Tag Archives: something

#1430: Animal Collective – Turn into Something

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Ah, Feels. Feels. Animal Collective’s Feels. I do have to listen to the album in full again one of these days. Back in 2014, I downloaded it more or less to round out the four albums marking the group’s “classic period” having already added Merriweather Post Pavilion, Strawberry Jam and Sung Tongs to the iTunes library. I think, in that order too. Might have even downloaded Centipede Hz before I got to Feels. Though when I did, ‘Did You See the Words’ jumped out immediately. Probably helped it was the album’s first song, but you know what I mean. ‘Grass’ took a little while longer to settle in. Once it did, it became a playlist mainstay. ‘Banshee Beat’ and ‘The Purple Bottle’ are meant to be two of AnCo’s most beloved songs, but in 2014, they just sounded all right to me. And after those ‘Turn into Something’ seemed like the other really obvious highlight. Which is why I say I need to listen through the entire LP again. It’d be a wonder to see what 12 years difference would do. And with the somewhat recent 20th anniversary reissue, I can get some more Feels-era tuneage.

‘Turn into Something’ closes Feels out, bringing everything back home after the lullaby-like ‘Loch Raven’. Looking at Spotify, it’s the second-least played track on the album, which surprises me at least because it’s such a euphoric resolution to everything that’s come before. The intro guitar, which also continues almost throughout, bouncing one from note to the other alongside those thundering tom-toms and snare hits… Those were enough to hook me in. Those were enough, because just listening to the song and not looking at the lyrics won’t clue me in to what Avey Tare’s was singing in any shape or form. Except for the “Oh, that’s the goodness” choruses and the refrains in which the title is sung, it’s very hard to make the words out. I have always appreciated the delivery and the clear energy he puts behind it. But reading the lyrics for this post’s sake, Tare describes his surroundings with a childlike wonder, experiencing a new scene in each verse. There’s an exploration of dealing with fleeting happiness or “goodness” as Tare puts it and a message to be something more, that you have the potential to change. At least, this is how I’ve come to see it. And it’s nice, a real optimistic point to end the album on.

And after Tare sings ‘You should turn into something’ for the last time, the song in turn changes into a completely different mood, becoming a droning, ambient piece with Tare-Panda Bear vocalizations over the top for two-and-a-half-minutes. Really something to space out to. I don’t know if Animal Collective are the type of people to lay out what’s to come next in terms of their music in the last songs of their albums. I’ve read around in places that some artists like to do that. But hearing ‘Turn into Something’ the first time, I did think I could hear bits of Strawberry Jam in there, particularly in those parts in the break between the first chorus and second verse where it sounds like you’re being dunked and pulled out of a vortex. The closing, mind-altering soundscape the tune closes with too, it’s like a precursor to the end of ‘Chores’ or the drones in ‘For Reverend Green’. It’s maybe all a big coincidence, though. It must have been nice being a fan of Animal Collective in 2005. Hearing all four bandmembers were back together again after Sung Tongs, and then they give you a song like this in return? Reckon it couldn’t have been better.

#1242: Super Furry Animals – Something 4 the Weekend

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Shame to say, or maybe it isn’t (depends how you feel about Super Furry Animals), but ‘Something 4 the Weekend’ will be the only representative from the Welsh band’s debut album Fuzzy Logic. I heard that album for the first time in 2014, but didn’t really hear it, if you know what I mean. I got my first job out of uni a few years later, but found that there was a lot of downtime the majority of the time. So I went ahead and choose to listen to SFA’s discography from beginning to end. ‘Something 4 the Weekend’ was the only song on Fuzzy Logic that I really liked. The LP’s a strong start to a catalogue. But their albums got stronger as they went along. ‘Least to these ears.

Sounds to me like this is a song about taking too many drugs. Actually, maybe not about taking too many, but just about them in general. Singer and guitarist Gruff Rhys also mentioned it was about sex too. What time is the best for those two vices? The weekend, obviously, hence the title. I’m sure there’s a quote that verifies that hypothesis somewhere. The song’s first verse details the narrator’s increasing usage of drugs (“stuck it on the back of my tongue and then swallowed it”), the second covers the sex part (“stuck it right up and that was the end of it”), and the chorus is where the narrator tells us that he’s always thinking about the two things with the aid of an easy, memorable melody. Also, you may notice that Gruff Rhys has this thing where where he pronounces words like “getting” as “gerring”. That’s not something he can help. He’s just very Welsh.

I then went on to find that this song wasn’t originally recorded this way. On initial copies of Fuzzy Logic, the song was titled ‘Something for the Weekend’. It’s essentially the same track, but faster in delivery, somewhat rawer in production and had a different intro. I’m going to hazard a guess that it was a record company decision that led to the re-recording of the tune, to make it something easier to play on the radio or whatever. You know how those businesses go. But on this occasion, I’d probably agree that it was the right choice. The song got released as ‘Something 4 the Weekend’ name, charted within the top 20 of the UK singles chart, and the ‘new’ single version eventually went on to replace the original when later copies of the album were sold. That original’s out there, though. Right below this paragraph, actually. You might like that version more. There’s no going wrong.

My iPod #337: The Beatles – Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey

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Hey what’s up how’s it going?

Today’s first song is from disc two (or side four for all you vinyl people) of The Beatles self-titled album from 1968. Or “The White Album” as almost everyone refers to it. That year was when John, Paul, George and Ringo started to dislike each other a bit. Why? Well there’s one word that the latter three, and a lot of fans would answer that question with. Yoko. John Lennon and Yoko Ono were hardly ever apart, even during recording sessions, and this aggravated George, Paul, and Ringo quite a bit. How did John answer this? Possibly by many ways which would have gone on behind closed doors, but for us he wrote “Me and My Monkey”.

“Monkey” should be played very loudly out of speakers. It gets me in the mood to party. It sounds like the band had a very fun time recording it, what with the random howls and screams which appear after almost every “Come on” that John yells, that incessant bell that never seems to end and when John also appears to start becoming a sheep right when the song begins to fade out.

It may be about heroin use and there may be some sexual connotations thrown in too, but those are just interpretations.

Dunno about you, but has anyone else noticed during the breakdown near when only the guitars and bass are playing that the bass plays a sharper note than the guitar chords? Just irks me a bit. But still, it’s cool. Very good hard rock song.