Literal Lyrics: guns kill people.

Hey there nine summertime readers. I'm Tom. I write this nonsense. I've been asked by Matt to contribute, and since I learnt how to share back in preschool, I was happy to help out. I hear he wants to turn this blog into a critical discourse on the state of modern music. Boring.

This is a series called 'Literal Lyrics'. Basically, I find the lyrics of a shitty pop song that is dominating the ARIA charts and I dissect them for the benefit of the listeners at home. It helps uncover the true meaning of these auto-tuned monstrosities. I plan to do it on a weekly basis.

This week's song is 'Russian Roulette' by Rihanna. Don't get me wrong, I think she's great. But only at dancing and singing. And getting punched in the face by her boyfriend. OH NO YOU DIDN'T! The song opens with some basic instructions on how to live.

Take a breath, take it deep
Calm yourself, he says to me
If you play, you play for keeps

Rihanna, you're hanging with the right crowd. These people have their head on right. Breathing, calmness, playing for keeps. Good on you girl.

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in rememberance: kings of leon

I’d heard others lament the transgression of previously-great bands into mainstream mediocrity and the consciousness of the cultural bankrupt long before I’d experienced that grief myself. From Daft Punk’s ‘Human After All’ to Wilco’s ‘A Ghost is Born,’ from Massive Attack, Pavement, Air, Beastie Boys, The Verve – all are artist’s that have damn near broken people’s hearts with their decreasing vitality and relevance. That’s just a selection of them. Try talking to someone who loved Muse ten years ago about the now Big Day Out-headlining band.

This is a chance to reflect. This is an obituary for the integrity and awesomeness behind a band once close to my heart. A chance to remember the good times so readily obscured by the more recent and more publicised shite. Stand up, Kings of Leon.

I bought Youth and Young Manhood while in Sydney for my uncle’s wedding without having heard so much as single note from it beforehand. I was at that point in my mid-teenage years where, devoid of an older brother and a dad that kept abreast of new music (and back when Myspace was actually used by high schoolers and not bands), I would readily hand over my monies with an adolescent, explorative excitement based on the thirty seconds I heard at listening stations (back when people still bought CDs), or the cover art, or one good review I read in some largely irrelevant publication. I genuinely miss that practice, especially the lack of expectations I had for every release and thus the greater frequency with which I was pleasantly surprised; the complete lack of aesthetic criteria or credibility concerns that now colour almost all my consumption. It was the product of a musical naivety I wish I still had. It made every release something of a mystery and almost everything (including – briefly – Jet) sound quite fresh.

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stuff i've been listening to

Bibio - 'Bones and Skulls'

This track is off Bibio's latest - and THIRD - album released on Warp in 2009. In fairness though, while billed as an album, The Apple and the Tooth is basically an EP and a handful of remixes packaged together. It's still cool if not a slight let down after the fantastic Ambivalence Avenue in June.
Apple doesn't come any closer to marrying the "two Bibios" presented on earlier albums - the glitchy, electronic Bibio, and the singer-songwriter Bibio. They remain quite distinct, though the latter is better represented on this release.
'Bones and Skulls' is a simple guitar track with a catchy, drifting vocal melody. It's a long way from Neil Young , with plenty of background noise and effected sounds filling out the empty space around the clattering percussion and crusty beats. It's the whimsical, vocodered bridge pulled straight from an Air track that really makes it soar.

The Radio Dept. - ' Pulling Our Weight'

One of the biggest regrets after my Euro trip this year was that I never made it to Sweden. I saw Sweden from the Danish shoreline, but never actually made it over there due to time and monetary constraints. This year alone, Sweden has brought us personal favs Fever Ray (album of the year) and The Mary Onettes (to be featured on an upcoming mixtape) amongst many others.
The Radio Dept. were the toast of indie music earlier this decade, with two great EPs and then a pretty good LP released in quick succession, plus no less than three tracks featured on Sofia Coppola's ultra-hip Marie Antoinette soundtrack.
This is an old song of theirs and is on both the aformentioned soundtrack and the Pulling Our Weight EP. The vocals have that dream-like quality that only continental Europeans seem capable of producing, and it's more than just the accent, the low-cut filter, the double-tracking and the reverb. It's what makes even the most fuzzed out Radio Dept. songs sound blissful; it's what draws the comparisons to other 'dream pop' bands. The bass takes the lead on this track. Its melodic line weaves throughout the track, and the one-bar-short phrase that opens the main riff seals the deal.

The Cure - 'Purple Haze' (Hendrix Cover)

Apparently this was put together for a 1993 Hendrix tribute album. I don't own said album because I find Hendrix/Zeppelin et al fairly soporific. I do, however, own The Cure's four-disc, 70-track long b-sides and rarities compilation Join the Dots. Organised chronologically, 'Purple Haze' is buried in the middle of the 3rd disc and is probably the last worthwhile track hearing on the very patchy last two discs. This shouldn't surprise anyone really since The Cure's a-sides at this point were nothing short of terrible ('Mint Car' anyone?)
The best thing about this track is that is displays the creativity that was then lacking in their own work. Robert Smith needs to find and hold onto whatever inspired him to turn air-guitar standard 'Purple Haze' into a hip hop-inspired, drugged-out ballad. It's also the most gothic sounding thing they'd put out that decade until '99s ridiculously hyper-goth Bloodflowers.
The Cure are one of my top three favourite bands ever, and if I were going to recommend any track they released in the '90s then it would be this one. Unusual, since it's a cover, but it shows what's great about The Cure better than their own material - it's eerie, oppressive, and inventive. It doesn't touch their first four albums mind you, but very little out there does.

what do you do with a...

“What do you do with a BA in English?” So goes the opening line in a song from Avenue Q. It’s a great musical because it makes puppets swear (giggle), and is also peppered with harsh truths like that one (you just don’t get that in Cats). I always knew my BA in English wasn’t worth much, but you never expect to hear it from a Jim Hensen creation (or close enough approximation) and being laughed at by a large who probably all have that degree or similar.

There is one difference between my situation and the one outlined in the aforementioned song. Ok, two: the first is that Gary Coleman is not my landlord, and the second is that my life doesn’t suck. I get work and it keeps me afloat, but it’s doing little to wipe away my debts from a recent Euro trip. It’s also hard to look busy when you work from your bedroom –and thus to anyone not physically standing in your room and observing you, working and watching Twin Peaks are practically the same activity.

Although said work is writing-based, I’d have probably gotten this work regardless of whether I had that BA in English or not. That said, I loved my BA and would do it again if I had the chance. But that routine and relative lack of expectation from my undergraduate days has since been stripped away and violated. I’ve never been one to stress about money or occupation before, but debts need a-paying. Also, my partner in crime/self-pity is now a straight and semi-productive member of society whose achievements at her job somehow eclipse the time I spend on Hype Machine and Facebook. I know, right?

I didn’t adopt all of the below steps, but if I ever scale back my freelancing stuff and get desperate then I will likely be turning to suppress the impotent guilt that will likely arrive shortly thereafter.

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stuff i've been listening to.

The Beta Band - 'Squares'
This is a song off this now-defunct band's second studio album Hot Shots II released in 2001. What's notable about this song - and something you'll realise pretty quickly if you listen - is that it shares a chorus with a later, well-known Lupe Fiasco song. Both are based around a prominent sample from I Monster's 'Daydream in Blue,' only The Beta Band's sample is slightly more abridged and features their distinct brogue on top.

I like Lupe Fiasco's track, but this is much better. While the idea of pop music drawing from hip hop in the mid-to-late nineties was hardly revolutionary, a bunch of English squares (no pun intended) somehow managed to sound so original by doing just that. Sampling old soul tracks, using crusty hip hop beats, playfully cutting up their librarian-esque vocals - it all works so well when it probably shouldn't. Maybe it's exciting because the band could have so easily rested on their laurels and churned out more acoustic songs like 'Dry The Rain' - first song on their debut EP and a fantastic song no less - but they went much further than that. They were diverse, adventurous and quite geeky. Sometimes they go almost too far; the sampled string break in 'It's Not Too Beautiful' is surprising the first few times, but eventually feels like the aural equivalent of sea-sickness.

I've been thrashing the Beta Band's 'best of' this last fortnight and this is probably my favourite song on there.

Foals - 'Big Big Love (Fig. 2)'
This song is hardly old but whatever, the album leaked Feb 08 - which is long enough ago to warrant its inclusion here. The opening (not the bit with sticks but the bit with the delayed guitar) sounds "like water" according to Maddy, which is a great description. The distorted, low-cut drums and synth that come in soon thereafter are deceptively simple and maintain a feeling of floating throughout the verses. The chorus is all double-tracked shouts and yet somehow sounds nearly as weightless, and then the song is brought by down to earth by high-fret antics in the bridge/outro.

This album was was produced by Dave Sitek (aka the man of the decade) and is way too underrated. Too many reviews said that the album needed more upbeat ska-type singles like 'Cassius' and 'Balloons.' While those songs are good, the best stuff on Antidotes is easily the more atmospheric, loop-based compositions (see: 'Red Sock Pugie,' 'Tron (Is A Good Film), 'Electric Bloom'). People complain about Sitek's production (the band themselves rejected his final mix) because it's not transparent - it draws attention to it's knob twiddling ways and incidentally pulls focus from the songs. But that what I love about it, and any band or listener looking for slick, live-sounding jams should stay away from Sitek. His production makes me want to spend hours trying stuff out on Logic, and the song 'Big Big Love (Fig. 2)' makes me want to grab my guitar and delay pedals and go for it.

in defense of animal collective (at my own risk...)

I remember a time when it was cool to like Animal Collective. I remember that time mainly because it only three years ago.

I was among the many fans that thought Feels was a great album from an innovative band. Then a whole bunch of new blogs and blog readers decided they also loved Animal Collective, and held them up as the band of the decade and the pinnacle of experimentation in indie music. And then it became cool to hate on Animal Collective. So many of those who formerly championed Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist and Deakin moved on to championing Fuck Buttons and Health - until such time that they too become the toast of alternative media and thus must be discarded in an equally open and critically-hostile manner.

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hipster partay mixtape

I put together a bit of a mixtape because it seemed like a fun thing to do. This isn't a compilation of my favourite songs ever or anything. No. This is a collection of songs that I would play if tonight I were getting loose and DJing to a crowd consisting entirely of myself.

It's pretty fun and not "high brow" hipster material (see: 'Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell'), though it may possibly include the obligatory AnCo jam ('Grass'). Also some cool remixes and my favourite mash-up ever alongside just generally catchy stuff. It's one file with fades - not exactly "mixed" (ie. beat matched), but still worth putting on if you're doing pre-drinks tonight (especially if you to be/want to be me). This is what Brisbanites affectionately call a "Ric's Mix," in reference to the indie-iPod-shuffle style of DJing featured at the eponymous still-best-despite-all-the-Motown-upstairs-on-Saturday-nights club/bar in Brisbane.

Download the mix (at 128kbps) along with the above cover art and tracklist here.

Enjoy.

(Clarification: the name of this mixtape - 'i want to party (party)' - references a Philadelphia Grand Jury song. So as not to be accused of misleading anyone, I'll now point out that that song is NOT included here since I didn't have my new PGJ album near me at the time. Suffice it to say it would've been included and may indeed pop on a future mixtape).