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#1125: Ween – Right to the ways and the rules of the world

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Maybe the best way to listen to The Pod is through the way its broken up on its vinyl releases. Split up into four sides, having the time to digest one of those at a time with some breaks in between would probably allow a new listener to at least digest the 15-20 minutes that each side of vinyl provides. I didn’t do this. When I was fully on my Ween exploration in 2015, I dove headfirst into the album on Spotify and listened to it the whole way through. All 76 minutes. That first time was a slog. I don’t know if you know, but the album is known for having extremely shitty production, even though a lot of the songs are classics. At least to us Ween fans, anyway. ‘Right to the ways and the rules of the world’ is only the seventh track on there. On that first listen, it felt like I’d been listening to the album for much longer than when the song arrived. And it also felt like it went on for a lot more than the mere five minutes it lasts for.

Now of course I’m used to it all. The track is a slow, slow one though. Coming after the little non-song of ‘Pollo Asado’ (a very popular one for Ween people), ‘Right…’ is what I believe to be a mimic of those old, melodramatic ’70s progressive rock songs by bands who would write about things like folklore or traditions of the past… myths and legends and the like. Gene and Dean Ween take on this melodramatic route, singing about nothing but a bunch of silliness – brilliant imagery though, gotta be said – all of which is crowned by the aloof harmonies that recite the song’s title phrase. “Monsters that trinkle like cats in the night/The cosmic conceiver continues his plight.” Those are just the first couple of lines.

The screeching organ that blares throughout is the melodic linchpin throughout the song, really hammering home that sort of medieval type of sound that I think the song’s going for. Something of a vocal chameleon, Gene Ween puts in another captivating performance. Increasing in intensity throughout, it culminates in the final verse where he lets out a shriek and then falls into a fit of laughter as the instrumental continues. Some people may argue that the song takes some momentum out of the album’s proceedings. Whatever “momentum” that may be, going through this album can feel like being in a state of purgatory sometimes. It’s just as essential as any other track on there, I feel. The production is so murky, you could almost choke on it. But the song at the core of it stands strong.

#1120: Supergrass – The Return of…

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It’s been a long while since I’ve written about a song from Supergrass’s Diamond Hoo Ha. In fact, the two songs I wrote about from that album, I don’t even like that much anymore. Been that way for a while. Supergrass are one of my favourite bands, hands-down, no question, though I have to say that the record – their final release before initially splitting up – is my least favourite of theirs. The songs aren’t bad, but they pale in comparison to almost everything the band provided in the years before. There’s something about its production that’s always never felt right to me. To a lesser extent, it just reminds me that we’ll never get another full-length release by the band again.

All right, so I may have said the songs “pale” just a few sentences ago. But there is one that shines amongst them. The track is ‘The Return of…’, the sixth song on there, closing out Hoo Ha’s first half, and I’ll state sincerely that it may be one of the best in Supergrass’s entire catalogue. This was my third most-played song on Spotify last year. I don’t know why the realization of its greatness happened so many years on, because I owned a physical copy of the album from its year of release. Sixteen years ago. Its “return of inspiration” chorus was one that had remained in my head for some time. But it may have only been a couple of years ago where I was sitting down, listened to the whole song with some good headphones, and thought, “Wow. This song is actually really good. What the hell?”

A production trick I do appreciate on here is how particular elements of the track are separated into the two channels. In the left ear, you have the drums and the rhythm guitar. In the right, you have the lead guitar playing the main riff. In the middle is Gaz Coombes’s vocals, the bass guitar and keyboards. So with whichever earbud/headphone you’re listening to the track with, you can get two separate experiences. That’s cool. In terms of mood and lyrics, the track’s a cheery, optimistic number. The narrator here is a nothing-can-get-me-down type of person, who’s never phased by unpleasant news in the papers or on the TV, by the unpleasant people they encounter, or even when they sustain an injury caused by falling down the stairs. An enchanting, dreamy chorus ties the verses altogether and it features a screeching saxophone solo in the brought-down instrumental break, which goes all crazy once Coombes starts singing again. It’s all fantastic. I should have known this for at least 15 years. But better late than never.

#1064: Billy Talent – Prisoners of Today

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When I got the first Billy Talent album as a Christmas gift in ’06, or somewhere around that time, I was already well-acquainted with the majority of it. After having rediscovered the group after a chance encounter online, that’s a story for another post, I spent what I assume would have been almost a year listening to 30-second samples of the tracks on there on this website called Artistdirect.com. Back in 2004/05, YouTube wasn’t existing and sites like this were the things I had to resort to to hear just a glimpse of the music I wanted to own without having to pay for it. Songs like ‘Cut the Curtains’ and ‘Lies’ for example, I remember vividly listening to those clips, wishing I could hear the full thing. The band had the music videos for their singles on their own website. ‘Line & Sinker’ and ‘Standing in the Rain’ were able to be played in full on there too.

But when it comes to ‘Prisoners of Today’… well, I can’t remember this track ever being one of those tracks that I sought out to hear the sample for. And to this day, I’m not sure why that is. So it was really like hearing a brand new song when it came ’round for its time to be played when I popped that CD into my computer for the first instance. ‘Course now it’s like water off a duck’s back whenever it arrives on shuffle in the playlist. But it was a bit of an outlier to me for quite a while. That’s enough for the me, me, personal angle. I’m trying to get you to want to listen to these songs at the end of the day. If you’re familiar with Billy Talent’s earlier work, then the song’s not so much different from what you’d expect. Overall a pummeling punk rock performance, propelled by the driving rhythm section of Jon Gallant (bass guitar) and Aaron Solonwoniuk (drums) and heightened by the fantastic guitar work of Ian D’Sa, whose playing I’ve made sure to comment on every time I’ve written a post about a song from this album. Still amazes me to this down how he’s able to play those lines so smoothly and yet with such energy and urgency.

The track concerns being unhappy with the 9 to 5, five day of work/two days of play routine that the majority of the world has to go through for all of our lives, and acts as a reminder to use our initiative and conjure up the motivation to change our ways of living and not feel like we’re being held captive by the seemingly restrictive layout of everyday life. The two verses appear to be from the points of view of two people, or maybe it’s one in both, who have these wishes they want to fulfill but are let down by their own lack of courage or general bleak outlook on life, so much so that they just don’t bother in taking the steps to pursue what they truly want. This track I believe is in a minor key, so you know automatically that there’s sort of something sad about it, but with the furious pace that everything’s delivered, I also think it gives a feeling of ‘Well, if you feel sad, then stop feeling sorry for yourself and do something, ya bum.’ Ben Kowalewicz builds up into a full-throttle scream alongside D’Sa and Gallant’s backing vocals at the rushing finish, really signifying that pent-up frustration the song suggests, and it’s a moment like that which makes me wonder why it took me so long to warm up to this one.

#1026: The Kinks – People Take Pictures of Each Other

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Was this song in a car advert once? You’d think that with the Internet existing and everything, you’d be able to find evidence of this in a split second. But I can’t find it anywhere. I have this vague memory of hearing this song in the advert. And then watching a video of that advert on YouTube somewhere. This was all years ago. But before listening to the Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society, that was how I came across ‘People Take Pictures…’ for the first time. It sounded so familiar when Ray Davies started singing those opening lines. Maybe I dreamed that advert up. If someone else remembers it, send answers on a postcard, please.

‘People Take Pictures…’ is the second song on that album concerning pictures being taken of memories gone by. The first to appear on there, ‘Picture Book’, focuses on the good aspects of looking at these photos and having those good ole moments of nostalgia. In ‘People Take Pictures…’, Ray Davies takes the more cynical approach, expressing a feeling that everyone’s just taking pictures of things just for the sake of it, to show their friends were missing out on or to show that they were there when something was happening just to gloat about it. On an album that’s focused on preserving the things of things that were sacred and pure, it’s here that Davies doesn’t want to see anymore pictures from the past after he’s shown an old picture of himself when he was three years old, sitting with his mother by an old oak tree. He wishes to see no more photos, and with those last words the whole record ends on a fadeout of perky ‘la-la-la’ vocals.

The sort of listener who like huge climactic finishes to their albums may be sort of let down when it reaches this point. A short and snappy number, this song is just over two minutes in length and it ends on a fade out rather than a true ending where everything comes to a concrete stop. Kinks fans will know that it was during this period that the band had also recorded ‘Days’, and if ever there would be an ideal album closer, then that track was right there. I personally like ‘People Take Pictures of Each Other’ in the place that it’s in. I think it works in concluding a summary to the album’s theme, through a funny 180-turn from all the ‘god-saving’ in the opening title track, you know? Looking at the past can be fine, but only in its amounts. Too much of that could probably get you down.

#1016: They Might Be Giants – Part of You Wants to Believe Me

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Just another They Might Be Giants song. There’s still a lot more to come in this thing. Maybe I might have said that they’re one of my favourite musical groups ever. If I haven’t, which I’m sure isn’t the case, I’m saying it again. ‘Part of You…’ was initially released as the fifth and final promotional track in advance of the band’s then-upcoming album BOOK in 2021. Slightly over a year has passed since the record’s release, and I’ve come to feel that it’s probably their best since Join Us arrived in 2011. Though it’s all subjective. You can’t go wrong with all the other releases that came in between.

What ‘Part of You…’ is is a delightful three-minute power pop ditty, primarily composed by John Linnell out of the two Johns. The opening descending/ascending melody of the keyboard in the introduction drew me right away, and that it’s also the same melody that Linnell sings in the opening verse really buried it in the brain. There’s no real discernible chorus, but more three sections that each have their own distinct melody. There’s the opening verse, the “Tiny voices” section, and the “Somewhere else” section which goes over the chord progression of the introductory verse. They make up the first half of the song in that order and are then switched around to make up its second. You’ll understand what I’m blabbering on about when you actually listen to the thing. What really matters is Linnell – Flansburgh too, but he’s not the song’s writer – is a master of melody and good hooks in a song and that’s all on display yet again in this one.

I haven’t been able to wrap my head around what the track is about, though. Like a few other Linnell songs, the lyrics are framed in this circular, elliptical manner that you have to take some time to think about. Not in the “Oh, you really have to think about this, man.” way, but more in the “That’s a funny way of wording a simple thing.” manner. There are double-negatives, maybe even a triple, so it kind of adds a bit more for the brain to process. But, from my general understanding of themes that can show up in TMBG songs, I think Linnell is writing from the perspective of a narrator who has either lied or said something straight up wrong to another person, and that person – who has to take medication for unknown reasons – is having an internal struggle on whether this person is telling the truth. Then I think the rest of the track is about what is happening in this person’s body as they try to process this potential lie the narrator’s telling them. Just my two cents, though. It’s known that TMBG just want you to enjoy their songs and not analyse them so much. But it’s hard not to have the urge when the lyrics are written in such a unique manner.