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#1058: Bloc Party – The Prayer

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I guess A Weekend in the City will always be seen as the not-as-good paler-in-comparison follow up to Silent Alarm, but when it was coming round to the release of Bloc Party’s second album in the first month of 2007, the anticipation and expectation couldn’t have been greater. Like the band had said in 2005, it was only two more years to hold on. Lo and behold, two years later – a new album was to come. ‘The Prayer’ was the first single, with its music video released in advance of the album’s arrival, and boy, do I remember that being repeated endlessly on MTV2 almost immediately. The band don’t do anything but sit around in some club. Only Kele Okereke gets up and walks about a little while the club-goers start distorting and all types of weird things start happening.

But none of the visuals mattered. What counted was that Bloc Party was back with this ‘new’ sound. It certainly made an impression with the 11-year-old kid I was. The huge boom-clap introduction was an ear-catcher from the moment it began, inspired by Busta Rhymes’ massive ‘Touch It’ single that would have been around while they were making the song. And then it’s followed by this ominous monk(?)-like humming which may also have a guitar buried underneath. Those are the main elements that lead into the verses in which Okereke takes on the persona of a man praying to the Lord above to give him the courage and strength to go out to the club and impress everyone he meets with his charm and his dance moves. The song’s page on Wikipedia says the track’s about drugs like ecstasy and Ketamine in nightclubs. It really isn’t. It’s about some guy who considers himself a bit of a lame-o during the working week that wants to be the main attraction when he’s on the dancefloor on the weekend. But I guess if you really wanted to think about it, the drug route is a possible way to go. Personally though, I’d say it’s the wrong way to go.

This song was a big one for Bloc Party. In the second week of its release, it got to number four in the UK singles chart and still remains to be their highest-charting single over here. For good reason too. Surely, the lyrics can be felt by any of those shy people who crave that sought-for recognition they believe they’re due, maybe even going so far as praying to help them obtain their success. You never know. It could be a desperate situation for people out there. Also, remember when I mentioned the producer Jacknife Lee in the post about Weezer’s ‘Pork and Beans’ a few days back? Well, he’s here again, managing to take the established presence of the band’s rhythm-section heavy dynamic and somehow making it even fatter. When those choruses arrive, they sound absolutely huge. Helps that the melodies throughout are just too good to not sing along to. God, it’s getting up to 20 years since this song’s been around. I mean, surely it was 2007 just a few years ago? Unlike a lot of music from around that time, ‘The Prayer’ does not sound as old as “20 years ago” may seem to be.

#1044: Super Furry Animals – The Placid Casual

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I once took on a personal task to go through Super Furry Animals’ discography in 2014. Reading around on the net and seeing comments made by the public, I got the sense that out of the British rock movement going on in the ’90s – not necessarily Britpop, but the entire scene including Radiohead, Manic Street Preachers and those sort of outside bands who didn’t fit in with that specific – SFA had one of the most solid catalogues of records out of them. Guerrilla was an album of theirs that was already well-acquainted with. But I started with the ’96 debut Fuzzy Logic, makes sense. And followed up by listening to Radiator, the band’s sophomore effort that came out a year later. It begins with a minute-and-a-half instrumental, ‘Furryvision’, a proper scene-setter, like the opening music in a TV show that plays over an opening shot of the sun rising over a sleepy town. But then ‘The Placid Casual’ follows and the floodgates fully open.

After a slick drum roll, the track and the band introduce themselves with ringing guitar notes and noticeably high-in-the-mix crash cymbals. With the incredibly trebly atmosphere going on, that whole introduction is like a wall of sirens and general chaos, probably to really announce that this was where the album was really starting, as the first track representing a full band performance. ‘Pawprint marks leave a telltale sign/There’s a furry friend loose and committing a crime’ are the song’s opening lyrics, a personal favourite couplet of mine in any song, and inspirational enough that I want to say it provided the design idea for Radiator‘s album cover. What ‘the placid casual’ is or are is never defined in the song, but taking them together results in a close enough description of a person that is calm, relaxed and unconcerned. There’s a reference to the seizing of power in Sierra Leone by Valentine Strasser in the second verse for no specific reason. Really, what I think the song comes down to is announcing that the band were back with this new album. Singer Gruff Rhys takes the perspective of the listeners, who ask what to do now that they have been freed and led into salvation by the band’s return.

What ‘the placid casual’ is/are isn’t defined in the track. Looking up the two words though, they appear to describe something/someone that is ‘calm and peaceful, and relaxed and unconcerned’. Seemed that the phrase itself had a ring to it in the SFA camp, as the band chose it to be the name of their self set-up record label. After the final iteration of the chorus, the crash cymbals slam away amidst some freaky synthesizer work and the ascending keyboard bass line, coming to a sudden stop and giving way to the following track’s introduction. Just keeps the train rolling on with barely a moment’s peace. If anyone’s wondering how the rest of my discography quest went with Super Furry Animals, I didn’t actually complete it until 2018, when I went ahead and started again from scratch. My own verdict: whole albums weren’t really for me, but the individual tracks I thought were great were faaantastic. ‘Placid Casual’ stood clear as a personal highlight.

#1035: Good Shoes – The Photos on My Wall

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Well, this’ll be the last song by Good Shoes I cover on here. It’s been fun. I’ve written about only two others. But they’re worthwhile to check out. Of course they are, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered to express my great thoughts about them. Out of these three, ‘The Photos on My Wall’ is the one that I have the least of a personal attachment to. It was the second single to be released from the band’s 2007 debut album Think Before You Speak, the album title also taken from a lyric within the song, but I don’t think I properly listened to it in full until years later. Think it may have been used in an Inbetweeners episode or something. Hearing the song in that context made me want to search it out, and upon that revisit, it became an instant add to the library.

Here’s another case where I’ve heard the track for so long, but never thought to take time out to what the lyrics are going on about. So here it is, my first analysis into them. Well, I’ll say that I think the narrator here expresses a similar view to the one in fellow Good Shoes song ‘Never Meant to Hurt You’. They’re both prone to saying things without thinking, hurting their significant other in the process. Though while the narrator shows at least some remorse in ‘Never Meant…’, the voice in ‘Photos’ knows their shortcomings, but isn’t willing to do anything to improve themselves. Though then again, when Rhys Jones sings ‘I think I could do better/So arrogant’, maybe that’s him saying he could be a better person, realising that he can be a bit full of himself. All this time I thought he was saying he could do better as in finding someone more suitable to be in a relationship with. Though I guess there could be the intentional double-meaning… You see? You get me started on lyrics and I’ll never stop. Thoughts just pour out of me.

The track’s under two minutes. Perky and upbeat in its delivery. I believe the riff that opens the track was what I heard on the Inbetweeners. Or at least some show similar to that that would be showing on Channel 4. Wherever it was, it reminded me that the song did exist and that maybe I should check it out because it sounded so damn catchy. By that point, Good Shoes would have just released their second album No Hope, No Future. Maybe that title was an omen of some sorts because the band broke up after its release. Another one of those countless indie rock bands of the ’00s falling by the wayside. A shame. But they did make some great tunes.

#1002: Fall Out Boy – Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued

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Another album opener, ‘Our Lawyer…’ is the first track on Fall Out Boy’s From Under the Cork Tree. It’s an album that many a fan of the band’s hold dear to their hearts. Has the well-loved classics like ‘Dance, Dance’, ‘A Little Less Sixteen Candles…’ and of course, ‘Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down’. Can’t say I hold the same regard. If there is a best Fall Out Boy, it’s clearly Folie à Deux. Cork Tree for me sounds a bit dated in comparison. A lot of the sentiments on there I just can’t vibe with anymore compared to when I was, let’s say, 13. But it sets off with a great start and a whole lot of self-deprecation and sarcasm, which I’m always all in for – especially when it’s done right.

“Brothers and sisters put this record down / Take my advice ’cause we are bad news” are the opening lines to this track, and for the rest of the track Patrick Stump sings bassist Pete Wentz’s lyrics which further go onto to tell the listeners the myriad ways in which the band will let them down and the superficial things that they’re good for – like celebrity status and fashion sense – that don’t really amount to anything properly meaningful. The track is set to a swinging tempo, but there’s an aggression and heaviness to the way the guitars are played that enables automatic headbanging among the instinctive swaying motion that you have to do with those types of tempos. Patrick Stump sounds like a kid, and he pretty much was – would have been 20 during the making of the album – but for a guy who supposedly wasn’t too confident about his singing, I’d say he does the job well. He’d only become better as the years went on, full embracing his inner soul-singer on Folie à Deux.

The song’s title is one of truth. Its original title was ‘My Name Is David Ruffin And These Are The Temptations’, but the band’s lawyers intervened and made them change the name. Either way, it’s another title of the band’s during that time that were very long, were usually never mentioned in the lyrics at all, and were probably named as such just to get some reaction from the listener. Funnily enough, I think one of the band’s shortest song title is on the same album too, with ‘XO’. That’ll be the next one from the record I do a post on. As I said earlier, not so much a fan of it now. But there’ll be more Fall Out Boy in between, for sure.

#990: Simon & Garfunkel – The Only Living Boy in New York

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Upon going through Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge over Troubled Water album in about 2012/13, there were two clear highlights, at least to me, that stuck out on that first listen. Those were ‘Keep the Customer Satisfied’ and today’s song ‘The Only Living Boy in New York’. Sure, the title track is right there. But it’s never been one that I’ve wilfully gone out of my way to listen to. Probably ever. The rest of the album tracks all have their moments. But it’s always been those two for me. And since I’ve written the post about ‘Customer’, well, I better start going on about this one.

‘…Living Boy…’ was written by Paul Simon during a time when singing partner Art Garfunkel took an acting role and had to travel to Mexico for a lengthy period in order to shoot his scenes. Simon, overcome with these feelings of loneliness, transferred all of this emotion the best way he could into song. He wishes his partner the best of luck and wishes him well; he addresses him as ‘Tom’, which is what Garfunkel would go under when the pair performed as ‘Tom and Jerry’ in their early years. He gets some delight from the mundane things like checking out the weather report for the latest news. Still, the separation doesn’t stop Simon from feeling like the only person existing in the big city of New York. There’s a subtle hint of conflict too, as it seems Simon knows that this acting bit is something that Art is really into. He pleas to him that if he wants to follow through with it, then he should just tell him instead of making excuses. It’s a bit of a turbulent affair, and it would all end when the act broke up and went their separate ways some time after the album’s release.

However the lyrics are interpreted, it doesn’t get in the way of how comforting a listen this track always is. Simon takes the lead vocal here, double-tracked and maybe singing really close to the microphone. I don’t know what it is, maybe he’s using a certain type of mic, maybe it’s an effect, but whatever is used gives his vocal a real close and intimate feel. Like he’s singing you to sleep or something. It’s a gentle delivery with a fine melody with a backdrop of acoustic guitars and a skipping bassline. The whole track delivers for the most part, but then comes that glorious moment when those glorious harmonies from the two singers enter the frame, brought in effect by performing those vocals in an echo chamber and multi-tracking it around eight times. They’re heavenly moments, like lights at the end of the tunnel. It’s at these parts where I guess Garfunkel appears in front of Simon after everything’s happened, telling him to not worry because “Here I am.” Maybe that’s looking too deep. All in all, like a few other songs on Trouble Water, ‘…Living Boy…’ is another personal look into what made those two guys tick.