1997, and is where you can find today’s song tucked in near the beginning of the record.

If you’ve listened to Radiator from front to back, you’ll know that the track follows ‘The Placid Casual’ which is very keyboard-led, Gruff Rhy’s vocals are packed in the middle and the drums crash with a vengeance. On ‘Screaming’ almost all the instruments are packed in the centre, with Rhy’s vocals separated in the left and right with very open guitars. It makes a great contrast, and is a great one-two punch at the start of the album.

‘The International Language of Screaming’ was released as the album’s second single way back when. It lasts for only two minutes and fifteen seconds but is packed with a lot of elements that make it very enjoyable and hard to forget. The main vocal melody almost never changes throughout the thing, and I’ve also like how it rises and rises before dropping down again and returning back to its beginning again. There are these weird wailing/cooing noises that I’ve only began to hear that surround all the music. But at the base of it are these overdriven guitars that lead the track along. I feel this track is just about boredom with life. Becoming stagnant at some point and needing to way to break out of the funk. Singer Gruff Rhys finds that the best way to do this is by screaming, which he obliges to do as the final choruses repeat and the song finishes with a soundscape of swirling electronic noises.

#598: Cloud Nothings – I’m Not Part of Me

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Cloud Nothings’ album Here and Nowhere Else turned five years old a couple of weeks ago. It still packs as much of a punch today as I thought it did then. At the time it was an album that I needed. I had found myself listening to the same old songs for too long. I was very much into Pitchfork so when the site gave it an 8.7 rating out of 10, it was clearly obvious that this album was going to be good.

A word you could use to describe the album is ‘rough’. Not in the “yeesh, that’s rough” kind of way. More in its aesthetic. The pounding drums go about a few seconds earlier than each guitar strum. Dylan Baldi’s vocals are never that clear in the mix. The guitars have quite a harsh, sandy quality to them. But every track is melodic and grounded in pop sensibilities. I may have already stated all of this in the linked post but it’s always good to recollect.

‘I’m Not Part of Me’ is the album closer. From what I can remember it was the first taste of the then new album that the band unveiled to the public too. It arguably has the most memorable hook on the entire record. Plus, it’s quite optimistic in its own casual way. Here and Nowhere Else is quite a tense record musically. Lyrically it looks at the the unfairness of life and how sometimes we just have to deal with bad things that happen to us. Then ‘I’m Not Part of Me’ comes in as the last track and provides the idea that life is unfair, yes, but that’s okay – you just have to move on. It’s almost a breath of fresh air. Just almost.

My iPod #545: John Linnell – House of Mayors

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“House of Mayors” is the title track from the second solo EP of They Might Be Giants’ John Linnell. Consisting of ten tracks it is something of an experimental piece of work; the majority of tracks are instrumentals named after former mayors of New York City. “House of Mayors” is very much the musical centrepiece –  spread throughout the EP are three short instrumentals that borrow some of the melody from the song – and the full thing is saved until the very last track.

Unlike his full solo debut album that would be released three years later in ’99, “House of Mayors” is very much a DIY project. All instruments present on the song are played by Linnell and the weird thing is I think, apart from the guitar, everything else is played on the keyboard. There’s a very heartwarming and earnest feel exuded by the minimal production and twinkling keyboard lines as John Linnell describes the scene at a fictional house of mayors where various political things are occurring. The subject matter doesn’t sound all that special, but the songwriter’s knack for great melodies and music make it one of the most comfortable listens in the vast catalogue of They Might Be Giants related material.

My iPod #544: The Futureheads – Hounds of Love

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It took a while for me to listen to the original “Hounds of Love” as recorded by Kate Bush in 1985. Twenty years later I was ten and beginning to get into this ‘indie music’ stuff when The Futureheads, the four-piece ‘post-punk revival’ band from Sunderland, released their cover of the song. At the time I was unaware of that it was a song that had already existed for two decades, though that does explain why her name was credited in the liner notes of the album.

The track is a prime example of what a cover version should be. The Futureheads don’t merely take the song and create a carbon copy, but add their own style whilst remaining true to the original’s musicality. Differing from the Prince Charming-like stomp of Kate Bush’s track, the band’s cover plays like a soundtrack of a man on the run from these hounds. Barry Hyde’s vocals succeed in expressing the passion and emotion displayed within the lyrics, he seems to elongate syllables and borderline shouts unable to contain himself, and the background ‘oh-oh’ vocals of Ross Millard, Jaff Craig and Dave Hyde give the track a great edge, providing a bold sense of solidarity as Hyde sings of this crisis he is going through.

One of my favourite covers. Good times.

My iPod #510: Kanye West – Hell of a Life

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“Hell of a Life” is the tenth track on Kanye West’s arguable magnum opus My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, his fifth album released in November 2010. In it, Mr. West thinks he’s fallen in love with a porn star and raps to the listener about the various escapades and sexual shenanigans she and him would get up to.

I can remember it becoming one of my favourites straight away upon first listen. There’s a dark undertone to it that is maintained throughout despite the humorous but graphic lyrics Kanye provides, plus there are so many little things that made it so much more enjoyable for me – like the little arpeggio lick that plays after every chorus or the sudden appearance of the background vocals from “Dark Fantasy” during the final verse. It’s one of those songs where every time you listen to it again, you may always hear something new that you never paid attention to before.  It took a few more listens for me to realise the chorus takes its melody from “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath; that may sound strange because it’s very obvious that it does from the get-go, but I was into the melody that much that it went right over my head.

A song with lyrics with sexual imagery and a hard-hitting beat carried by a fuzzy bass line, “Hell of a Life” probably marks the peak of Kanye’s “fantasy” before reality finally hits him in “Blame Game“.