Tag Archives: there is a way

#1381: Dananananaykroyd – Time Capsule

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Here’s another blog subject to go in the list of “the last song from albums I’ll never be covering again on this place”. I feel like there’s been a lot of those recently. If this is your first time reading up on a song from Dananananaykroyd’s There Is a Way here, the short story of my experience with it is I downloaded the album a few days after its release, after finding out about the first single from the album on – I’m pretty sure – the morning after my last GCSE exam in 2011. There Is a Way got very, very minimal coverage, both commercially and critically. Pitchfork reviewed the band’s debut album. I thought they’d review There Is a Way. They did not. I wouldn’t be surprised if millions of people didn’t know this album exists. But I at least hope that writing about nine of its 11 tracks on this site gives you incentive to check it out and make your own thoughts on it. For me, the album still sounds as fresh now as it did… 15 years ago. Jesus. My favourite album of theirs out of the two they made.

Finally getting a physical copy of There Is a Way only a couple years ago really opened my eyes as to what the songs on it were about. Up until 2024, I was singing along, but only with words that I thought I was hearing or mildly comprehensible. I’ve probably made a point in previous posts about how the Glaswegian accents of Gunn and Baillie Jnr come through strongly in their singing numerous times. And that’s only because the point is true. Lyrics sites had no idea what was going on. There are only a couple which now have the right lyrics, and that’s because I uploaded them myself. I mean, the song was always obviously about a time capsule, but I can make a strong deduction now that one of the bandmembers dug a capsule up – most likely John Baillie Jnr ’cause he wrote the lyrics – found a diary in it and was inspired enough to relay its entries and the overall time capsule-finding experience into the form of a song. Baillie Jnr finds a delightful interest in the trivial things his ancestors got up to back in the day and puts it on himself to carry on the family name, tributing his hometown of Glasgow in the process.

‘Time Capsule’ is a track on There Is a Way that I remember liking from the first listen. I once threw out a comment on a post the band made on their Facebook page, requesting the song be the next single. My comment probably had no relation to what the band posted. It wasn’t to be, because the band released ‘Think and Feel’ as the second single and then broke up not too long afterwards. It was a sad, sad situation. The split, I mean, not that my request got “snubbed”. But I honestly thought ‘Time Capsule’ had everything that the public would enjoy. It had the “Time Capsu-all” hook, sang in unison by vocalists Calum Gunn and John Baillie Jnr, that quick-fire scale-demonstration guitar riff on the right-hand side by guitarist David Roy. Paul Carlin’s working those drums, makes the track’s momentum feel very busy, always moving forward. There Is a Way is a ball of energy up to and including ‘Time Capsule’. You think the band have to let up at some point. And they do. After ending the song with a climactic finish where the band go into half-time, hammering the aforementioned guitar riff home until the song collapses in on itself, a bubble pop transitions the listener into what I’m guessing is a field recording outside the studio that lasts for about a minute. Just to let you have a little breather, I think. A great way to close out the album’s first half.

#1177: Dananananaykroyd – Seven Days Late

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After having known Dananananaykroyd’s second and final album There Is a Way for 13 years, listening to it since near the day it was released in 2011 and becoming very familiar to every song on there in the process, I made the decision to buy it outright and get a physical copy back in January. It wasn’t cheap. Almost £20, it was. But I knew the music was good, so it was worth it. A lot of things became clear once the copy came in the mail and I opened those liner notes up. For one, I’d been singing along to the majority of the tracks on there, completely differently to how they were originally written. And two, almost all of the music was written by guitarist David Roy and, bar three songs, the lyrics were covered by John Baillie Jnr, who’d been more of the backing vocalist on the band’s previous album while mainly acting as the second drummer. I guess that’s why those two stuck together in a new band when the ‘Kroyd split up a few months after the album’s initial release.

I’ve gone on a bit of a tangent there. Let’s take it back to the point about singing the wrong words. Yeah, that’s what I’d been doing all this time. ‘Seven Days Late’ is a track on the album where there’s a lot of shouting involved. And being the people of Glasgow they are, they were unapologetically Scottish in the way they enunciated their lyrics. It’s an endearing quality. I could only mimic what I could understand, apart from those phrases where it was very clear what was being said. ‘Seven Days…’ is the most intense song on the album. I remember being sort of blown away by Bailie Jnr’s scream at about 2:20 when I first heard it. Bear in mind, I was 16. But there was nothing from Hey Everyone! that made me think they had that kind of scream in them. Really from the chest, sounded truly pissed off. And I’m sure the whole song is simply about someone deciding to stay in a room somewhere and do nothing until their mum and sister comes to take them away.

Thinking about it, there should be no reason why a simple subject like that should be matched with such ferocity and urgency in the music. And if it does, you’d think it probably wouldn’t work out too well. But that’s exactly what goes on here and, in contrast to what I stated in the last sentence, it works out very well indeed. This track makes me damn-near want to punch a wall. Multiple times or something. That’s sometimes what it has to come down to. There’s a frustration and tension that builds and builds throughout, and when the track leaves you hanging when things pause for a brief second near the end, those anxious feelings are beautifully alleviated by the final chord where the band members breathe an almighty sigh of relief – like sitting in a nice, warm bath after a tiring day. It’s such a good moment, I get goosebumps every time.

#1101: Dananananaykroyd – Reboot

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Let me take you back to the 17th June 2011. It was the day after my last GCSE exam, and I was finally free. A year of revising subjects to a strict timetable created by my mum was over. It was done. I could forget everything. I was lying in bed watching Freshly Squeezed on Channel 4, early in the morning, it’s a show that ran its course after a while, and to my surprise came the new music video for Dananananaykroyd’s new single ‘Muscle Memory’. This is a story I’ve told already, most recently in the post for that song a couple years ago. I was always vague on the time all this happened though. Why I can be so precise now is thanks to the option of being able to see my timeline on Facebook, where the 16-year-old me made it clear that exam time was finished and the world was his oyster.

Unbeknownst to me, the band’s new album There Is a Way – their second and what turned out to be their final LP – had already been out and available to purchase for four days by that date. According to the ol’ family computer, I downloaded the 21st June. It must have been on that day that I realized that There Is a Way wasn’t something that was months away, but was actually out and existing and available to hear. I got to downloading it. Shame on me for not fully supporting the effort and buying the CD, but I needed to hear it, there’s nothing much else to say. Especially after becoming a fan through their first album Hey Everyone! ‘Reboot’ starts it all off. The band kick into gear, droning on an open A chord for the most part while a guitar pulls off some melodic licks over the top. The main riff of the song doesn’t arrive until just over a minute. The first chord change in the track doesn’t happen until just under 1:30. You’re waiting and waiting in anticipation for some vocals to enter the frame. I know I was all those years back. And they do, eventually, with two and a half minutes of the song remaining.

It’s only just occurred to me that vocalist John Bailie Junior being the first voice you hear on the album may have been a very conscious choice. On the band’s previous album, he also provided vocals, though served more as a backup to fellow vocalist Calum Gunn due to the fact that he was also the band’s second drummer. Two separate drum kits can be heard on both channels throughout Hey Everyone!. But during a gig, he fell offstage and broke his arm in two places which put his drumming duties on hold. Bailie Junior is very much at the forefront alongside Gunn throughout There Is a Way. And it all begins on ‘Reboot’. The track itself is just a statement that the band were back in something of a new form – a reboot of their old selves you could say – with two proper vocalists, one drummer only and a new bass guitarist, and ready to unleash some havoc through dripping gloss, candyfloss and planting seeds that spread disease. I remember being so happy experiencing this new song on this new album, and when that final chord hit with the band cheering and whooping with the cymbals sizzling away… gotta say I got some goosebumps. Felt so good to be playing this record. Shame they had to go ahead and split up some months later though. Interestingly, the main riff of ‘Reboot’ was around as early as 2010, as in this tutorial by one of the band’s guitarist, they start busting it out spontaneously around 39 seconds in.

#880: Dananananaykroyd – Muscle Memory

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Ten years ago, Scottish band Dananananaykroyd released their second album, There Is a Way. The day it was released was the beginning of the final week of my GCSE exams. But I didn’t even know that the band were even making any new music until the video for ‘Muscle Memory’ – as you can see up there – was shown on Channel 4’s breakfast music show Freshly Squeezed about a week later, I want to say. It might have even been on the last day of my final exam. Anyone remember that show? Freshly Squeezed? Anyway, I thought the track was great from the moment I saw it. Helped that the band looked like they were all having some good times in the video too. Right before it got into the shouty bridge, the video cut out and the show presenters moved on to something else. But I was left with enough. The knowledge that D’Kroyd were back with a new album. And an urge to see how the track actually ended.

By the time I saw that video, I was now a free 16-year-old who didn’t have to go to school for three months. The world was my damn oyster. So I watched the rest of that video on YouTube and downloaded There Is a Way as soon as I could. And I loved that album too. It was probably my album of the summer. And ‘Muscle Memory’ was always one of the highlights from there. The ascending riff that starts it off just sets everything in motion, and when all the other instruments join in the track is given this extra bounce that always gets my foot tapping. Vocalists Calum Gunn and John Bailie Jnr sing in unison, harmonise and alternate the lines they sing. It’s all generally a very fun listen. And what is about? Well, after some consideration in the past few weeks, I think it’s a song that’s meant to explore the relationship of a band/artist and its fans. How fans want to get closer to a band by trying to decipher their lyrics, reading their reviews, or playing along to their songs by learning them on the guitar. Dang, I think this tune’s so great. Hasn’t lost its energy ten years on.

So taking you back to 2011. There Is a Way had been out for a few months. There I was, excited for any new music videos from the band if they decided to release any more singles from it. And then out of the blue, they announced that they were to split up after their UK tour. Have to say, I was just a bit bummed out. But then again, listening to the last song on that album, the clues were there. The band had felt that they’d done their part, and from some articles I’ve seen they didn’t think they could go on with a band name as strange as theirs anyway. I miss ’em. But they have two albums that captured that essence of pure energy and joyous noise that the band were all about. And for that, I can’t be too sad.

My iPod #462: Dananananaykroyd – Good Time

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“Good Time”, the seventh track on Dananananaykroyd’s final album There Is a Way, gets the album back to the original frenetic, loud, energetic, pumped-up style set in the preceding six after a calming interlude of environmental noises after the end of “Time Capsule“.

There is a lot to take in in the three minutes and sixteen seconds this song lasts for. It speeds up, slows down for the choruses, changes time signature at one point, there is stuttering, yelping, screaming, singing in unison, it lifts you up and smacks you around. If you don’t have a physical copy of the album (cos the lyrics are in there), there is a large chance you will have no idea what is being said to you most of the time. But that’s not a bad thing. As long as you have fun, which you will no doubt, then it’s fine. Just have a good time……. listening to it.

It was its unpredictability I think that made it one of the last songs from the album that I appreciated, but after a few more listens I got it. I’m glad.