Tag Archives: time

#1437: The Avalanches – Two Hearts in 3/4 Time

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It was kind of cool when there was the time when The Avalanches were this mystical group that made Since I Left You and bounced, leaving the people to wonder what happened to them. Those of you who were around when their long-awaited second album Wildflower was announced and eventually released in the summer of 2016 will know how great a feeling it was to hear new Avalanches music again. I was there, and I tell you it was a huge damn deal. A couple jams on there I still rock today. Didn’t really like We Will Always Love You all that much. It was very fine. With four years between that album and Wildflower, it was a quick turnover by Avalanches standards, but to me …Love You lacked that oomph that made the two prior so effective. It was sleek pop music. Sleek pop music by the Avalanches. But sleek pop music still, which as a genre I’m not quite into. With news, old news at this point, that the fourth album is in the works, I just hope that the oomph returns.*

I can tell you the first time I heard Since I Left You in full was on my phone, lying in bed, in between waking up and caving in to get up for the rest of the day. Years ago, I’ll say 2013 again. The fact that it was virtually one big instrumental experience split into 18 tracks without any proper lyrics meant I could just relax and let it all wash over me, didn’t have to focus too much. Songs on there I was familiar already were the obvious ones like ‘Frontier Psychiatrist’ and the title track to a lesser extent. And Pitchfork gave it a 9.5, so to the impressionable, I think, 18-year-old I was, this was a cool album to be listening to. I admire the album for all its worth, but it’s never really one I go back to for active listening. Like, it’s a great, great album, the songs constructed by all the sampling are ridiculous. But it’s all the sampling that makes the album such a dense one. It’s a dense record. And I think it needs a certain environment for the whole to truly be appreciated in. I don’t find myself in the dead of winter, darker nights, cold temperatures, thinking, “What would be great now is Since I Left You.” So that’s how I feel about that. The one track on there that does everything for me though, any time of the year, is its fourth one, ‘Two Hearts in 3/4 Time”.

‘Two Hearts…’ sort of begins in the tail-end of preceding song ‘Radio’, with the opening “Oh, can’t you hear it?” sample trickling in from there. ‘Radio’ itself contains a persistent thump that lasts throughout almost its entire duration, so to follow it up with ‘Two Hearts…’ which reveals itself as this lovely, waltz-time, almost spacey affair – once you get past the showy Cabaret samples – that makes you feel like you’re floating on air… that’s some good sequencing right there. A description of the song would just be me listing out the samples used to make the track, which doesn’t make for great reading. So I think it’d be better for you to have some active listening for yourselves while you read along. What I’ll state bluntly is, I like the use of every sample in this song. The repeating descending vocal melody is pretty. The jazzy ascending Rhodes piano, least I think that’s what it is, is astral-like. The panic-inducing ending taken from John Cale’s ‘Ghost Story’ is hectic and maybe a little frightening, but brilliantly brings in an unexpected left turn. And I also like how, before a particular section fully enters the mix, you can hear it slightly in the background of the section that precedes it. A little taste of what’s to come is subtly revealed each time. The album keeps on trucking as the song rolls right into ‘Avalanche Rock’. And if we want to go there, ‘Two Hearts…’ is in 6/8, isn’t it?

*lil’ update – At the time I wrote that, ‘Together’ and ‘Every Single Weekend’ hadn’t yet been released. I kind of heard the former, haven’t heard the latter. I’m gonna wait for the album. It’s almost here.

#1383: The Who – Time Is Passing

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So I got to know The Who’s ‘Time Is Passing’ via the band’s Odds & Sods compilation. I think I listened to that before I got round to hearing Who’s Next and other studio albums by the band. I know it was definitely before Tommy. But I can’t remember why. A possible reason I can think of, is that I saw it once got a perfect 10/10 score on Pitchfork – in a review you won’t see on the site now – and was convinced enough just by that to check it out. When Odds & Sods was originally released in 1974, it contained 11 tracks and ran for a solid vinyl-record length of 40 minutes and 23 seconds. But when it was reissued in 1998, with CDs being the norm and allowing more available storage, a fine decision was made to double the amount of songs on the compilation, ramping the running time up to a grand 77 minutes. This was the version that was digitally available back in 2011, which was when I first went through the album, though on a now-defunct website called we7.com that was sort of a precursor to all the streaming services that exist now.

‘Time Is Passing’ was one of the tracks added to that ’98 reissue. It was originally written for the Lifehouse rock opera Pete Townshend had envisioned to be The Who’s big follow-up to Tommy. But because no one could understand what the story was after countless explanations, Townshend had a breakdown. It was decided the opera be trimmed down to its highlights, resulting in Who’s Next. But man, with the amount of good music Townshend was writing and The Who were making at the time, Lifehouse could have been the greatest rock album ever. ‘Time Is Passing’ would have been on it, in the opera’s first act, establishing the country lifestyle the protagonist follows and introducing the “music has the potential to save us all” theme that anchors the entire plot. Roger Daltrey sings about playing [his] guitar while [his] sister bangs a jar and walking by the sea and other natural/homely things, all the while he yearns to hear a piece of music he feels will set him free (which ties into ‘Pure and Easy’, but that’s opening a whole other can of worms that needn’t be). And for a Who song, it’s performed pretty straight. Just Daltrey singing with that growl of his over the musicianship of Townshend, Entwistle and Moon. It’s strong, strong stuff.

I liked ‘Time Is Passing’ almost immediately. Thought it was very full-sounding to the ears, So much so that I didn’t realise that what I was listening to was a mono mix, made from the right channel of the original stereo which was then forced into the centre. When the track was found for the 1998 reissue, the left channel of the stereo mix was apparently in such a bad condition that it was discarded. I’m sure I read this somewhere, think it was on thewho.net before that site went through changes that made it worse. A person on YouTube used a bootleg and the official release to make an approximation of how the entire soundscape initially was. It turned out there was a keyboard and steel guitar adding a whole other dimension that everyone was missing out on. An official Who-certified stereo mix wasn’t available for the public to hear until 2023 when the Super Deluxe Who’s Next:Life House Super Deluxe edition release was released. Now that’s around, it’s pretty much replaced the Odds & Sods version in my eyes, as much as I do appreciate it for being the initial one I heard. Nothing beats a good stereo mix, though.

#1382: The Libertines – Time for Heroes

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Maybe I should approach this post like I’m writing about a song from Up the Bracket for the first time. I mean, I’ve covered ‘I Get Along’ – the last song on the album – but it wasn’t too long after doing that post that the song would come up in the shuffle list, the clunky riff would start, and I’d think to myself, “I’m not sure I like this song all that much anymore.” Got me heading for the skip button quite regularly. But that post will still exist as a reminder of a time when I used to like it a lot. But ‘Time for Heroes’? That’s a whole different story. After the band’s initial split in 2004, music videos by The Libertines would make their occasional appearances on MTV2. It just so happened that ‘Time for Heroes’ had one, being a single and all. I probably saw it once, twice, maybe three times, but that was enough to like the song. Then my sister got Up the Bracket as a loan from a school friend of hers. She ripped that onto the old, old, in-a-landfill-somewhere XP computer. Now I could listen to the song anytime.

I don’t know if there’s some kind of unwritten rule in Libertines fandom. Like you’re not meant to compare Pete Doherty and Carl Barât, you’re meant to like them both equally, or something. I’m not the biggest Libertines-head. But for me, Doherty’s always been the more interesting vocalist out of the two. The main attraction of the band is hearing them in a song together, that goes without saying. But if it’s just one of them throughout the whole thing, I feel Doherty’s usually the one who brings a different element to the proceedings. Like on ‘Time for Heroes’, he’s kind of got this drunken, slurring quality to his vocal delivery. Maybe he was drunk at the time of recording it. He sounds like he could mess a word or line up at any moment. But he still manages to hit every note needed and belts out those passionate “Oh, how I cherish you, my love” lyrics at the end of the verses. Or is that line the chorus? I don’t know if this song has a chorus. Feels like Doherty just sings one long verse over some great chord changes, on and on until the instrumental break comes in with a minute left to go.

‘Time for Heroes’ is Doherty’s observational take on the riots that took place in London on May Day 2000. I think he took part in them himself. I was barely a human being at the time, so I don’t know what the specifics of what happened. But this article on the events can clue us all in. Doherty addresses the listener with the first lines, “Did you see the stylish kids in the riot / Shoveled up like muck, set the night on fire”. Good opening lines by the way. Doherty continues on, shouting out the rioters known as the Wombles who dressed up as the characters of the same name. He references Bill Bones from Treasure Island. Just small things to look out for. Overall, I think the song’s acts as something of a tribute to all of the people who were caught up in the riots that day. Not the police, but the public fighting against them. I feel like they’re the heroes the song’s title refers to, and his ‘love’ is the thrill of being involved in places where he probably shouldn’t be. Least, that’s what I get from the song. It’s a good one. Better to listen to than to read about.

#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.

#1380: Supergrass – Time

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Ah, the last time I’ll be writing about a tune from I Should Coco on here. It’s been a good run. I’ve tried to be a champion of Supergrass whenever I cover something of theirs on this place, and I’m gonna keep on going. While you may be listening to Blur, or Pulp, or Oasis, you should all really be listening to Supergrass instead. I Should Coco usually gets recognised as the classic album of the band’s. It was released in the midst of Britpop and it has ‘Alright’ on there. But its overarching infectious energy, brilliant melodies and underlying humour has helped the record stand the test of time. When it comes to me, …Coco was the third Supergrass that I physically owned after getting it for my 13th birthday and having In It for the Money and the X-Ray album in my hands already. And I can remember that first listen and thinking at the time, “Yeah, this is just another good Supergrass album.” Those guys had done it again. And this was just their starting point. They only got better.

‘Time’ is the 11th song on …Coco. It was released alongside ‘Alright’ in a double A-side single format in 1995. The two songs got to number two in the charts, but ‘Alright’ got all the popularity. I don’t think I’d ever heard ‘Time’ before I got I Should Coco in 2008. At this point, I can’t remember the last time I willingly listened to ‘Alright’. ‘Time’, I could put on at anytime. It’s the band’s country, “Home on the Range” type song, anchored by a delightful guitar lick and a swinging rhythm. Got a big appreciation for the groove it possesses, punctuated by the bass line by Mick Quinn. There aren’t many words to analyse in this song. It leaves a lot to interpretation. What I’ve felt is it’s about a person acknowledging that it’s time to leave their loved one as they go away for a little while. If it’s based on personal experience, someone’s going on tour. But the narrator wants to know that the love they still have never leaves when they look their partner in the eyes: “I know what I see / Have it all, you” as it says in the chorus. It doesn’t sound right on paper, but the feeling’s there. Sounds much better with the music alongside the words.

I think what also makes the track so great is the way Gaz Coombes the thing. “The tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime’s on the way”. It’s those long-drawn out notes that ring out into the studio. Such an emphatic way to get things rolling. In fact, the vocals all the way through are probably my main highlight. Particularly how Quinn mirrors Coombes’s melody, but an octave higher. Adds that little layer on top of everything. So when they sing together during the choruses, it makes the song all the more catchy than how it initially started off. Cap it off with a simultaneous guitar and harmonica solo, you get some good listening returns. Coming after what’s probably the silliest song on …Coco, ‘Time’ lays down a real sense of warmth and endearing sincerity, providing a moment to “feel” as the album gets closer towards its end. Yeah, I’m a big fan of this one. It’s not the final statement on the album. But as a representative of it on this blog, it is. Couldn’t be more appropriate.