Paraguay and Laos

Tiger Lily

2008-10-11T16:21:00.001Z

Dawn has come and you still haven’t been kissed. You’re wrapped in someone’s words but want to be wrapped in their arms. Whatever happens it’s worth the wait.

“Tiger Lily” is one of the very best examples of the fantastic results of Science & Nature’s expansion of the band’s sound and range. Its tale of repeated, lengthy 4am phone calls from the title character is at heart a little slight. Given a more typical treatment it could easily have slipped into the ‘fun but inessential’ column, although it does contain the most fantastically bitchy throwaway line of their whole career (‘Take a look at your peers/Stretching out all their half-arsed ideas/Into half-arsed careers’, where the ‘your’ is surely ‘our’!).

The jazzy, double bass shuffle that underpins the whole song instead gives it a buzzing nervous energy, furtively looking for an escape route the whole time while resignedly pretending to listen to insults and irrelevancies. The biggest wonder, though, is the instrumental flight of fancy that divides the song in two. As the previously almost unnoticeable organ hum of the mundane slowly fades away, the newly bare and cavernous bass is like a reminder of how things are always a bit stranger in the dark, half awake world. It’s joined by spaced out (in both senses) guitar licks and then overtaken by a brisk harpsichord that takes us to a whole different place than unremembered, dutiful phone calls before being abruptly snapped back to reality with a conclusive, echoing crash.

It’s difficult to reconcile the two, but the inlay song-key (see top of this entry and here, does suggest that magical diversion and the wistful sigh of ‘love can change, maybe today’ that drifts over the end of each section do hint that there is some hidden devotion there too. There must be a reason to keep picking up the phone.

Persuasion

2008-10-02T22:31:00.005Z

For what was likely a contractually obligated compilation, it's amazing how much fun the 'tones sound like they're having on the quartet of new songs on 2002's The Singles. Even more impressive is that they try on a new identity for each of them, and all of the four are broadly successes.

We've already discussed the wide open Americana of "The Bluetones Big Score". Persuasion has the same production gloss and tight harmonies, but leans instead to vampy new wave. It also features a ridiculously jaunty middle eight with some kind of synth-accordion, and outro with oscillating beeps in the finest fifties-vision-of-the-future tradition. Although I've not really noticed those before, camoflaged as they are by the robotic distorted guitars that 'woh-woh-woh' all over the track.

It's creative, it's a lot of fun, and it's all tied together by a clever narrative that sees a relationship in turmoil (as represented by Mark's powerfully drawn out vowels of the verses) being offered a glint of hope of reconciliation, albeit one where 'my envoys' do the talking. Only, it turns out via that middle eight, they actually aren't fighting because there's real conflict but just for the hell of it, like much else of what's enjoyable here.

Slight Return

2008-10-01T22:24:00.002Z

At this point, it had to be really.
For those who don't already know, "Slight Return" was The Bluetones' biggest hit. Only Babylon Zoo kept it off the number one spot back in 1996, and it played a large part in Expecting to Fly briefly interrupting a very long Oasis run at number one in the album charts. It also still gets regular-ish airings on alternative leaning radio station, in common with precisely none of their other songs.

What with never having heard of The Bluetones before 2000, I didn't know any of this at the time, so I'm missing out on a big wave of nostalgia and as a result at a certain remove from this song as it's widely treated. There are certainly other singles of theirs that would cheer me up more with (hypothetical) radio plays as a result, but there's no way I'm going to begrudge "Slight Return" its status.

In some ways it's actually not the most obvious hit. The chorus is catchy, but no more so than "Bluetonic" and "Cut Some Rug", whose tunes are a lot more forceful and instant. Lyrically it is relatable but remarkably low key - never has an anthem been so careful and qualified from the title on downwards. 'I'm coming home'... '(but just for a short while)'. In the long run it's actually the thoughtful realism behind its gentle reassurance that makes it work, a friendly hand on the shoulder that recognises that there are problems but takes them down in size. That takes a good few listens to sink in though.

What makes all the difference immediately is that none of those other songs featured the sunniest, jangliest guitar tone ever, or made use of it so fantastically. From the single bright, expectant opening chord that hangs in space for just long enough onwards, it provides all the hook you need and more. They know it, too. That's made clearest is how they brilliantly end the thing - there's no drawn out repetition of the song's lyrical refrain to finish, but instead a return to riffing on its guitar patterns, turning at last into a completely unqualified celebration.

Finally, it's probably sensible to mention that other band whose ghost occasionally looms over us at this point, as the only song that comes close to sounding like this, and just possibly an influence, is The Stone Roses' "Waterfall" (The La's or Delays being close but a juncture further away in style). Now, Ian Brown's voice got to be the butt of way more jokes than it deserved, especially coming from people who would laud the Gallaghers, but for all its other strengths it's fair to say that he could never have done justice to a "Slight Return" however good a backing he was given.

Video: "Slight Return"

Serenity Now

2007-08-28T21:31:00.000Z

As long as it isn't a forgone conclusion for the chorus repeat, there's always something quite satisfying about the moment when a song's title comes up in its lyrics. It can be like a really small but clever puzzle being solved, the more unlikely the better.

Take the Seinfeld-referencing "Serenity Now", which eventually pops up at the end of the chorus:

'Deep down, everybody you meet wants to knock your teeth out,
Cos you're an ally of corruption and obscenity,
You're an enemy of reason and serenity now'

The moment isn't much in itself, but lends a certain closing ring to a memorable chorus (and song) that harks back all the way to "Marblehead Johnson" in its tense rumble. And small but perfectly formed sums up "Serenity Now" rather well.

I ♥ The City

2007-08-23T20:48:00.000Z

First of all, sorry about recent sporadic posts. Working full time now does give me a lot less time but the plan/hope is to write at least one thing for somewhere every weekday, be it here, Delete As Appropriate or the Jukebox, so there shouldn't be gaps longer than a few days.

"I ♥ The City" occupies somwhat of a halfway house between sincerity and satire. Its bounding energy, punctuated by eager bursts of wailing harmonica, lends it the character of someone excitedly holding forth on a favourite subject, and it begins with (albeit sort of denied) boasts about the superiority of city dwellers. The chorus, though, is lyrically nothing but poking fun at the same:

'Many people like open space,
But give me a perfumed alleyway,
Give me crowds and give me buildings,
Give me rotting vegetation,
Give me concrete give me ceilings,
Give me overpopulation,
I love the city'

I can't think of that last line as sarcasm though. The earlier throwaway that 'You've got to love it anyway' is probably key - this really is love, but it's love out of obligation rather than any kind of thought process. You can see all of the city's faults but you love it because, well, it's home, and you can't imagine being anywhere else even when breathing in pollution or pinned to the wall of the tube by a mass of commuters. I hope, given the band's roots, that I'm not just projecting when I assume that we are both talking about London here, and even though I didn't grow up here I can still relate to the feeling a lot. Perhaps that's why the sometimes clunky lyrics and its being one of the weaker tracks on Luxembourg musically don't stop me from really enjoying the song.

Glad To See Y'Back Again?

2007-08-13T19:33:00.000Z

Or, as the back of the BBC Radio Sessions case has it, "Glod To See Y'Back Again?", reflecting all of the care and attention going into ex-label Mercury's Bluetones repackaging.

To be fair, that question mark is there for a reason, and this is a song that doesn't sound at all glad of anything. Frustration is the dominant emotion, with a side order of depressed resignation, and so in one of the Tones' cleverer early breaks with traditional structure they chase their own tail round a series of progressively small and disaffected circles. They stick to the same basic groove all the way through, but just flexibily and ponderously enough that when they pause on the verge of another return, you feel like this time they might just escape. The lyrics flag up the same dissatisfied inertia, wryly commenting 'hello again' and 'here we go again' at new turns.

Then about two thirds of the way through the escape finally does happen, when the loosely circular structure is broken with barely a teasing pause to herald it, in favour of a mini, Talking To Clarry style psychadelic guitar blowout. It's a bit of an awkward conclusion to a song whose contained nature is its main strength.

Are You Blue Or Are You Blind?

2007-08-09T20:02:00.000Z

A mischievous title for the band's debut single proper, a number 31 hit in 1995 which wasn't included on debut Expecting To Fly, possibly seen as too throwaway to fit. It's throwaway in the best possible sense, though, a burst of instant, sunshiney pop that comes rushing out the blocks, never lets up in energy ends perfectly in under three minutes, job done. Along the way we get even more great backing vocals than usual, an incredibly confident call and response chorus and a singalong 'ba ba ba ba' or twenty.

For such an early and deceptively simple appearing song there are a lot of clever touches within, too. The way that its rattling guitar riff pinballs back and forth between speakers behind the second verse is addictively unusual, and the verses especially deal in splashes of colour and mood at the expense of narrative in a way that's engagingly at odds with its agressively direct tune. It's not quite the complete article, and I'm not sure that I'd take this version of the band over the more emotional and complex one that emerged afterwards, but the pop thrill of "Are You Blue Or Are You Blind?" is certainly a great thing to find in the depths of a discography.

Wasn't I Right About You?

2007-08-04T14:50:00.000Z

There's something to be said for the model of album structure where the last track acts as a gentle easing out, rather than a grand conclusion. The last couple of Elbow albums come to mind in particular here, both with miniature songs that act like epilogues to the records, tying everything up nicely and preparing for the finish.
The Bluetones' last song "Wasn't I Right About You?" is more upbeat and musically substantial than those but still feels like it fits this idea, particularly the beautiful trumpet near its close. Thing is that without enough strength in the album before it, it just feels a little inconsequential rather than an earned winding down.

Slack Jaw

2007-08-02T00:01:00.000Z

'You're walking down the street you've walked down a million times before. But this time you're in a musical. These trees and houses are too beautiful to be real. This pavement seems built for dancing on.'

I was thinking of doing all the rest of Science & Nature in one go. But on balance it makes more sense to spread it out. It will balance out all of the 'meh' new album entries nicely in tone and ease of writing, for a start.
'Cos I sure love Science & Nature. I got Expecting To Fly first and related to its dumped dejection a lot more easily at the time, but it's still Science & Nature that I've always liked best, that is the one album that I most often (secretly) think it makes no sense that anyone can not love this. The fact that so few do, even among the band's fans, was a pretty crucial factor in making that secretly, getting me to the realisation that taste is not some objective criteria where I'm right and those who disagree have all missed the memo.

I don't even just love the music. Those lines at the top of this entry aren't lyrics. They're from the long, touching stream of consciousness like poem that sits underneath the CD in the album case, which I love as much as everything else about this album. The story seems to follow the sequence of the 11 songs, though where one ends and the next begins is blurred at times. And here it's going to do half my job for me. It nails what the song does perfectly, in that in its short three minutes not much actually happens (at least in narrative terms) but it feels like an enormity.
'It was a month and a day, It seems a lifetime away, When we first met in town and spent a night. We drank and we talked until the music was stopped, And the barman came and turned back on the light We arranged again to meet And as I walked off down the street I swear that I felt ten feet tall'

That's all there is to it as far as the happy side goes. But delivered with a grin that's practically tagible, and backed by the build up of a heady, folksy hoedown, it captures the buzz and elation of love first realised perfectly. The steady, simple shake at the beginning of the lines is rejoined by the drum thump of the songs intro and then an increasingly complex rhythm that's like the backing dancers from that personal musical stepping into place behind.
And somehow, even the twist in the tale, the girl not returning his calls, does nothing much to change that buzz. Even the bitter jibe within ('One day when you're ancient, preparing for another lonely night') seems infected by the warmth of memories. Trying to hide it just brings it through louder - "Slack Jaw" believes in 'better to have loved and lost' with all its heart and makes it bloody difficult to argue with.

mp3: S lack Jaw (Evening Session version)

Move Closer

2007-08-01T21:01:00.001Z

Thanks largely to their prolific way with B-sides and recent lack of associated quality control, there are a few songs in The Bluetones' discography that are painful on repeat listens. Only their Phyllis Nelson cover "Move Closer" is painful the first time. There's not much wrong with such a cover in theory - it could easily have turned out at least as well as "Woman In Love", with for my money much better starting material. The final results, though, are as despicable as they are inexplicable.

The basic crimes are threefold:

Inferior, watery rendition of original backing track.
Copius fake crowd noises. Yikes.
Artificially slowed down, Barry White impression vocals.

Actually, you might as well just take the last one. They're that mind-bogglingly, skin-crawlingly horrible. I don't even want to make it through the whole song for the purposes of this entry. If it's meant to be funny, it fails hugely on that level too. It fails on any level ever.

YouTube: Original

Woman In Love

2007-07-31T23:59:00.000Z

The opening two seconds of this cover from the "After Hours" single seems to say a lot. The descending tinkling chimes introduction is a trick much beloved of overblown ballads and a sound that has surely rarely appeared on any record with pretence of credibility. It also isn't present in the Barbra Streisand original.
And indeed this isn't the common thing of an indie band taking a pop record, stripping it down and drawing out the inherant serious emotion that surely no one would have realised was there all along (suuure). But improbably, nor does it exactly turn out to be a larger than life pisstake, exaggerated to silliness. No, for good or bad it's just like the original, but a smidgeon more camp.

YouTube: Original

Be Careful What You Dream

2007-07-30T10:44:00.000Z

'I played poker with my health, earned and spent enormous wealth,
It only served to stunt my growth and keep me further from myself.
Some wounds don't heal, they remain to let you know
That you must be careful what you dream.'

Sounding crushed under the weight of years, this "Keep The Home Fires Burning" B-side has a lot more in common with that A-side than the 'comedy' likes of "Please Stop Talking" that it sits alongside. While "Home Fires" is betrayed by others and stinging with that pain, though, all of the damage in "Be Careful What You Dream" is self-inflicted, be it that of the narrator himself or of the girl that he watches from a distance for the first two verses.

It's pretty negative stuff lyrically from the title on down, especially the delightfully misanthropic 'So what if she made some friends? It counts for little in the end' of the second verse. It never gets depressing though, thanks to the blow being softened by both the lightness of touch in the simple, graceful music and the way that Mark approaches those lyrics. He's not exactly cold or dispassionate, but there's a certain detached distance he brings to the words of concern that's actually really reassuring. The sense given is that the friends are unimportant not because everyone sucks, but because her big city move is a minor learning process in a grand scheme that's going to turn out for the better. Even though the title's a piece of advice, the song is ultimately for letting people get on with life and find out for themselves. Which might be better advice still.

Thanks to the fine people of the official Bluetones forum (hi to any of you still reading this self-indulgent toss), I just found out that the Dylanesque tune is all but taken straight from, well, Bob Dylan's "Simple Twist Of Fate". Harmonica in particular. Which perhaps goes some way to explaining why such a pretty song was considered B-side material only.

mp3: Be Careful What You Dream
YouTube: Simple Twist Of Fate

The Jub-Jub Bird

2007-07-29T11:54:00.000Z

Another literary title that this time pertains a lot more obviously to the song than in the case of "Nae Hair On't". Lewis Carroll's Jub-Jub Bird is 'a desperate bird' that 'lives in perpetual passion' and desperation and passion neatly sums up the themes of its namesake song.

From the muffled roar that opens to the juddering bassline that shakes through the louder passages and the chaotic mid-section where the Jabberwocky makes its most obvious appearance, its about as forceful a song as they've ever recorded. Even when offering a breather from this in its quieter sections, there's a looming dread and the lyrics constantly allude to a similar feverish intensity, passion always couched in terms of madness and loss of control - 'whenever I hear your name, a mist comes down over my eyes' and 'I'm lost in the scent of your skin'. The song is at its best when hinging on the tension of internal struggle, becuase there's something about the madness around that isn't unconvincing, but is a bit uninvolving.

It's perhaps an unfair comparison but it doesn't help that in the same year Mansun were referencing Jabberwocky too and doing way more fucked up and fascinating things to their rock in the process, albeit without such emotional centre. Still, if not entirely lovable, "The Jub-Jub Bird" is certainly worthwhile and a nice fit to the second half of Last Chance Saloon.

mp3: The Jub-Jub Bird (live)

I'm Over And I Know It

2007-07-28T14:09:00.000Z

After reading about The Bluetones covering the theme from '80s TV show Minder at around the same time as this radio session track was recorded, I somehow had it in my head that "I'm Over And I Know It" and the Minder theme were one and the same. Apparently not - it's in fact a cover of a song by sometime tour support The Webb Brothers. So my impressions of this song were affected by associating it with a TV show that I've never seen and didn't actually have anything to do with it.

The Bluetones' version seems to be pretty faithful to the original (at least as far as a 30 second clip on Amazon can prove...) a sort of boozy, mock-celebratory spiral of despair that covers up the tears with handclaps and 'do-do-do's. It feels more like a tribute to a band that they're fans of than something that they had their own unique spin on to offer, although it's not hard to see it fitting in with the likes of "Never Going Nowhere" in their recent tendency towards double meanings and commenting on their own outsider position. It's a well done enough song to have me at least interested in hearing the full original if I can find it.

No post today

2007-07-27T00:34:00.000Z

due to unexpected gig going. See you tomorrow (well, today now)

Sleazy Bed Track

2007-07-25T12:16:00.000Z

After not really experiencing this whole jetlag thing at all on the way out to the US or straight after returning, in the past two days I've woken up at 1pm and 6am respectively . Something isn't right there. It's with such thoughts of tiredness in mind, lets turn to one of The Bluetones' more underappreciated singles, "Sleazy Bed Track".

'I know it's getting late,
But if you'd like to talk a little more,
Well that's alright with me.
I'm feeling kind of tired,
But it ain't exactly beating down my door,
Now just why could this be?'

Deliciously hazy and intimate, the verses rest on slippery blues guitar and Eds' suitably weary, late night drumming, backed with an organ hum distant enough that it's easy to miss where the spooky edge that it adds is coming from. 'Kind of tired' definitely feels like an understatement, but the 'just why could this be?', why it isn't being felt, is answered soon enough. It's revealed to be a contradictory mixture of (1) concern for the wellbeing of the person being addressed and (2) abject horniness. Shattered late nights for a freeing of inhibitions more potent than alcohol, exhaustion making now seem like the most crucial time to seize the moment because in no time at all it will be tomorrow and everything will have changed? Works for me. There's something almost dreamlike about the burst of energy that carries us into the bizarrely triumphant sounding chorus, one final hit of hormones and adrenaline masking the unlikeliness of the pleas therein.

'All you gotta do is baby kick off your shoes and lay down,
Climb up here with me and lets forget about sleep and lay down...'

The title of the song might well be an ironic acknowledgement that Mark couldn't play sleazy effectively if he tried, but it definitely works in its favour, lending his seduction an unlikely innocence that keeps his concern in the verses more believeable as genuine than manipulative. Maybe not enough to wish him success (it's still just a touch too creepy in places for that) but certainly to not begrudge him the attempt.

Sidenote: to prove that noticable likeness to other songs isn't always such a dealbreaker, just check out the uncanny similarity between the opening here and that of Crowded House's "Fall At Your Feet".

mp3: Sleazy Bed Track (Evening Session Version)

Castle Rock

2007-07-24T20:17:00.000Z

First of all to explain the tags I've given this, I would consider "Castle Rock" as a B-side but it was also technically a double A-side with "Cut Some Rug", the third single from Expecting To Fly, probably explaining its fetching sandcastle cover. Although, pleasing The Enemy, it's not literally a song about a castle. Duh.

Working out the reason behind its naming is tricky as with many early songs (A beer? A Stephen King newsletter? Lord Of The Flies?) so I think I'll go for the castle standing in for Mark's emotional defenses. The first verse's 'you're rushing through my head, you're seeping through my skin' certainly has an air of being under siege, and he's already said that he's got a place to hide. What and who he's defenfing himself from is a little mysterious even before a 'she' is added to the main 'you' but he's got betrayal nagging at his mind, both his own (the play on words pun 'lying in your arms/lying to your face' put to great use) and that of whoever has 'turned and walked away'. The scratchy, hesitantly stop-start guitar/drum riff that opens the song and underpins the rest of it is like an itch that won't go away, just like his unwanted feelings for whichever of the sort-of-implied two girls it is. Maybe both. It's also the first step along the way to the harder sound of their second album, a lot more so than later stopgap single "Marblehead Johnson". For now, they still kept the ultra-sweet harmonies and emphasis on looser, flowing song structure that was later to fall away somewhat too, though.

"Castle Rock" is really intriguing both in complicating their sound and complicating the narrative compared to Expecting To Fly's songs (I remember reading someone saying that every single one was about being dumped, and thinking ever since that they had quite a point - we'll get back to that one later) but a little too slight and unclear to be one of their very best. Still, the fact that songs as good as or better than this were very common as B-sides at the time says a lot about the

mp3: Castle Rock and Castle Rock (Peel Session Version)

Baby, Back Up

2007-07-23T23:59:00.000Z

I'm back!

San Francisco's Amoeba Music might just be my new favourite place in the world. I bought 17 albums there in my two visits last week, alongside a T-shirt and a DVD. I also discovered something odd there (although probably not as weird as eating at a place called 'Quaker Steak & Lube' as we did in Indiana): Amoeba had a wider selection of Bluetones CDs on sale than I have ever seen in any London shop. Good luck trying to mind the Mudslide EP here, for instance. It reminded of Mark Morriss' claims at their last London gig in April that "Baby, Back Up" had become a massive hit in America. Self-mocking humour in reality (and it wouldn't do them any
good if they carry on cancelling tours outside of the UK) but just momentarily, it was possible to imagine...

I've already mentioned my troubles with the most recent album, but that same gig really brought them home. See, it's one thing to find songs on a record unremarkable, but another thing to find them the same live, when they're cutting into time that could be being used instead to play much loved older songs. Listening to completely new songs at a gig can often be unfulfilling, but it shouldn't remain that way after they're actually released and the gig marked the first time ever that I had listened to the most recent Bluetones stuff out of duty rather than with any great enjoyment. It never happened with Luxembourg or Serenity Now, and it was a bit painful to realise.

"Baby, Back Up" was an unforseen exception to this, though. I'd never really noticed it as strongly before that point, but there's something of a spark there that missing elsewhere, a certain mischief that matched to its introduction. Mark plays the alarmed prude, with his chorus exclamations backed by guitar revving and jutting into the spacious lightness of the rest of the song, providing a sharp contrast that's funny and a little bit cruel.

'Baby, back up,
Enough is enough,
You're freaking me out,
not into that stuff...
I thought you were cool but you are just weird'

There's a great burbling organ line in the middle section and end of the song too, and you can just imagine him and his girl out flying kites and floating boats, as he professes his interests to be. But as for what it is that he prefers that to, not so clear. For someone who sang happily about S&M on the previously album, this is incredibly coy, with 'fumbling around under the coats' about as close as we get to details. With a first verse that's positively predatory, it's easy to come to the conclusion that it's a want for commitment that's freaking him out rather than any bizarre fetish, except that, huh, there's a final twist of 'these are the final days of our lives, we should be going at it like knives'.
I won't pretend that it fits together that well, but damn if playing the threatened bastard doesn't make for quite the nice change.

Beat On The Brat

2007-07-06T00:01:00.000Z

It's only looking through The Bluetones' songs trying to decide what to right about next that I realise just how many covers they've done as B-sides throughout their career. Mainly in the Science & Nature/The Singles/Luxembourg eras, which says something about the demands of releasing two CD versions of each single with B-sides for each, I suppose.

It's quite hard not to read this Ramones cover from the "Fast Boy"/"Liquid Lips" single as a 'look, we can rock too!' statement, although it was probably born out of genuine appreciation too. It's a much less minimalist interpretation than the original, that hypnotically sparse bass buried beneath lots of guitar fuzz and drums pushed forward. What Mark lacks in cool he just about makes up for in enthusiasm, and the overall impression is now more 'beat' and a lot less 'brat'. Then there's the one inspired affectation which makes it stand out from those many B-side covers that I mentioned. It's a little lyric change - 'beat on the brat with a baseball bat' to 'beat on the brat with a cricket bat' that pokes fun at themselves but sounds no less appropriate at the same time.

mp3: Beat On The Brat the Bluetones version.
YouTube: Beat On The Brat the original.Visuals irrelevant.

The Happy Lobotomy

2007-07-05T00:01:00.000Z

An aside: My nice neat 111 entries will in fact be 112. I was going to treat "Jazz Moments" and "Pretty Ballerina" as one entry but realised that the band released "Pretty Ballerina on its own later on so they really need separate entries. It's probably for the best given the superiority of one to the other, actually. Anyway...

I complained yesterday of 2006's self-titled album and the way that it is content to stick at being background music. It didn't have to be that way, as this selection from the previous year's Serenity Now EP demonstrates. One of the snappiest, most instant things that they've ever recorded, "The Happy Lobotomy" takes Luxembourg's harder, sharper sound and sweetens it up. Its addictively circling metallic riff is propulsive but never abrasive, accompanied by big dollops of squelchy bass and rivalled in catchiness by the 'do-do-do-do-do-do-do' choruses throughout. Special mention too to the start of the song, where one single beat hangs in the air for just short enough of a moment to lend the riff an extra element of surprise when it comes in. Musically, it's not a song to ignore, which colours the lyrics too.

As for those, well... humour is a subject that we're going to come back to time and again with later Bluetones. Sure, they had the occasional one liner early on but it merely a garnish for serious songs and never anything near the focus of their work. Somewhere along the line, though, an idea started to creep in that songs didn't really need to have much of a point beyond being a vehicle for some whimsical laughs, resulting in the likes of "After Hours". The effects are frequently very bad, but while "The Happy Lobotomy" definitely falls into the same category, it's catchiness is enough to override them anyway. It's an energising stomp where the lyrics are a kind of optional extra, although it also helps that this time Mark is almost as funny as he thinks he is, going through increasingly obscure ways of saying that he's lost his mind with some impressive invention:

'My old grey matter is wrecked,
I can't tell Quorn from Quebec,
There's nothing north of my neck.'

The lobotomy of the title not necessary to enjoy the song then, though it probably wouldn't ruin it either.

mp3: The Happy Lobotomy (live)

The King Of Outer Space

2007-07-04T00:02:00.000Z

The one thing that I'm really not looking forward to in this project is writing about every track on last year's self-titled album. When I was at Stylus I put myself down to review it, sure that I would have no lack of things to write about the band (as I've hopefully demonstrated so far), but then it came out and, well, nothing. I mean, I could have talked about the band and my history with them, but trying to come up with anything interesting to say about the actual album proved futile, so I didn't bother.

Why this should be was diffcult to put a finger on, but I think I've got it now. It's not that the album is bad, at least in the way I'd normally use it, certainly. Nothing on it nearly hits the depths of "Fast Boy", nevermind some of their B-side atrocitities. It's closer to Science & Nature's uber-melodic pop sound than any of their other albums. Every single song is, well, accomplished. And there's the rub - accomplished is not a word I'd be using if this was something that I could love. They never put a foot wrong beause they never take a risk, leaving us for the first time in sequel land where everything that was great in the first place is put back in but the WHY is gone.

Perhaps it doesn't say much then that "The King Of Outer Space" is my favourite song on the album. It's a song about waiting, hopefully, for a visit from aliens, 'home-made transmitter point[ed] to the sky... blindly believing'. It's one prettily one mid-paced song among many, but I didn't really catch that until relistening, because such is its serene tone that I heard it in my head as being as much slower. And, more importantly, it's quietly clever and quietly heartwarming and just too goofy to fall into being too quietly everything and become involuntary background music.

Packed with arresting turns of phrase like 'Each day the world floats further away, all big and blue like it's bruising', it has a lot in common with "The Bluetones Big Score" in its detailed flights of fancy. While that song is all about how nice the dream is, taking a while to give us a wink and let us know that it isn't real, though, "The King Of Outer Space" is sort of the reverse. It comes straight out with 'long odds on receiving' but never gives up on a naive hope that the dreamed for events will really take place, packing a toothbrush (just in case). The minute of offbeat, bluesy guitar that closes the song leaves it as a mystery whether they really do, but hope in itself can be a beautiful thing.

U.T.A.

2007-07-03T00:10:00.000Z

"U.T.A." is a song that never really made much of an impact on me as part of Return To The Last Chance Saloon, an album that I've always found a bit of mess as a whole and on which it is dwarfed by the flashes of brilliance that surround ("Solomon Bites The Worm", later "sleazy Bed Track" and "If...").

On its own, though, it stands up pretty well as one of the most quietly successful experiments of the album. Mark Morriss' heavily treated voice is a result of the second album tendency to throw everything in the studio at the songs and see what sticks, but it works much better than most. Stretched desperately thin, it's a forlorn whine whose paranoia is all the more suffocating as a result, similar to in Radiohead's "Climbing Up The Walls" although without achieving quite the same levels of supreme creepiness. Newly heavy, fuzzy guitars are put to much better use than elsewhere on the album, creeping up to cover the song and smother its melody just as our narrator is smothered by America; whatever the T in "U.T.A." stands for, it's not a positive. To top things off, a siren blares and leads us to a suitably disspiriting conclusion. It acts as a neat counterpoint to the worship of certain aspects of North America throughout Last Chance Saloon, although similarly suffers just a hint of being more intellectual exercise than genuine feeling.

Armageddon (Outta Here)

2007-07-02T00:01:00.000Z

From title on downwards, this comedy sketch (we're using 'comedy' pretty broadly here) B-side to "Keep The Home Fires Burning" makes for painful repeated listening. A couple of jokes about "Slight Return"'s status as their best known song raise a smirk initially, but for the most part it's all horribly sixth form, consisting of jokes about students getting 'totally caned' and talking about Bagpuss. Argh.

I won't inflict the track on you or deal with it much more, but it's a useful jumping off point to note some interesting connections to British comedy at this time. First of all, it's listed as 'Armageddon (Outta Here) featuring Matt Lucas'. He's probably doing all of the 'funny' voices on it I guess, although the uptight visitor is the only one I'm completely sure of. Him and David Walliams also appear in the video to "Mudslide" from later in 2000. This was the time of Rock Profile rather than Little Britain so the two weren't exactly household names yet but since then, of course, they've moved on up to success and doing videos with Pet Shop Boys.

Secondly, the one saving grace of the track was the first appearance of Science & Nature's excellent instrumental "Blood Bubble" in the background. As I've discovered after watching the whole of both series of Spaced in the past week, "Blood Bubble" is also used as the backdrop to the intro and final gunfight scene (go to 03:00) in an episode in which the main characters mistakenly give some teenagers oregano instead of marijuana and everything is much, much funnier than in "Armageddon (Outta Here)". A number of different Bluetones songs are used throughout the second series and the band themselves make an appearance in the crowd for the Robot Wars/Fight Club episode (go to about 00:25)
Since then, of course, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have moved on up to making movies and hanging out with Coldplay. Such is life.

Weekend off

2007-06-30T19:39:00.000Z

From Friday I'm going to be off in America for two weeks. I'm hoping not to leave you for those two weeks without any posts at all. To help with that I'm not going to be posting the next song til Monday, when you can look forward (or not) to "Armageddon (Outta Here)".

The Bluetones Big Score

2007-06-30T01:00:00.000Z

'Out in the clear,
It's safe when you're near,
Your cool is contagious.

Pour one for me,
That sweet daiquiri
Goes down like a dream.'

That label at the botton of the post says The Singles, not Singles, because the apostrophe deficient "The Bluetones Big Score" was one of the three bonus tracks at the end of their 2002 singles collection. And that's probably the right place for it, because it's difficult to imagine it comfotably fitting into any album, but it would be a shame to relegate to B-side status a song that's an interesting departure and slips down as easily as that daiquiri.

Just under four minutes of pure escapism, "The Bluetones Big Score" is two parts Beach Boys lushness to three parts '70s cop show funk, imagining a life on the run from 'Johnny Law' in the American sunshine with a broad smile and a wink. As if its tone wasn't enough to make the total lack of any peril clear, its triumphant climax being 'no one's gonna touch us cos we're innocent' charmingly lets slip that this is never going to more than an idle fantasy. Just the thing for lazy summer days.

Colorado Beetle

2007-06-29T00:01:00.000Z

Yesterday's YouTube link for "Carn't Be Trusted" featured the 'tones using the first half of "Colorado Beetle" as its intro, so it makes sense to cover this song next. They presumably did so as the two have an awful lot in common thematically if not musically, both touching on betrayal and intially disguising their true cruel sentiments, although "Colorado Beetle" takes things that bit further.

It's a cute acoustic ditty with a lovestruck opening croon - 'I shan't close my eyes tonight, I'm gonna look at you instead...', except that, ah, of course, '...and when at last you sleep my love, I'm gonna smash your lying head'. That this line is sung more sweetly than anything else in the song makes it all the more disconcerting on first listen, although the fact that the track's title compares his love to a potato destroying pest serves as a bit of a clue to anyone who knows their chrysomelidae. The violence is saved from unpalatability by clearly being an emtpy threat - the regretful, heartfelt chorus of 'Colorado Beetle, I fell for you' is more genuine than anything else around it and all of the angry, twisted words of the rest of the song are just futile attempts to reverse that one immutable feeling.

Ok, it makes sense that this is the B-side rather than "Carn't Be Trusted" since despite the usual excellent guitar trickery it palls a little by the end of its four minutes, but it still packs quite a punch.

mp3: Colorado Beetle

A special mention...

2007-06-28T22:44:00.000Z

...for a new blog to go in the links section. It's called Separated Out and is by iamausername, normally poster of increasingly insightful dissections of UK TV shows on The Wonders I've Seen. He gets a special mention for three reasons:

1) He's one upped me in the unfashionability of band stakes by choosing Marillion. MARILLION.
2) He pointed out that I have thus far been spelling oeuvreblog wrong. Yikes.
3) He's my brother.

Carn't Be Trusted

2007-06-28T09:00:00.000Z

Let's start with the only negative here, since I'll have to cover it in "The Fountainhead" otherwise. The hiss and crackle and sounds of needle touching vinyl that link the two (because this is the opener to 'Side 2' of Expecting To Fly, see) are a misstep, not so much because they lend credence to accusations of being too reverent of the past as because the album is too long to fit a traditional LP and so there would be no such split! If they wanted to make a classic single album, they should have made it run to less than 53 minutes. Anyway...

This is The Bluetones in imperious form, the kind of song that makes me (briefly) understand people who adore their debut and compare everything since to it unfavourably. Full of youthful confidence, with a playfully freewheeling, just slightly hard-edged bounce, it's an instant shot of everything that was best about their sound at the time. And that's even before we get to probably Scott Morriss' most blissful harmonies ever and a song that turns their oft-projected nice guy image on its head.

See, this is a cruel, bitter song partly disguised as a sympathic arm round the shoulders. Mark Morriss first adresses an acquaintance (friend?) in the spirit of cameraderie: 'Who is she to say to you can't be trusted? And come to think of it how does she know?' with all overtones of a matey 'Yeah, you're damn right to be offended!' Which side Mark's really on becomes abundantly clear soon enough though, as following a series of progressively more ambiguous insights, he takes obvious joy in delivering one of the album's funniest of twists.

'But she just wants to spend some time with you (wa-wa-oooh)
Just a minute, or just a moment (ooooh-wa-wah)
Just long enough to throw one good clean punch'

As if that wasn't enough pain inflicted, he momentarily seems to signal that the vitriol is over, as the rest of the band step out the way for a peaceful 'Now you've reached the point where she sees through you...' before the drums charge in and the knife is twisted again and again. The implications in 'Everything she had she handed to you, and what she didn't give you, you stole' alone are enough to make me wince. It makes sense that Mark appears to end the song by being punched, then, although the whirlwind of sound and tumble of words that come out don't exactly make for the clearest of narratives. Who cares, when it sounds this heart-thumpingly exciting. It also frequently makes for one of the most enjoyable moments of their live sets, when the dramatic pause in the closing 'And all I have to show for my doubts is a cut to the lip..... and some blood on my shirt' invariably leads someone in the crowd to jump the gun and belt out the final line unsupported.

mp3: Carn't Be Trusted (live) with said singing sadly uncaptured.
YouTube: Carn't Be Trusted from Later With Jools Holland in 1996. The intro is "Colorado Beetle".

My Neighbour's House

2007-06-27T00:01:00.000Z

Last week, my iTunes library went past the 10,000 songs mark. I don't think I've even listened to a sadly significant proportion of those, let alone know them, but still, my mental library contains a lot of songs too. It's hardly surprising then that new songs can sometimes sound strikingly familiar because they have something in common with one of them. Just a hazard of listening to lots of music, really. But it still occasionally ruins songs, and "My Neighbour's House" is one.

You see, the riff in "My Neighbour's House", the big fuzzy one that blazes through it and rarely lets up, is basically the same one as in Oasis' "Rock 'n' Roll Star". Turn on "My Neighbour's House" and the first words that come into my head aren't 'My neighbour's house is burning down and I wish that I could care', they're 'I live my life in the city, and there's no easy way owwwwwt'. Followed, of course, by the unforgettable 'soon-shyiiiine'. The problem is magnified by the fact that the riff it resembles is a really well known song, by one of their supposed peers, and that they play it in very much the same turned-up-to-11 style. No other Bluetones song would sound as much like Oasis anyway. I'd like to think that the resemblence wasn't deliberate, but it all points to an uncharacteristic laziness.

A shame because in some ways "My Neighbour's House" has a lot more to recommend it than most of their other songs from last year's self-titled album. It's full of energy, has a really effective breakdown where the riff doesn't interfere, and has some of Mark's most idiosyncratic and intriguing lyrics, with him wishing for 'some fellow feeling' that he just can't find and fearing harsh (divine?) judgement as a result. But all that pales next to the Oasis factor and choosing this as comeback single at a time when mainly dismissed as Britpop throwbacks was sort of willfully stupid. The first full Bluetones single ever to miss the top 40, incidentally.

YouTube: 1-minute sample of My Neighbour's House. Enough to see my point, hopefully.

Talking To Clarry

2007-06-26T13:26:00.000Z

"Talking To Clarry" is the first song on Bluetones debut Expecting To Fly. Clocking in at 6:53, it's the longest song of their career, and definitely one of the most ambitious.

It opens with the roar of an aeroplane taking off which serves as:
A) a nod to the album title
B) a reference to their home town Hounslow's place next to Heathrow airport (maybe?)
C) a way of saying "listen up there, something big is about to happen"
And soon enough it does, ponderous bass leading up to a sunburst of resplendently jangled guitar that lights up the song before settling into a calmer pattern. The way that the guitar alternates with the opening sung lines is brilliant, each line dangling over an empty space before being caught at the last moment. This section really fits the song's the theme of breakdown in communication too, sounding like a conversation where each side is completely speaking a different language.

From there we twist through numerous tricksy but well handled time changes, culminating in an beautiful acoustic section where Mark Moriss is bewildered but bouyant as 'so many people crowd out the shadows', slightly spaced out and adding to the hint of psychadelia that they would never really return to after this album. It's quite the thrilling journey, but as they reach for an epic conclusion they bite off just slightly more than they can chew. Adam switches up to wah-wah soloing that couldn't get much more Squiresque, Mark extends to vaguely grand proclamtions ('it's all gone quite absurd', he bellows) and the song is sealed as a kind of miniature "Breaking Into Heaven". Which is for my money the best Stone Roses song ever, regardless of the awful quality of the rest of that album, and "Talking To Clarry" can't help but suffer in comparison, despite some great touches of their own (my favourite: 'yeah, no... yeah, yeah'). Three-quarters of a great song, but a missed opportunity to fully carve out their own identity, and the one time that the Stone Roses' shadow looms a little too large over them.

Nae Hair On't

2007-06-25T16:35:00.000Z

Well, however it turns out in the end, this project has already taught me a few things. More on that shortly.

First, "Nae Hair On't" is one of The Bluetones' most popular B-sides thanks to both being on the other side of "Slight Return" and being the most simply gorgeous song they've ever recorded. It's by their standards unusually full of space and light, with a soft rhythym backing a progression picked out by a charmingly squeaking acoustic guitar. Adam Devlin's electric is as fanatstic as it always was at this time of their career but a lot more economic, teasing out peals that echo around the song here and there but never really taking the forefront. At one point it rumbles and threatens to take things to a dramatic conclusion but that never quite arrives, everything staying low key and gently reassuring right to the end.

It's reassuring and uplifting despite the phrase repeated most througout being 'it doesn't get any better, alone'. How does that work? Well, it reads to me like advice to someone who is down but isn't really willing to take it (they won't admit to it but 'your eyes will always give you away'), and that is the best way of encouraging them to reach out, adding just a hint of warning about the consequences of not taking the advice of the (beautiful) second verse:

Hang on to your sense of wonder,
Hang on to your gentle grace,
Hold out for a great blue yonder,
You'll find your resting place.

As for what I learned? Well, the typically cryptic song title clearly isn't in any modern English and I vaguely remembered reading about it being Robert Burns related. I decided to look it up to confirm that and see if there were "Keep The Home Fires Burning" style references to an original work in the song. A bit of searching led to finding that, aye, it's the name of one of his poems, and to indications that it was a bit rude.

After finding the whole thing thanks to Aberdeen Music forum, it turns out to have no particularly plausible links to the song, but definitely doesn't disappoint on the rudeness front. Note: I would advise against reading this if you like the song in question and are worried about resultant associations. For me, alas, it is too late.

Yesterday I wed a lady fair,
and you would believe me,
on her cunt there grows no hair,
that's the thing that grieves me,
it vexed me sir, it plagued me sir,
it put me in a passion,
to think that I had wed a wife,
whose cunt was out of fashion.

To quote the first reply on the forum, crikey.

mp3: Nae Hair On't and Nae Hair On't (live)

Away

2007-06-23T22:23:00.000Z

Work's in the way again so I'm taking the weekend off - see you again on Monday.

Suffer In Silence

2007-06-22T18:00:00.000Z

"Suffer In Silence" doesn't stand out straight away from The Bluetones' very large collection of B-sides. The none more taut rhythym section keeps up a brisk pace with just a hint of tension and verses detail struggles with uncomfortable shoes and friends who won't pay their share at lunch. So far, so...nice. But on top of the humour being handled a good deal more cleverly than normally on their more comedic songs, there is just a hint of a biting undertone to the song. Mark Morriss does repressed anger just as well as he does repressed anything, lingering every few words for just long enough.

Then, a minute in, everything is laid bare. The hinted at big chorus never emerges, musical spikiness is replaced by a gentle shuffle and Morriss sings in detached fashion some of the most curiously affecting words of their recent career.

Every night I return to the same chair,
By a phone that's attached to the wall,
And I hope that no one will call.
I'm not waiting for an invitation,
I'm not waiting for horrible news,
But the other shoe to fall.

It feels like something really bad is happening, a big shadow hanging over half the song (or you realise next time, the whole song) that he hopes if it is ignored might somehow magically disappear. That's why he fixates instead on the little things of the first verses, I guess but the dread is still there, creeping in. This is followed by Adam Devlin kicking up the kind of wandering, aggressive solo that he can probably knock out in his sleep (but which is short enough to work regardless), and then we're round to the same thing again, just as unsettling as the first time. That the song finishes with no real resolution at all makes it all the more quietly unsettling.

A great song, and a very pleasant surprise when Luxembourg's other B-sides suggested that they had all but given up on that front, too.

mp3: Suffer In Silence

Down At The Reservoir

2007-06-21T23:59:00.000Z

It struck me, seeing "Down At The Reservoir" live for the rest time a few months ago, that it's by some distance the most Britpop thing that The Bluetones have ever recorded. That needs some clarifying, obviously, since Britpop can mean many things to people, from Mansun to Pulp to Elastica to Starsailor (if you're American, anyway). I mean the particular type of jovial, brash guitar pop that captured a moment and then was gone, all but completely ceasing to exist by the time this decade rolled around. It's "Country House", it's "Alright", or at least it's "Staying Out For The Summer". Needless to say, it's relentlessly bouncy.

The rich, layered guitar jangle of their debut is replaced with a hard, naggingly simple riff over which all the world (from, er, 'washed out bum' to 'gay bourgeois') is invited to come hang out in amazingly guileless fashion. If Mark Morriss has noticed the irony when he sings "You need your medicine to help the sugar down", he's definitely not showing it. The middle 8 is syrupy enough to make your teeth hurt. And there's a definite thrill to be had from the carefree innocence of it all.

Thing is, that trick only works when you're winning. In the middle of their set, it came off excellently because people were on their side, besides enjoying themselves way too much to mind that the song means nothing whatsoever. By the time that Return To The Last Chance Saloon was released in 1998, though, Britpop of this sort was well on its way out, replaced by Embrace and The Verve and "Song 2". The Bluetones had never really had anything as dumb or celebratory as this before, and now they did but most definitely weren't winning. So it was never even worth putting out as a single. In which context (or even knowing about it in retrospect) it seems just a little sad, a song that only makes proper sense as a communal singalong but would barely even make that status. Whenever I see the band dismissed out of hand in print, this song is how I tend to picture the critic as seeing them and while I wouldn't mind future setlist appearances, it's not a song I seek out on record.

That's a while since a really positive entry now, huh? Onto some really good stuff for the next two days, though...

No update today

2007-06-20T23:59:00.000Z

Due to graduation. But "Down At The Reservoir" should be with you tomorrow.

Driftwood

2007-06-19T12:29:00.000Z

A lot of these songs I already have a good idea in my head what I'm going to write about them and just have to listen again once or twice for confirmation or to see if anything new strikes me. When "Driftwood" came up, though, I could only really remember a couple of lines emerging: "The road to paradiso must pass through the inferno/Came seeking purgatario..."

Like many of their early songs, this B-side to their debut single proper is built around Adam Devlin's layered, wandering guitar lines. "Driftwood" is much lighter on hooks and heavier on atmosphere than anything else of the time though, subdued all round til one great swell at the halfway point brings it those weirdly triumphant sounding lines. After that it's essentially one very long, graceful fadeout. No surprise that I didn't remember it any better or more fondly as it's all a bit wispy, but for a song where limbo of the religious kind stands in for the personal ('I've lost count of all the times that I've listened to you leaving' is as close as we get to a chorus) that's not too bad a thing.

mp3: Driftwood

Code Blue

2007-06-18T16:23:00.000Z

I'm waiting for a mission,
Face me in the right direction,
I'm full of good intentions.

I don't know what exactly the instrument is that makes the amazing noise in "Code Blue". The album booklet just has Paul Beard on 'keyboards' so that will have to do. I am thinking some kind of analogue synth. This review says Hammond, but then it also calls me a Ben Sherman wearing piss-thrower, so I'll choose to question that. Anyway, it's this incredible forceful but slightly rusty sounding thing, and it sounds like a repeated wobbly fanfare throughout. It helps make this one easily of the strongest moments on Luxembourg musically, and is a perfect fit for the clockwork soldier conjured by the chorus.

It's a shame that the anti-war strawmanning and satire of the verses doesn't match up nearly as well. I sort of get what they were going for. The warmongering wannabe president isn't exactly original but works. However, even the strongest pacifist has to see attacking the guys actually fighting the wars as being clueless as the wrong tack to take. The noises deserve better.

An aside: 'Keep the commies out of W3 for HRH and Uncle Sam' had me confused for a long while, thinking that it was some odd shortening of World War 3. I recently realised though that they probably mean Acton.

Liquid Lips

2007-06-16T22:29:00.000Z

'If this album had been made by The Strokes or another of the current Flavour of the Month bands, the critics would be raving about it.'
BBC Shropshire

Luxembourg, the first album released after The Bluetones' departure from major label land, gets compared to The Strokes a lot. I've done so myself. Often it's in somewhat misguided lines like the one above, which make for very nice wishful thinking but are probably not true.

"Liquid Lips" as as close as they come. Weirdly, the one Strokes song that it most closely resembles is "Juicebox", released two years later. Give or take a note, the exact same bassline snakes through it and similarly completely dominates the song. The staccato guitar is tightly wound around it, and even when allowed a solo Adam Devlin just adds some fuzz to the same progression. They don't pull off quite such a full sound as "Juicebox", but the kinetic effect is very similar. The WHOMP, WHOMP of drums in the intro go one better, even.

But then there's Mark Morriss. He's one of my favourite singers, right up there with Guy Garvey and some other people without alliterative names. He's great. I don't tend to think about him as much, normally, because the main reason is that he's endlessly, incredibly easy to listen to. Which doesn't sound much until I try to think of anyone else that has the same ability to never get in the way, never even slightly grate and twist the emotions with the tinyest of changes, and there is no one. Anyway, the point that I was going to get to is that this doesn't apply to "Liquid Lips". I notice him, every time, because he doesn't fit. It's an angry song, the calling out of a 'backstabber, money grabber' who has somehow fooled everyone else. Its lyrics are a little ropey but could potentially have worked as the rantings of someone too angry to think of anything better and just starting to throw whatever comes into his head ('Liquid lips baby you would stink on ice'?). They don't though, because he fusses over every word, overemphasising a lot and seeming to double guess what will work best rather than being as effortlessly natural as normal. He even sounds a little thin and reedy for the first time ever and also gives the exact opposite of Julian Casablancas' phoned in drawl, funnily enough.
I know that it contradicts my last entry to some extent, but this is evidence that trying to change sound away from your strengths isn't always the best move.

Despite those misgivings, "Liquid Lips" is still a much more enjoyable attempt at owning a new, harder sound than the actual A-side of the 'double A-side' that trailed Luxembourg. We'll get onto that at some point in future, though.

(No entry tomorrow I'm afraid as I'm off to Muse at Wembley. Working, rather than watching.)

Fock Da Brain-Hole

2007-06-15T10:00:00.000Z

When I decided to embark on this project, it was really some of the more esoteric corners of The Bluetones' ~~catalogue~~ ouvre that I was most looking forward to writing about. And they don't come much more esoteric than "Fock Da Brain-Hole".

In case the title doesn't give it away, it's a nu-metal parody. Although, coming from October 2000, it actually predates that genre's height of popularity by a little way. "Rollin'" wasn't number one til January 2001, and "In The End" was almost a year away. Things hadn't yet reached the point where I could go to a shool battle of the bands and see 4 out of 6 cover the same Papa Roach song. Perhaps this is part of why "Fock Da Brain-Hole" features so little in the way of venom directed towards anyone specific. It's no "Rockin' The Suburbs", and its barely decipherable, heavily distorted lyrics appear to consist mainly of a drawn out attack on cuban heels.

Only come the eventual punchline (a cheerful, undistorted 'oh, I feel much better now!' at its close) do they really give the game away. While funny on first listen, that puncturing of the song is really detrimental thereafter. Because never mind funny, the rest of it is just great fun. The huge rolling barrage of drums, the pummelling bass, some awe inspiring guitar grinding, even the suprisingly fitting harmonica violence... they actually do a great job at taking the best bits of the visceral nu-metal sound and giving them a little spin of their own. Sure, it's a throwaway. But it's also a semi-logical extension of the genre stretching of Science & Nature, and it's a shame that they never tried anything remotely like it within their more serious work.

mp3: Fock Da Brain-Hole

No. 11 / Bluetonic

2007-06-14T14:53:00.001Z

When I am sad and weary,
When I think hope is gone,
When I walk along High Holborn,
I think of you with nothing on
Celia, Celia, Adrian Mitchell

This is where it all begins, for them. "No. 11", so called because it was the 11th song that the band had written, was the lead track on indie label Fierce Panda's third EP Return To Splendour. Other tracks on that one were by such household names as Thurman, The Nubiles and Alvin Purple, but it's worth noting that its predecessor included debuts by Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Ash, and Supergrass.

"No 11" sets out the band's stall very effectively. A simple but richly reverberating guitar riff cycles twice before another, better one is overlaid, then a third. Eds Chesters drums almost as much to fill in the little gaps left in this intricate web as for rhythymic purposes. The bass does... something in there somewhere. Mark Morriss' voice is basically fully formed already, a sweet, high, enfolding thing that scuppers any chances of a place as the new Stone Roses that they were claimed to be.

And come the chorus, they set it all out. 'There's no heart you can't melt with a certain little smile/No challenge should be faced without a little charm and a lot of style'. Perhaps the latter should be swapped around, because charm has almost always been a bit more them than style, but that's The Bluetones right there. Taking on allcomers, politely. If you're being snarky, 'Only a fool won't take the chance to stay the same' fits too. It's so perfect a statement of purpose that it's no surprise that they went on to all but name it after themselves.

"Bluetonic" is thus the eventual album and hit single version of the same song. It's meatier, of course, with every little guitar sound crisply projected in widescreen and the chorus now marked with a big 'sing along here, folks' signpost. It loses a little something in transition. Scott Morriss' backing vocals are already being relegated back in the mix and imitating his brother's poised tone, rather than being slurred in from another room. That line, the Adrian Mitchell-sourced one that was of course the one Mark was asked to finish on Never Mind The Buzzcocks, is delivered with a knowing wink rather than thrown away as if it wasn't anything. The biggest difference shows up right at the end though: The closing 'yeah, ye-ah yeah YEA-eh' of "No. 11" is full of palpable hunger, the sound of a band raring to take on the world and with a drive beyond the polite exterior. The yeahs are still there in it's successor, but the excitement isn't quite.

Youtube: Bluetonic video, don't they look young?
mp3: No. 11

Keep The Home Fires Burning

2007-06-13T14:51:00.001Z

'There's a silver lining
Through the dark cloud shining
Turn the dark cloud inside out'
"Keep The Home Fires Burning", Novello/Ford, 1914

This is where it all begins, for me. A winter evening watching Top Of The Pops on a slightly battered old television (screen scratched, a little too quiet because if you turned the volume up you had to turn it off and on again to the turn it back down), heart bursting at the enormity of feeling that the little song at number 13 suddenly brought.

In these days where everything I listen to comes with more information and knowledge than ever, with all accompanying expectations and presumptions, it's weird to think how free of context I once heard this song. I hadn't heard of the wartime song from which it takes its title. I barely knew anything of Britpop and certainly didn't know of The Bluetones' links to it (I thought that they were Canadian initially, for reasons which now escape me), nor of the NME's allegations of racism that centred around this single and may well have helped finish off their mainstream career. We'll return to those second two later, as they don't really have much bearing on the song itself.

The other "Keep The Home Fires Burning" certainly does though, even if I didn't get it then. In fact looking it up again and thinking about it for this entry has brought that home even more. I was all set to write that the shared title and references are there for black humour only as the Bluetones song has nothing to do with 'gallant son[s] of Britain' or the war. But then, there it is in the third line. 'My home is a warzone'. It's in fact an inversion of the whole original song, turning the silver lining inside out to find a black cloud. It never gets too explicit about what it is that Mark Morriss is running away from, beyond that line and the chorus of 'Home fires burn/scorching a hole through me'. Neither does the sprightly music ever really push home a sense of violence or conflict but the massive sense of betrayal in finding that reliable, safe home is nothing of the sort squeezes through very clearly nonetheless.

And even if, like me then, you miss all of the ironic contrasts in the lyrics then the beautifully arranged nostalgic brass (Hovis! Coronation Street!) of the intro and outro manages to convey exactly the same thing. A neat trick.

Since I've never suffered anything like the implied home situation it wasn't relating to that that made the song grab me so hard back then. I think, beyond the economic phrases weilded so effectively as to make for their best lyrics ever, and music now so ingrained that I find it almost impossible to even think about it to write, it was the sense of putting a brave face on everything that got to me the most. I'd been spending days at a time listening to Travis (The Man Who, obv) turning almost nothing into grand displays of emotion, and despite superficial musical similarities this was in many ways the opposite. It still does something to me now.

YouTube: Keep The Home Fires Burning video, not the most serious of affairs.
mp3: Keep The Home Fires Burning (US version), minus the brass and plus a country tinge.

Notes

2007-06-13T14:11:00.000Z

I'll be aiming to post every day, but won't any more often. If I write more than one a day, as I hope, they'll go to a buffer for times when I'm busier with other things.
I'll be posting mp3s, but not of the versisons of songs which are readily available on albums. If you're really interested in a song then you might want to email d e l e t e a s a p p r o p r i a t e [ at ] g m a i l [ dot ] c o m ;)
I'll be doing YouTube links too, which will take care of the singles at least.
The order of posts will be determined by a combination of iTunes' random function and whatever I feel like writing about each day. I might do all of Science & Nature bar "Keep The Home Fires Burning" in a row, just because. And I'm saving a few songs that I'm most relish ing writing about til later on.
Unless they release any new material surprisingly soon, you have 111 song entries to look forward to. Which is a pretty cool number.

Why?

2007-06-13T14:10:00.000Z

The ouvreblog is such a great idea that it's a wonder there weren't more of them sooner. The idea is simple. Write about an artists whole career, song by song, usually one a day or something approaching. There's an excellent summary of the phenomenom here, and you can check out the list of links to the right to find more. I'll add any others that I come across in future. They often make for some great reading, whether through offering insight into catalogues I already know, or being superbly written about ones I don't. With a little more time on my hands and getting back in to writing more, this seemed like a great idea.

Given my own recent thoughts about where I am in music writing/listening terms, and how I've been finding things going a bit stale, you might wonder about making the commitment of listening to a loved band's entire works again. But, at least since a time when I had only 17 CDs, I've never really been one to listen to the same things again. It's a cycle of 'buy vaguely promising new stuff>listen a little bit>go meh>repeat' that's more the problem. Going back to think and write about what it is that meant so much to me in the first place is actually a refreshing change.

So, the band to do. My first thought was to take up Belle & Sebastian as Ian nearly did, but there's a small problem there. The first two (or even three) albums, the ones that have the real cult following, they just aren't my band. I like those too, but there's no way I have any kind of handle on them compared to the current Belle & Sebastian. So that one's still open to anyone else. Partly it's because I wasn't there at the time, but that isn't all, because I eventually decided on a band that started around the same time. Difference is in how long I've followed them for, and how I've come back and back to them through the years as others have fallen away.
They're also a band that slightly differs from any other choices for ouvreblog subjects so far. Everyone else has been more or less canonised, in critical or commercial terms or both. The Bluetones, well, haven't. They're not at Menswe@r or Ocean Colour Scene levels of existing as a punchline, but not far off. I have some hopes of piquing the interest of those unfamiliar with them but I'm realistic about my limited potential audience. I can't think of anyone that I'd be happier to write about, though.

So, in other words, writing for my own enjoyment and if anyone else likes it, it's a bonus. Could there possibly be a more appropriate sentiment to begin a Bluetones ouvreblog with?

(thanks to Sweeping The Nation for alerting me to the quote from which I got the title for this blog - it's sixth from top here)