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#1433: The Streets – Turn the Page

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Leading up to Christmastime 2008, I sent my cousin the yearly list of things that I wanted for the holiday. These lists would usually consist of albums and maybe a couple video games on the side. On that particular edition, among other potentials, I asked for both Original Pirate Material and A Grand Don’t Come for Free by The Streets. Earlier on in the year, Mike Skinner released his fourth album under the name in Everything Is Borrowed. But his music had been in my life for a good long while by then. I was alive and kicking when A Grand… was the new album, recognising ‘Fit But You Know It’ when it appeared on the FIFA 2005 soundtrack. I was in Year 6 when the brand-new video for ‘When You Wasn’t Famous’ was being repeated regularly on MTV2. And the singles’ videos from Original Pirate Material were a usual occurrence on the same channel. I was all-in for The Streets in that first decade of the 2000s. But I must have found out that Original… and A Grand… were considered to be the best out of the four, hence the request. And I did get them, conveniently packaged in a 2-in-1 CD jewel case, which I still have to this day.

Original Pirate Material was Skinner’s first album, released back in 2002, only made sense to start with it. It begins with ‘Turn the Page’. You ask me today to relay Skinner’s words on this track back to you, I wouldn’t be able to do it even after knowing it all this time. Not because I don’t know them, but I know for sure the words are better coming out of his mouth rather than mine. The lyrics are very much Skinner’s message to the listener to get in the zone for the album to come, and in a way for those that were to follow, ’cause he’s the phoenix rising out of the UK garage scene – which was doing its thing commercially in those early, early years of the 2000s – and looking to push it in a new direction. I can’t relate to that. I was in the last days of my sixth year on this planet when Original Pirate… was originally released. It’s not like it’s something you start reciting in the shower, either. So I’m fine to only listen to the lyrics. Skinner has such a commanding presence anyway, and those strings add the dramatic tone that takes everything to another level.

I think I need to watch the film Gladiator ’cause the track contains references to it that I am completely missing out on. Mike Skinner saw it and was inspired to write something that captured its essence. I’m sure he succeeded, but without knowing the film, it’s not in my place to firmly say. Admittedly, I’m not too cultured when it comes to movies. But even with the absence in Gladiator knowledge, there is a definite movie-scene vibe to ‘Turn the Page’. Like, it’d be perfect as the background music to a training montage of this determined character who wakes up early in the morning to get shit done. The movie would have to take place in the UK though and rely on less of a budget than your standard blockbuster Warner Bros. box office sellout. But anyway, yes, ‘Turn the Page’, a strong start to anyone’s discography, let alone one sole album. Begins everything with a cinematic tone, urges you to strap yourself in and get ready. If you listen ‘Turn the Page’ on its own, you’ll find it ends quite suddenly, on an unresolved note, and it’s because on the album, it slides right into the following track ‘Has It Come to This?’, in which the curtain’s lifted, and you’re properly invited into Skinner’s world. So listen to both songs in succession, is what I’m trying to say. Well worth the seven minutes of your time.

#1410: Big Boi ft. Sam Chris – The Train, Pt. 2 (Sir Lucious Left Foot Saves the Day)

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Well, André 3000 eventually gave us his real debut solo album we were waiting for a few years back. It most likely didn’t turn out the way everyone wanted it to. But it’s now something that exists in the world. I haven’t listened to New Blue Sun, but I’m sure it’s interesting at least. I think I’d have to be in a certain kind of mood or physical space to listen to the whole thing. In the world of respective individual releases by he and Big Boi after the splitting of OutKast in 2006, even though the latter has three albums to his name, I think it’s still Big Boi’s 2010 Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty that’s the best out of the lot of them. I was looking back on some posts for blog maintenance’s sake and saw I gave a whole backstory on my experience with that album in the first Big Boi post I did on here. I did have a good time with it back in those early 2010s. I haven’t listened to it fully in a while. But I have my favourite tracks from there, a few of them I’ve already covered, and ‘The Train, Pt. 2’ is another one.

In name only, the track’s a sequel to “Part One”, which appeared on OutKast’s swansong Idlewild. That saw Big Boi reminiscing on his career up to that point, potentially hinting on leaving the rap game. On ‘Pt. 2’, the ‘train’ theme continues, but here the artist provides a bit of commentary on the music industry, progression in technology, and on rappers constantly faking their wealth on the TV and getting the naive youth to believe in it. “Got them bay-bays believing that bullshit”, is how he puts it. On the choruses, Sam Chris expands on the notion of lying and exaggerating events, singing that these kinds of things happen on a daily basis – a never-ending cycle presumably in the music business – but if no one’s hurts by them and it’s all for a good laugh, then it’s all fine at the day, right? The answer should be no. But it is yes in a way too. A kind of negative action causing a positive reaction? I think it’s the ambivalence about it all that’s the main issue here.

I don’t know who came up with the repeating rhythm guitar line that plays almost throughout, but it’s essentially that element which acts as the foundation beneath everything else that happens in ‘The Train, Pt.2’. Sam Chris delivers the chorus impeccably, I remember being instantly hooked to his vocals, and Big Boi rides the beat with his flows as well as ever, even if it took a little longer to fully digest what he was talking about. What I feel I enjoy most is how Big Boi bounces off Sam Chris during the chorus, I think from the second one onward. “Lying to yourself like it really happened (Really happened)”, “Riding on a never-ending train (Choo choo)”, “Pick a stop (Pick a stop), pick a lie (pick a lie)”. You get the idea. These vocal echoes that create this sense of endless motion on the vocal front. “I think I (I think I, He said, he said, he said) Sometimes I think I love it…” A great part there. Could have ended the album with this song, to be honest, but ‘Back Up Plan’ does do the job in bringing things home. Also, the track’s really 4:43 in length with the remaining time taken by an unrelated samba(?)-inspired interlude, ’cause what’s a hip-hop album without a skit or two?

#1406: Big Thief – The Toy

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For some reason, my take on Big Thief’s ‘Shoulders’ is growing to be one of the more popular posts on the blog. I login to the account, check out the stats, and on a pretty regular occurrence the post will be there in the “Most Viewed” when the time range is set to ‘Last 7 Days’. I don’t know how or where it’s being shared. But I guess it’s striking a chord with people. Just like ‘Shoulders’, today’s subject, ‘The Toy’, can also be found on Big Thief’s fourth album Two Hands, the second of two LPs they released in 2019. I was heavily unemployed that year. Big Thief made things feel somewhat better. U.F.O.F. was out in May. Don’t know how anyone else feels, but that’s still my favourite Big Thief album now. To everyone’s surprise, Two Hands was then announced in August, for release on October 11. So I waited for that date, in between filling countless job applications and feeling pretty miserable.

The day came. Went to Spotify, played that thang through. ‘The Toy’ was an instant highlight, I really liked it. Coming after the single ‘Forgotten Eyes’, it brings the energy levels down tremendously, going more for a contemplative route with a cradling, waltz tempo. On Spotify, out of the album’s first five songs, ‘The Toy’ has the second least plays. Not one that the consensus goes back to. I do suppose once you’ve heard the first verse and the “Toy in my hand is real” chorus, you’ve more or less heard the rest of the song. But it’s the repetitive nature of the song that really attracted me, plus the chord changes and guitar lines that occur throughout behind Adrianne Lenker’s up-close-and-personal vocal and Buck Meek’s short harmonies. Also, the outro after the final chorus, just the icing on the cake. Feels good to just sit and bask in the instrumental until it sizzles out the way it does. I think I hear someone giggle on the right at about 4:08 as the guitars ring out. Don’t know what was going on in that studio to cause such a reaction. Maybe it was the fact they got the take they needed. I’m glad it was left in.

I wish I could find the interview/write-up/story where it was said, but I’m sure that on it I read that the ‘toy’ in the song’s lyrics was referring to a gun. And after writing that sentence, I have found it might have actually been this one. But I think the ‘toy’ changes with each reiteration of the chorus, from a sex toy in the first, to a gun in the second, to an actual child’s play toy in the third and then…. I don’t know, maybe the world in the president’s hands in the fourth? Maybe a reach. But you read between the lines, and you’ll get what I mean. So instead of thinking about Lenker singing about a weapon in her hand, which I very much did even while typing this post up, I’m now thinking each verse is written from a different perspective, separate characters with these physical and potentially metaphorical items in their possession. Whatever their state of being, these ‘toys’ are real, they have an affect on people’s lives. They’re important. I think that’s what Lenker’s getting at. Like the song, like it a lot.

#1403: Nick Drake – Tow the Line

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In early 2017, I was on the Christmas break, in between the first and second semesters of my final year in university. I was preparing information for what would become my dissertation. I was doing some reading required for coursework of some kind. But it was also in that cold wintertime that I found out about Nick Drake’s ‘Tow the Line’. Drake’s three-studio-album discography had been firmly set in my iTunes library for years up to that point. Pink Moon, one of my favourite albums of all time, any longtime reader on here knows how I feel about it. I can’t remember what directed me to ‘Tow the Line’. I can only think that after knowing Drake’s three albums for so long, I was on the lookout for more material of his, preferably in the same vein as the work on Pink Moon. This led me in the direction of songs like ‘Black Eyed Dog’ and ‘Hanging on a Star’. But it’s ‘Tow the Line’ I’m here to talk about. So here goes.

‘Tow the Line’ is the last song on the Made to Love Magic compilation, a collection of Nick Drake outtakes, remixes and remasters, released in 2004. Before that year, ‘Tow the Line’ had never been heard by anyone. It was only found during the making of the compilation after producer John Wood had left the tape containing Drake’s other “final” recordings running and, to his surprise, the song started playing after a few moments of silence. ‘Tow the Line’ is reportedly the very final thing Nick Drake ever put to tape, recording it in July 1974, just four months before his untimely death. I don’t know if there’s a sense of finality in the song’s message, but the sound of him putting the guitar down in the very last second does feel like a kind of auditory full stop. I wanted my Pink Moon-ish fill of more Nick Drake material, and I got it with ‘Tow the Line’. It’s been a good near-decade knowing this song exists.

Out of the last five songs Nick Drake did, it’s ‘Black Eyed Dog’ and ‘Tow the Line’ that are the frontrunners for me. I like ‘Rider on the Wheel’ too, but its original (and better) mix seems to not be widely available. While ‘Black Eyed Dog’ is this real bleak, stark, looking-death-in-the-face kind of song, ‘Tow the Line’ has this charging sense of urgency about it. Drake strums away on his acoustic guitar, a G-note on the bottom string droning, makes things feels quite tense. And I think it’s a tense situation Drake is detailing in the lyrics. It’s all or nothing in this period of time he’s singing about, and it seems that the outcome – success or total failure – depends on the ‘you’ person he’s directing the song towards. It’s an ultimatum, is what it is. There’s definitely a finality to it all, what was I talking about? Either the person sticks around and shows Drake the way or they leave and things turn out for the worse. It’s up for them to decide. That’s the final decision. And that’s how Nick Drake capped off his recording career, with issues unresolved, left in no man’s land. We all know it, the guy deserved so much more in his time.

#1402: Radiohead – The Tourist

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Ah, well, here’s another “last song” type deal again. As we slowly but surely get to the end of this series, Z and the numerals really aren’t that far away, I shouldn’t be surprised that these kinds of posts will occur more frequently. I wasn’t expecting four of them to happen on the bounce. But it’s all good. Here’s ‘The Tourist’, the last song on Radiohead’s OK Computer, the last song from that album I’ll be writing about on here. I don’t think there’s much else on a critical level about that record that I could say that hasn’t been stated already. Is it my favourite Radiohead album? I mean, it’s up there. Despite its arguable flaws, I rally moreso for Hail to the Thief. But I enjoy OK Computer a lot. Who knew an album wrapped around a theme of paranoia concerning the rapid development of technology in the late ’90s could be so thrilling to listen to? I didn’t get round to hearing the full album until 2010, years removed from its original 1997 release. It didn’t sound dated then. It still doesn’t sound dated today.

From ‘Electioneering’ onwards, the second half of OK Computer decreases in tempo with each passing track. Everything is brought to a close with ‘The Tourist’, the slowest song, I’m sure, on the whole album, delivered in a steady 3/4 time. I had the same experience with it that I had with ‘Let Down’ on my first listen-through. The verses of ‘The Tourist’ were going along at their relaxed pace, Thom Yorke melodically wailing, harmonising with himself and elongating notes that reverberated into the distance. All was just fine. But then the “Hey, man, slow down” chorus came in, and I had a strong, strong feeling that I’d heard it somewhere years before. The chugging guitars then entered the frame, and I was certain this was a song I knew already. I’m very sure it was used in an advert for something in the very early 2000s. For what brand is long-forgotten. But here was that song from that advert, and I wasn’t even purposefully looking for it. It’s always nice when those kinds of instances happen.

Once I had the album, I obviously had to go look up some facts about the songs on there. Do my due research. When it comes to ‘The Tourist’, the big thing I remember finding out was that it was written by lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. I never knew if ‘written’ just referred to the music, but a quote from Thom Yorke recalls how Greenwood wrote it in disdain for American tourists who were frantically working around some spots in France. The “Hey, man/idiot, slow down” refrains were very literal. So I guess it was both music and lyrics. And in another way, it loops the album around with the chorus lyrics preceding the car crash that happens in first track ‘Airbag’. It was the last song to be included on the album, and it was after its inclusion that Thom Yorke stopped waking up early in the mornings a nervous wreck because OK Computer now had its resolution. What better way to finish it than with a ‘ding’ of a bell, like a microwave when the time’s run out. Got to give a lot of love for a very hot album.