Tag Archives: up

#1454: The Libertines – Up the Bracket

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So I’m sure I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m a Black man. It shouldn’t really matter all that much. But, you know, the type of music I share my thoughts on wouldn’t usually say “Black” to most people. Regardless, it’s the truth. Growing up and watching MTV2 UK in the mid-2000s, you’d wouldn’t see many, if any, Black faces on music videos. Kele Okereke of Bloc Party’s was probably the first one I saw via ‘Helicopter’. It was the only one for a while. But then the video for The Libertines’ ‘Up the Bracket’ showed up one day. It wasn’t the first of the band’s that I’d seen, but it was certainly the first I watched that featured all the members. Gary Powell was the first Black drummer I’d ever encountered. He didn’t look like he was playing the drums with much focus or precision in the video for ‘…Bracket’, and it got me wondering whether he was actually in the band or a stand-in for someone else. That’s quite messed up, I know, shows you how my 9- or 10-year old brain was conditioned. It wasn’t until I saw him again in the video for ‘Bang Bang You’re Dead’ by Dirty Pretty Things that I understood, this was an actual drummer who could actually play.

You can find that funny, you can find that truly insane. I’m somewhere in the middle thinking on it now. More towards ‘insane’, though. Despite the naive prejudice I gathered on the first viewing, it didn’t distract from the fact that the song itself sounded very nice. Doherty sings about meeting two dodgy men on Vallance Road, supposedly an allusion to the infamous Kray twins who used to live there, and telling them to fuck off by sticking two fingers up at them. Not the peace sign. And then the song focuses on two people for the choruses, a boy and a girl, who look like they’d be the perfect pair but are lost in their own little worlds. A slight change in theme, but it works somehow. The video added to the enjoyability. The band walk up an alleyway (Grove Passage in Bethnal Green, London – a mecca for Libertines fans), Pete Doherty and Carl Barât mime the words while doing so, and they all end up back at someone’s flat, performing the song in their iconic red jackets, in a party-like atmosphere while girls dance around them. Very easy watching. If there are two people who know how to mime lyrics and walk towards the camera, it’s Pete Doherty and Carl Barât. If you see videos by either of them, solo or with their other bands, that’s usually what happens.

‘Up the Bracket’ is the title track on the band’s debut album. It opens the second side, if you were to buy the record on vinyl. As much as I like ‘Up the Bracket’ as a whole, it’s the small, little details that make it an engaging listen. There’s the yell by Doherty right at the beginning, one of frustration, recorded during a moment of chaos in the studio. Barât joins in on the lower harmonies on the “See these two cold fingers” lines, those sound cool. He also plays the descending guitar line in the choruses, he for sure plays the lead guitarist role in the song. There’s that moment during the second chorus when a scratchier vocal track comes into frame, revealed to be inserted from another take of the song in the 2022 anniversary edition. The aforementioned yell is also in that same take. I didn’t know that before writing the sentence, but I’m keeping this all in. I think the oddity that puts the cap on everything is the audible ‘fuck off’ that’s said near the end of the guitar solo. That ‘fuck off’ went uncensored for years on TV. When it was about 2012 or something and I saw the video on what had turned into ‘MTV Rocks’, probably the last time I saw the video on the channel, it appeared that someone at the MTV offices had figured out there was a clear curse word in the song and censored it. I was falling out of love with MTV2/Rocks around that time, the music on rotation there just didn’t seem to as interesting as it used to be. Just that small censorship move showed me that things had really changed on that channel. Couldn’t tune into it the same way anymore.

#1432: Blur – Turn It Up

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Here it is, one of the worst Blur songs the band ever did. Or so you may have been led to believe. Allegedly, when it comes to ‘Turn It Up’, the second-last song on Modern Life Is Rubbish, the one thing agreed amongst Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree is the hate they have for it. There’s no interview confirming this consensus (that I can find). But you can at least find an one with Albarn in which he says, “[Young and Lovely] should have been on the LP. But it didn’t get on there and fucking ‘Turn It Up’ did.” I’ve got a good grasp of the English language to know that any noun prefaced by an intensifier of ‘fucking’ is not being referred to in a good way. ‘Turn It Up’ is a bit of an odd one on Modern Life… It doesn’t fit with the British social commentary theme that runs through the LP. It does feel a little like something that would have been a shoo-in on the previous, debut album Leisure. Judging by the following linked performance, it was one of the first new songs written after that album’s release. But I want to assure you, as a fan of music of all kinds, but predominantly rock as you could tell from everything else on this blog, ‘Turn It Up’ is a great, great time.

In terms of the lyrical content, ‘Turn It Up’ doesn’t really go anywhere and it doesn’t mean anything. “Kazoo, kazoo, you are mine / Kazoo, kazoo, every time”, “Kazoo, kazoo, your reply / Why do you turn your back on me?”. All a bunch of nonsense. Probably an added reason as to why Albarn in particular does not care for the track in any way. Despite this, he sings every lyric within very nicely, alongside Coxon on the higher harmonies. There are great melodies throughout. And the production behind it all is absolutely massive. Mega. There’s an explosiveness to the band’s performance than there has any right to be on a song like this. I’d had Modern Life Is Rubbish in the iTunes library since 2013, but it was a revisit a couple years later that really turned me on to ‘Turn It Up’. The revisit made me pay more attention to the chord changes, the track’s different sections and the various guitar licks Graham Coxon was pulling off throughout. It pricked my ear towards the thunderous drum work by Dave Rowntree, he’s going all over the place, rapid-fire snare rolls and tom-tom strikes abound. Just made me gain a general appreciation for the track I didn’t have before. Even as a “lesser” track, it’s one of the reasons Modern Life… is my favourite of the three “Life” albums Blur did in the mid-’90s.

Graham Coxon once broke down Modern Life…, listening to each individual track and picking out elements a little harder to hear than the average listener may want to. The flickering guitar at the beginning was created by Coxon leaning his guitar against an amp and feeding it through a tremolo pedal. There’s a rattling triangle somewhere in the mix. I think it’s the high frequency of that which adds the trance-inducing quality in the “Kazoo, kazoo” pre-choruses. And the little guitar run he executes before the first pre-chorus is filtered through a wah-wah pedal. The breakdown is a good watch. I’ve kind of run out of things to say here. Sure, ‘Turn It Up’ doesn’t have anything of huge consequence in terms of a narrative, nor in terms of its placement on the album. It’s stuck in that slot in the track list when you’re gearing up for the ending and waiting in anticipation to see how the package finishes. It feels like it’s one of those “we wrote this and our label really likes it, but we don’t” kind of songs. A lot of side-eyeing in this track’s direction. But what it lacks for in importance, it more than makes up for in its intense energy and forceful performance.

#1335: Queens of the Stone Age – Tangled Up in Plaid

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Lullabies to Paralyze. An album that very much could have been Songs for the Deaf 2 very easily. But thankfully Josh Homme was very much against that idea, and made a rougher-around-the-edges collection of songs with his bandmates that all had a creepy tone linking them together. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to the whole thing myself. But what I would like to put out for certain is my notion that the run on the LP from its third song ‘Everybody Knows That You Are Insane’ to the seventh in ‘Little Sister’ is one of the greatest in the band’s entire discography. A very underestimated run, though, because of the album it’s on. It may start earlier or end later for some people. That’s just my opinion. Also in that selection of numbers is ‘Burn the Witch’, ‘In My Head’, and today’s subject of analysis: ‘Tangled Up in Plaid’ – the fourth track in the album’s listing.

I’ve always thought that ‘Tangled Up…’ could have been a single. At least to me, it has everything I’d assume makes a record label person go, “Yep, that’s one to release to the masses,” or whatever those types of people would say whenever they’re getting a single ready. The first chorus doesn’t come in until two minutes in, I guess. Not that it should matter all that much. Just that more people would know about the song as a result. The tone’s set with these plinking piano notes, snare drum strikes and haunting guitar wails, the kind of incidental music you’d hear in a film where someone’s going down a dark, haunted hallway or something. I get a musical kind of vibe from that introduction too, feels like something you’d hear on a Broadway stage. But then the guitars come in and completely negate that whole sentiment. Homme completely owns the track vocal-wise, he’s got that almost-Elvis tone going on again – singing those high chest notes, going into the ghostly falsettos and then belting out the notes again through some kind of fuzz effect for the choruses. Very enjoyable on that front.

Doing these posts gives me a chance to actually think about what these songs are about. I’m too busy singing along to them you see, I’m very much like the guy Kurt Cobain describes in ‘In Bloom’. From the chorus alone, I went ahead to think that it was sung from this overprotective narrator in a relationship, who realizes their flaws and tries to ease up on their overbearing nature. The whole “I know you gotta be free” bit. But looking into it more, it looks as if it’s the ‘other’ in this situation rather than the narrator who’s the destructive one. What I never thought before, after looking up some theories online, is how this whole song may potentially be about former bandmate Nick Oliveri, who was fired from the band before work on Lullabies… got started. Definitely puts a new perspective on things. But I’m sure I’ll enjoy the whole package all the same. It’s that swinging feel the track possesses, it takes me away every time.

#1284: Enter Shikari – Step Up

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Enter Shikari’s ‘Step Up’ is the last representative of the band’s Common Dreads album, their second, released back in 2009, that’ll be showing up on the blog here. If I was at this point in this series maybe a decade ago, there would have been a couple more posts for other songs on there. Namely, ‘Solidarity’ and ‘The Jester’. But there was a point when I would have my phone on shuffle and, despite the whole purpose of shuffle being random in the song selection, those two songs would start to play on almost constant basis. And as the years went on, I slowly fell out of favour with other numbers like ‘Gap in the Fence’ and ‘Hectic’. But the posts for those two up and available to read, so you can see my thoughts from a time when I was properly into them.

But through it all, ‘Step Up’ has stood tall while those fell to the figurative wayside. With its place as the third song on Common Dreads, it helps to further establish the mood of the album coming after the titular intro track and ‘Solidarity’. But while ‘Solidarity’ acts as a call for unity and is something for the fans with its musical/lyrical callbacks to refrains and motifs from their previous album, ‘Step Up’ is the slap in the face – telling people to wake up and pay attention to the injustice that’s happening on the regular around the world. Vocalist Rou Reynolds, alongside bassist and backing vocalist Chris Batten, critique the passivity I think the majority of us are prone to when we witness something happening horrible on the news and rally to us that, by doing a little research and taking action, we can at least play a part in making a difference. However small the result may be, the main point is that an attempt was made.

The track begins with its frantic synths, spilling over from the preceding track while that comes to a close, that soon make way for drummer Rob Rolfe’s thunderous entrance. It’s not too long that, after a dominant roar from Reynolds, proceedings properly get going, with he and Batten doing a respective call and response, shouting versus melodic singing dynamic – a thing that was very much a staple in those earlier Enter Shikari albums. For a post-hardcore type of band, they were never too proud to showcase their prowess at harmonies. There’s plenty of those to latch on to here also. I guess another notable part is the spoken word bridge Reynolds delivers nearing halfway through. It’s not the last time you’ll be hearing that sort of vocal delivery on the record if you’re listening from front to back. In fact, the very next song contains it too. But it’s there that Reynolds bluntly states that we don’t know how good we’ve got it while other people are suffering, screaming his frustration which then leads into the song’s second half. It’s great stuff. This is the last from Common Dreads on here. It’s not the last of Enter Shikari.

#1282: The Rolling Stones – Start Me Up

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In 2009, I stumbled upon the YouTube account of StSanders. If you’re aware of the whole ‘Band Shreds’ gimmick where people overdub themselves playing badly over a video to make it look like the artist/band can’t sing or play their instruments properly, I’m very sure StSanders started that whole thing. The main difference with his videos though was that he made completely new music and lyrics, somehow still syncing with the actions and lip-syncing of the original footage, ending up with some amazingly hilarious results. His one for the Beatles was the first I ever saw, and I remember my jaw dropping and my brain sort of rewiring itself when I realized what was happening. And once I got into it, I went onto his YouTube channel to see what else he’d worked on, saw the one he did using the video for The Rolling Stones’ ‘Start Me Up’ and fell about laughing some more. I’ll go ahead and embed that one below. It seems stupid at first. But just follow through with it, it’s worth the watch.

Safe to say, the actual ‘Start Me Up’ song is nothing like the Frankenstein’s monster StSanders made of it. Because I’d seen the Shreds video first, I couldn’t help but try and match it with the actual words Mick Jagger is miming to in the proper music video. Once those lines became less blurred, I came to appreciate both in their own respective ways. ‘Start Me Up’ opens The Rolling Stones’ 1981 album, Tattoo You, one that mostly consists of studio outtakes recorded in the 1970s. The song started out as a reggae tune in ’75 when the band were working on Black and Blue. They re-recorded it during some sessions for Some Girls in ’78. The group just couldn’t get the music right. But when 1981 came around, the album engineer found a take where the band performed a straighter rock version rather than the reggae vibe they’d mostly been sticking too. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood laid down some vocals over the top, a few overdubs were done, and the version of ‘Start Me Up’ we all know was completed.

‘Start Me Up’ is one long metaphor for sex. Sex and arousal, and there’s not much else to it. Jagger sings about seeing a beautiful woman and getting turned on, likening it to revving up a motorcyle and going for a long, long ride. Except at the end when the song’s fading out and Jagger then starts to go on about a dead man “coming”. A whole wink, wink, nudge, nudge moment this song is. But I can’t be mad at it. Keith Richards’s guitar’s the first thing you hear, followed by an thwack on the snare by Charlie Watts, and when the rhythm truly gets going, it’s pretty much a wrap. You’re under the song’s spell. At least that’s the way it ended up for me. I’m usually listening to the interplay between the guitars of Richards and Ronnie Wood. Whose guitar is in which channel, I’m still not sure, but they’re both never playing the exact same thing. It’s cool to see where they differentiate and then maybe play something in unison at points. And the rhythm section of Bill Wyman on the bass with Watts on the sticks is strong as ever. That snare really has a rich tone to it, slices through the mix. And despite all the innuendos being thrown at you, Jagger doesn’t sound bad either. Like those “mean, mean machiiiiiine” growls that transition into those alluring ‘start it up”s at the end of the choruses, which are usually followed by the perkier ‘Start it up”s that begin the verses. A strong performance by all involved.