Tag Archives: other

#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.

#931: Mac DeMarco – No Other Heart

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‘No Other One’ is a track from Mac DeMarco’s mini-album Another One, released back in 2015. By that time I had a been a fan of the guy since the arrival of Salad Days the year before. After having watched visited 2 and watched a large portion of YouTube videos concerning him, the announcement of Another One was a cause of great anticipation on my part. I even had a try of sort-of reviewing its lead single around the time. The mini-album came, including seven songs (all more or less about love, gaining it, losing it, wishing that you had it, accepting when it’s gone) and an instrumental. The title track is a favourite of mine. ‘No Other One’ follows it, very much containing the same situation, but is delivered in more of a deceptively cheerful manner.

That situation being that the narrators in both songs have feelings for a lady who is already in a relationship with someone else. The old case of unrequited love. Hurts for a lot of people. But DeMarco lays it down in the lyrics that makes it so relatable for many listeners. In this case, he notices that this girl has been feeling low for some time. He wants to be the man to make her happy, but then he realises that she’s already taken and so has to let things be. But there’s still that yearning and wanting that makes things harder to accept. This is all stated under/over soft piano chords, that noodling guitar-style that was something of a trademark of DeMarco’s at the time, and a really groovy bass that ties everything together. In fact, if you’re zoning out on DeMarco’s vocals and noticing other things in the music, the bass will probably be the next thing you’ll pay attention to. Very melodic. Very tasteful.

Seven years on, I kind of see Another One has bit of an era-ending document of DeMarco’s. After this, his music never sounded quite the same. Though some cynics out there might laugh at that notion and argue the opposite. From what I’ve noticed, he moved down more of an acoustic route with more varied instrumentation on 2017’s This Old Dog, and then followed that by taking his tracks to their basic elements on Here Comes the Cowboy in 2019. There was definitely a sound to his earlier releases that tied them all together. Maybe it was simply that shining guitar tone that was present on all of them. I could ponder about this for a long time.