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#1249: John Linnell – The Songs of the 50 States

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Well, I guess there’ll be thousands of people out there who will have no idea what Grooveshark was. Grooveshark was a website existing for a while where people could just straight up upload music online for anyone to listen to. It was Soundcloud and Spotify all kind of mixed into one. Then I guess record labels caught onto it and realized it was kind of an illegal/copyrighting issue going on, so it got abruptly taken down after a few years. Looks like it’s back up again under a new address, but I don’t think it’s really the same. But I say all this to say that it was on Grooveshark that I got to listen to John Linnell’s State Songs album back around 2012, and its second song, ‘The Songs of the 50 States’ was one out of the few I got into immediately.

The late, late ’90s was a time when They Might Be Giants heads John Flansburgh and John Linnell went on their little separate ways to do their own projects. Flansburgh did his thing with Mono Puff. Linnell made the State Songs album, bringing to fruition a concept he initially started working on some years prior. Fifteen of the 16 songs on the album are named after US states, and ‘The Songs of the 50 States’ acts as the record’s theme song. Linnell tells us to get ready for the songs that are coming up, and that even he can’t help but get the good shakes when thinking about the tracks he has lined up. Funnily enough, he sings about the songs of the 50 states, but only wrote numbers for 15 of them. Actually, 16 including the B-side, ‘Louisiana’. TMBG fans hold onto hope that one day a State Songs II will just appear one day. Or at least be announced.

After the album’s introduction of ‘Illinois’, an instrumental played out by a carousel organ, ‘…50 States’ brings things into more familiar sonic territory by being more of a band-centric performance. TMBG fans will know what I mean when I refer to ‘the Band of Dans’. Dan Miller (guitar), Danny Weinkauf (bass guitar), and Dan Hickey (drums) for those who don’t. They’re the backing musicians present on the track, and a bunch of guys Linnell was familiar with anyway having been playing with the two Johns for a couple years up to that point. It’s a great performance by all involved. An upbeat, optimistic tune that builds that anticipation for the songs that follow.

#1248: Queens of the Stone Age – A Song for the Deaf

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So, I didn’t realise this until getting ready to type this out, but depending on whatever copy of Songs for the Deaf you have, this song’s either listed as ‘Song for the Deaf’ or ‘A Song for the Deaf’ on the tracklist. Same going for the ‘Dead’ song too. Just think that’s mildly interesting. All this time, I’ve been used to listing both with ‘A’ at the beginning in the various music libraries and stuff, and so I thought Spotify were just being lazy. They’re both correct. But being set in my ways, I’m not changing the title for anything, so the ‘A’ is staying. The big climactic finish to Songs for the Deaf, the almost title-track takes the listener through the final leg of the trip through the California desert, which the whole radio concept of the record is built around. It’s not necessarily a happy end. Things take a very dark and gloomy turn here. Does the driver even make it to the end of the journey? I think it’s up in the air.

The song’s a twisted waltz, its tempo set out by the menacing bass riff that’s then continued on by Josh Homme’s guitars. Written by both Homme and Mark Lanegan, the song’s a showcase of the contrast between two’s vocal styles – the smoother tones of the former mixed with the deeper, gravelly sounds of the latter – and I think it’s very suitable that the last big vocal contributions we hear from Nick Oliveri before he was fired from the band are the manic and hysterical screams that pan from side to side in the bridge before the final chorus. It may have the least plays out of all the songs on the album, at least on Spotify – and by quite a large margin too, I don’t understand – but I think the track exhibits one of the best performances by the band on the entire LP. There’s a reason why people think of the Homme – Oliveri – Lanegan – Grohl line-up of Queens as the golden era of the group, and this song is just of one many of them.

First time I heard Songs for the Deaf in full, I was in primary school and a friend of my sister’s loaned the album to her. The tracks were playing out of the loudspeaker in the living room. It wasn’t very active listening on my part, but I think I was about 10 so cut me some slack. But the very vivid memory I have of the experience was hearing the guitars at the end of ‘A Song of the Deaf’ all kind of feeding back in that wall of noise before it sounds like their souls are taken from them with a ghostly echo. Me and my sister looked at each other, both sort of stunned, and all she said was “Whoa.” We hadn’t heard anything like it before. Since then I’ve always thought of this track as the one with the spooky ending.

#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.

#1218: The Futureheads – Skip to the End

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Goddamn it, it’s been nearly 20 years since this song came out, and I vividly remember watching MTV2 when its music video was showing on the regular. That places me at the age of 11, nearing the end of my days in primary school. ‘Skip to the End’ was unveiled as the first single from what was going to be the new second album by The Futureheads, News and Tributes. It was something I wasn’t expecting because 1, I wasn’t reading up on music like that back then, and 2, another song by the band had been released some months prior that had been announced as a standalone thing and nothing more. But none of it mattered. The band were officially back, back. And owning the band’s debut album on CD like I did, and still do, it was an exciting thing.

I wouldn’t be able to specifically remember the very first time I watched the video/heard the song, but I do recall at least thinking initially that it maybe wasn’t as immediate as a ‘Decent Days and Nights’ or ‘Area’. The verses hopped along with clicking cross-sticks and stabbing guitar chords. Guitarist/singer Barry Hyde delivers his vocals, unusually without the notable backing vocals that were ingrained in the Futureheads DNA. But then the chorus comes in, those backing vocals arrive with it and everything felt all right again. It took a while to get there, but that familiar Futureheads feeling was established. And after hearing it probably almost every morning before school in that time, it made sense that it would stick in my head and I would add it on a phone so I could write my feelings about it nearly two decades later.

The lyrical matter is pretty simple. The narrator here states that if there was a chance to somehow go forward in time and witness the end of their relationship with someone, they would do so to see if there was any point in starting it in the first place. Whether it’s a happy end or a broken heart is the main factor with which they would make their decision. There’s no answer to how the relationship in question goes because obviously it isn’t something anyone’s able to do. It’s just a song to say if they could, they would. But if the second verse is anything to go by, Hyde sings about “going through the roof” (getting very upset) when his lady makes sense, it may be fair to say that things could be going a little better.

#1215: Noisettes – Sister Rosetta (Capture the Spirit)

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Another Noisettes song beginning with ‘S’. Not so far after the last one too. Funny how it goes sometimes. You won’t write about a song by a band/artist for a long while, and then before you know it you’re writing about two in almost quick succession. The last one was ‘Scratch Your Name’, a fine, fine song, I’d advise you to listen and maybe read what I have to say about it. But now it’s time for ‘Sister Rosetta’ to shine. Like ‘Scratch Your Name’, ‘Sister Rosetta’ was another track from the band’s debut album to be chosen as a single. It got its own music video, which I’m sure I would have seen on the TV at some moment in time. I can’t remember watching it as much as the singles that came before. But when I did catch the video on those brief occasions, it was always a good time.

The track is an homage to American singer-songwriter Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who pretty much invented rock and roll. I wish my grandma was as cool as this. But more thoroughly, the lyrics explore the personality of a lady who frequently partakes in nights out in London with the song’s narrator. The narrator describes the good times they have together, making note of the synergy between the two characters, complementing each other “like Satan and Christ”, and I think the chorus sees the narrator wanting something more to happen in this relationship. What it is isn’t explicitly stated, but a capturing of the spirit must occur in order for the narrator’s questions to be answered. The verses are carried by an old-timey rock ‘n’ roll feel, suitably reflected by the swing dancing choreography in the video, before transitioning into the blistering punky choruses. They close out the song, just when things start to feel a little out of control, with singer Shingai Shoniwa bringing proceedings to a halt with a sudden shriek.

If you listen closely to the song via the video, you’ll hear that the rumbling noise at the song’s end sort of cuts out quite abruptly. That’s because, on What’s the Time Mr. Wolf?, the audio carries through right into the following track ‘Bridge to Canada’ – the first Noisettes song I wrote about on here so many years ago. Seeing as this is the last Noisettes song I’ll be writing about on here, it feels good to somehow tie them all together. Some people reading this may recognise ‘Sister Rosetta’ as a song that was featured in a Twilight film. It seems the track was re-recorded for its inclusion, and I have to say…. I don’t like it all that much. Sounds so much tamer in comparison to the original. But, you know, that’s just my opinion. Hear it out for yourself.