Tag Archives: the

#1279: Pavement – Starlings of the Slipstream

Leave a reply

‘Starlings of the Slipstream’ is the penultimate track on Pavement’s Brighten the Corners album, released back in 1997. I can’t recall if I’ve ever said on here, but usually I switch between Crooked Rain… and Terror Twilight as my go-to listen-through Pavement albums. But over the years, Brighten the Corners has been slowly creeping up and calmly nudging it’s way into pole position too. My view, you can’t go wrong with any Pavement album. I’ve enjoyed a good chunk of Brighten… for the longest time. But as I’ve revisited over the years, with the big 3-0 approaching and being 30 now, the record’s become a great comfort. Being the ‘turning 30’ album it is, I can sort of relate with Stephen Malkmus who was going through the same stage of life at the time of making the album, even with surrealism and lyrical wordplay he tends to incorporate in his songs.

‘Starlings…’ was originally known as ‘The Werewolf Song’, assumedly because of the “ah-woooo” refrains during the chorus, and was introduced as so when the band played the Tibetan Freedom Concert in 1996. They did this performance on either 15th or 16th June, and a month later, they were in a studio in North Carolina recording the music that would end of being Brighten the Corners. Somewhere in between, Stephen Malkmus found the time to get some lyrics down to set amidst the music. Or maybe even during the recording sessions he did, the band usually got the performances to tape first and he would lay down his vocals afterwards. And with the final lyrics, you get a set of words that aren’t very easy to break down and get to the nitty-gritty about. They’re vague in typical Malkmus fashion. But just the song title of ‘Starlings of the Slipstream’ is enough to bring an image my head, much like a lot of other lyrics you’ll find in the track. So maybe it’s more about the imagery in this song, rather than the meaning.

So it would be the logical move to go through this song line-by-line to try and express what imagery’s conjured up by each respective lyric. But I feel that would kind of be a waste of my time, and you probably wouldn’t want to read that either. Rather, I’ll just list the few things that stick out to me when I think about the song. Overall, the chord changes and the stopping/starting motion the music holds in the verses. Each smack of the crash cymbal with the guitar strum feels very releasing. And then those stop-starts transition into the werewolf choruses where Malkmus recites the song’s title. Those moments are quite entrancing in their own ways too. The way Malkmus intensifies his vocal on the “I put a spy-cam in a sorority” line. Didn’t need to do it, comes from out of nowhere, but always grateful that he chose to sing it that way. And I like how the track just falls into this noisy outro with two guitars wailing between notes before everything fizzles out to an end. Somewhere I read a comment that referred to ‘Starlings…’ as the song that sounds like the final track but isn’t. And while I got a laugh and did think that the comment was sort of right, it does the best job as the second-last one. Gives us that last bit of levity before ‘Fin’ really ends the album on a poignant note.

#1278: Graffiti6 – Stare into the Sun

Leave a reply

The only reason I know of Graffiti6’s ‘Stare into the Sun’ is because of the song’s inclusion on the soundtrack for the 2011/12 iteration of EA Sports’ FIFA series of videogames. A roundabout way of saying FIFA 12. At that time, my GCSEs were over and done with. I was now onto studying for my A-Levels. It was quite the raise in difficulty. But instead of devoting more time into researching and putting more effort into my work at home, I carried on my usual tradition of buying the yearly FIFA game and dedicating time to that instead. My original YouTube account also got taken down around this period, so I think I was a little depressed. But the FIFA soundtrack wouldn’t let me down, it hadn’t since 2002. And ‘Stare into the Sun’ was a major, major highlight from there.

In ‘Stare into the Sun’, songwriter Jamie Scott sings about looking around at all the happy couples being together in the summer sun after having recently had his heart broken himself. He’s on his own, he’s feeling low. Feeling blue, as he says in the lyrics. But he also knows that this is how life goes, and after he’s done crying, he’ll be able to see the light and have brighter days coming his way. You see where the whole ‘staring into the sun’ metaphor comes into play. The music’s all upbeat and sprightly, got these whistles/xylophones that sort of heighten the positive energy. That descending piano riff at about 20 seconds in and what closes the song out too was enough to get me interested in the first place. Overall, what you’ve got in ‘Stare into the Sun’ is one of those happy-sounding songs about a sad situation. It’s a type that I’m usually into, and when it’s done well, it’s an instant like on my end. So here I am hopefully writing an engaging overview about it.

Hearing the track repeatedly through the TV speakers, I reckoned the track was sung by an American group potentially fronted by a Black vocalist. As you can see from the music video, it is not. And the group are from London. Just saying this ’cause it’s true, not to complain or anything. Doesn’t effect how I enjoy the track in any way. This was probably one of the last tracks I came to know from a FIFA soundtrack. I got FIFA 13 the next year, and that was the edition where I suddenly realized EA Sports were barely putting in any effort into the games anymore. Plus, the soundtrack was kind of unremarkable. That was the true sign that things weren’t right. The song can be found on the group’s Colours album, which then got re-released with new artwork and an extended tracklist. ‘Stare into the Sun’ probably got the re-release treatment too, as it then got another official music video made for it. Think I prefer the one above, though. It’s all the same song.

#1271: Billy Talent – Standing in the Rain

Leave a reply

Back in the days of 2005, Billy Talent’s official website used to look like this. Two years after the release of their debut album, the design was still very much focused on that era. And the example I provide was the page that came up if you didn’t have Flash installed. Now that Flash is busy not existing anymore, not even Archive can go further than that. But I can tell you that when Flash was the thing to have, you were able to watch the band’s music videos, either through Quicktime or Windows Media, catch up on the latest news regarding the group, and listen to three of the songs from the debut album as a kind of preview through an integrated music player on the homepage. I want to say one was ‘Try Honesty’, another was ‘Line & Sinker’, and the third was ‘Standing in the Rain’. So I knew that one almost by heart before I had the album for myself.

‘Standing in the Rain’ is the eighth number on Billy Talent, a bleak one about the struggles of a prostitute. Not sure there’s much to pick apart in my opinion, because the lyrics are very much what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Ben Kowalewicz sings from the point of view of a woman of the night, or man, you don’t know, the gender’s never revealed in the words, detailing their misery. An annotation on Genius says the track was inspired by the Pig Farm murders carried out by Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton. I can’t find any other source by the band that corroborates this interpretation. It may very well be true. Maybe Kowalewicz and guitarist Ian D’Sa were just inspired to write about prostitution and thought it would be interesting to cover it from the prostitute’s point of view. I’d like to think it was just that. You can’t believe everything you see on those lyrics sites.

Just a solid, solid performance throughout by the band. D’Sa very much plays a strong rhythm guitar on this one rather than doing the simultaneous lead/rhythm guitar playing he carries out on the vast majority of the record. But the chord choices and progressions are still as strong. A lot of the attention, I think, may probably be directed to the harmonies and general singing carried out by D’Sa and Kowalewicz. They sing in unison for the pre-chorus, before the former goes to the higher harmony for the actual chorus. And then in the break, D’Sa takes the lead for a brief second before Kowalewicz joins in and the rest of the band crash in together for the song’s closing moments. On a personal note, I’ve always thought the mixing of the cymbals sounded a little strange during the opening. I know they were recorded separately from the actual drumkit during production, but I don’t know what it is. Anyone else can agree or disagree. But if you can at least get what I’m on about, I’ll be plenty happy.

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

1 Reply

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

Leave a reply

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.