Tag Archives: the

#691: be your own PET – The Kelly Affair

Leave a reply

2008 is so long ago now. It’s actually a year I can barely remember. I would have been in year 8. 12 going on into teenage years. Life was pretty carefree. I was there but I don’t think I took the time to take things in.

One thing I do remember was be your own PET releasing their second album Get Awkward in March of that year. That turned out to be the band’s final album too. I had been following them since they released their ‘Damn Damn Leash’ single in 2005, so it was always good to see something new by them appear on TV or just be given to the masses in general. I believe ‘The Kelly Affair’ was the first official single from the album. I’m not sure that I cared for it that much. Thinking on it now I couldn’t say why. Jemina Pearl’s voice had a lot more power behind it. They’d also gained a new drummer after their first one left. Jonas Stein’s guitar and Nathan Vasquez’s bass playing were just as playful and riffy as they were on the debut album. But nothing too major had changed. It took me to download Get Awkward and listen to the track within the context of the album to realise that hey, ‘The Kelly Affair’ isn’t that bad. You think silly things when you’re twelve.

The track’s been in my library for so long now that I’ve never thought to research on what it’s about. From listening to the lyrics, I thought that Pearl made up this song about being in a fake band called The Carrie Nations and living in a valley where everywhere you look someone’s taking a few anti-depressants. But no. The song is just about what happens in the film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. There is a band who are called The Carrie Nations who were originally called The Kelly Affair. ‘Z-Man’ is the guy who makes himself the band’s producer. And ‘the valley’ is where all the sex and drugs happens. Maybe I’ll watch the film if be your own PET think it was good enough to write a song about.

#690: Goldhawks – Keep the Fire

Leave a reply

Rewind to late 2009. I was lying in bed watching Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Why that is I’m not sure, guess it was something to pass the time. He was about to interview Andre Agassi. Before that happened, a little montage played showing Agassi’s highlights as a tennis player. This exact montage actually. I thought the music that played matched the visuals perfectly and it sounded fantastic. I had to know what this song was and who it was by.

It took me months to find out. I thought it was Supergrass for a while, because the vocals sounded just like Gaz Coombes. I believe I sent an email to a Supergrass fansite asking if this was some exclusive new song the band had made. It wasn’t. Supergrass ended up splitting in 2010 anyway. So here was this great song by a new band that I could possibly get into and no one seemed to know who they were. Lyrics weren’t available online. You couldn’t download it. It took me months to find out who made this song. It started playing in football adverts and everything, it was very frustrating. It’s so long ago now I actually can’t remember how I finally found out who it was. I actually think it was on some forum somewhere after someone asked what song was playing in a particular advert. The response was more or less “The song’s called ‘Keep the Fire’ by Goldhawks’. And there it was.

The track is the third on the band’s only album Trick of Light, released in 2010. As you can assume from what I’ve read it’s the first song I ever heard by them. It was only the track’s chorus and its ending that played that night on that Jonathan Ross show, but I thought it was the best few seconds of a song I had heard in a long time. I’ve tried to describe the band’s sound in a suitable manner in a previous post. Listening to it more and more, it’s basically about trying to keep a relationship alive and flowing so thing’s don’t get so boring. Though I think its focal point is lead singer Bobby Cook’s vocals. He just sings it brilliantly. A lot of emotion, and very earnest.

A year and a bit after I initially heard the song, the band finally made a music video for it. You can see that at the top of the page. I was very disappointed in it. It definitely deserved better than what it got. They basically did a Pixies move. I definitely prefer to just listen to it and have my own visions in my head while it’s playing.

Anyway, you don’t hear much from Goldhawks now. That’s because the members no longer play together. This song’ll last forever though.

#689: Simon & Garfunkel – Keep the Customer Satisfied

1 Reply

Heard Bridge over Troubled Water for the first time in 2013, I think. Not the song, but the full album. This was during a time when I was feeling down and should have been focusing on preparing for my A-Levels. But whilst studying for exams in subjects that I didn’t necessarily care for, I took the time to listen to a load of albums that are considered to be classics.

‘Keep the Customer Satisfied’ is the fourth track on Troubled Water, and is a sonically joyous song about being exhausted by the seemingly endless touring that Paul Simon experienced. The first verse is pretty self-explanatory. Simon feels good now that he’s home, and the chorus just explains that he’s just doing his job but still gets the occasional verbal abuse from people who don’t care for his music. He plays with the narrative in the second verse by singing about an altercation with a deputy sheriff who’s giving him hassle. This may or may not have happened to him in reality, though I think it’s just a scene that visualises some of the stress he felt at the time.

He and Art Garfunkel both sing the lead vocal in unison with their iconic harmonies included. The track is carried by a bass that flows all over the place, climbing and descending in scales and generally setting a driving tempo and rhythm. Things are taken to another level when that brass comes in. Initially arriving in a few short blasts, it’s in the little “whoa-oa-oa” section where those biting horns set up this astonishing wall of sound.

This has been a favourite of mine from the album for a long time now. Never hear people comment/discuss/talk about it that much. Though on an album that also has ‘The Boxer’, ‘The Only Living Boy in New York’ and its title track…. you can’t blame anyone.

#673: Wolfmother – Joker & the Thief

Leave a reply

I haven’t listened to any new Wolfmother material in years. Not saying I was the biggest fan of the group in the first place. But when two original members left and the new album then was going to be called Cosmic Egg, that’s where it lost me. The albums they’ve made since the self-titled debut may well be quite for all I know, but probably wouldn’t hit as hard as that first record.

‘Joker & the Thief’ is a track from that album. It was also released as a single, the last one – at least in the UK – if I remember right. Its video (above), featuring the cast of Jackass due to its inclusion in Jackass Number Two, was played regularly on MTV2. That’s pretty much how I got to know it. But it was another hit in a long run of great singles from the band that urged me to get the whole album.

After seeing/hearing it so many times on television, it’s quite difficult to get down into the nitty-gritty of what makes the song good. It’s just a great hard rock song. A bit Led Zeppelin-like in the way they take a character and describe them in a way that makes them seem far out and cosmic. I also like that there’s no bass guitar in the track, instead being replaced by a keyboard that works equally as well. It’s quite different to what you’re normally used to.

#666: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Jenny & the Ess-Dog

Leave a reply

Near the end of Stephen Malkmus’ first album as a ‘solo’ artist is ‘Jenny & the Ess-Dog’ – a tale of two people who couldn’t be further apart on the social spectrum in terms of age (Jenny is just 18, the Ess-Dog (Sean) is 31) and upbringing but ultimately like each other enough to have a sweet relationship.

They listen to Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms album together and buy a pet – a dog – as some couples tend to do. Unfortunately, Jenny goes to college and the relationship eventually fizzles out leaving the two individuals to embark on their separate journeys.

The song is very easy-going and upbeat in its delivery, driven by a climbing/falling vocal melody backed by warm, sunny guitars and child-like keyboard patterns that guide each verse along. ‘Jenny’ is another track on the album that I always felt mirrored the freedom that Malkmus felt upon the split of Pavement in 1999. There was no track like this on Terror Twilight, and I guess he felt that he could with ease with the burden of his old band off his shoulders. This could have been a radio hit if he wanted it to be.

Its music video above has nothing to do with its lyrics as is the usual for a lot of Malkmus-related music videos though that shouldn’t take anything away from the song’s quality. Charming in its own strange way.