My iPod #271: The Hives - Die, All Right!

It's my birthday.... yaaaaaaaaaaaaay. Nineteen years old, by the way. You wanna know how I've spent it so far? Sleeping, eating and listening to music in my room. I really should have just slept until the evening and then gone to the shops to get the drinks in preparation for tonight's antics. I was in a club in the very early hours of the morning cutting shapes to DJ Luck and MC Neat which was fun. But apart from that this birthday's turned out to be the same as every other one - staying inside with the knowledge that I have existed for another year.

That wasn't depressing at all, let's move onto the song shall we?

So "Die, All Right!" is a track by The Hives on their second album "Veni Vidi Vicious". I saw the video years ago on Kerrang! I think I was in Year 7 because I didn't have a YouTube account then and I remember looking up the video because I thought it was quite cool. I wasn't sure if it was a new song or not, because I had never seen the video before. Turned out it was on the same album as "Hate to Say I Told You So", meaning that the song was, in fact, an old track. Apart from the weird point that the band were a bit orange, the song was still very good. It's a bit of underrated one. I do like this a lot more than "Hate to Say" which can be argued to be the band's signature track. Not that that track is a bad one, I've heard it so many times that it doesn't do much for me anymore. Enough of that, I'm going off topic.

The song rocks many socks. Very quick and relentless, it doesn't stop and allow you to catch your breath. It has the characteristics of all the good Hives songs. A memorable riff (one which I'm certain has been used in an advert in the past) which repeats and repeats until it embeds itself in your brain, lots of energy and the familiar exclamatives, yelps and howling vocals by charismatic front-man Pelle Almqvist. Good tune.

Happy birthday to me.

My iPod #270: Beck - Devils Haircut

If only this song played every time I was just casually walking down the street. Wearing some nice clothes with the track blaring out from an unknown source, people staring at me while I just walk on by ignoring them. It can obviously never happen. But if it did I would feel like the coolest mother around.

That's basically the plot to the video for "Devils Haircut", the first trackon Beck's album "Odelay". That is until we find out that spies have been watching him the whole time. It's a brilliant music video directed by Mark Romanek, one that only makes listening to the song even better.

Not a lot of people know what the song is about, including myself. To me it seems like a bunch of random words that link together really well and sound good to the ear, very much like every other They Might Be Giants song or "Peacebone" by Animal Collective, which all sum up to being a metaphor for a devil's haircut. Whatever it's about doesn't really matter. Once that three note riff comes in, I'm instantly hooked. The cool beats and terrific sampling by The Dust Brothers are what give the track its edge.

My iPod #269: Billy Talent - Devil on My Shoulder

So yesterday I wrote about another Billy Talent track. One that starts off another of their albums. This one is about another devil but instead of it being in a midnight mass, it is now on a shoulder. The song's narrator's shoulder. It is the first song on Billy Talent's third/fourth album, and was released as its second single.

This was the one that really got me pumped up for the release of "Billy Talent III". "Turn Your Back" was the first new song that showed that the group had a new album in the works when a live performance of it at the Hurricane Festival in 2008 was uploaded onto YouTube. That was all well and good, but it would be almost a year until anticipation for the upcoming album really started rolling. "Rusted from the Rain" was released as the first official single, which I thought was okay upon first listen. It grew on me over time, but there wasn't anything particularly striking about it initially.

Then..... this happened. A trailer previewing another new song from the album. A sneaky bassline joined by Ben growling the title of the song, then followed by an assault from the guitar and drums. This was what I wanted to hear. It sounded so cool. That was "Devil on My Shoulder".

It probably should have been released as the first single. I wouldn't have had the same amount of doubts about the album if it had been. The song itself is from the perspective of someone who has very bad luck, feeling nothing but self-loathing and self-pity. In terms of its sound, it was very different to anything else that Billy Talent had released. Brendan O'Brien - who has produced albums for artists such as Rage Against the Machine, The Offspring and Pearl Jam - brings a real studio atmosphere into the album, something that was not so obvious on the albums prior to it. This was a proper hard rock song. This was no longer a band who needed to scream, or were as angry as they used to be in previous songs. Billy Talent had.... matured (eerrrr).

It had to happen one day. But "Devil on My Shoulder" was the sign that showed me that the fire was still roared in the belly of Billy Talent.

My iPod #268: Billy Talent - Devil in a Midnight Mass

The opening track to Billy Talent's second album was built upon an 'evil guitar riff' that guitarist Ian D'Sa started playing one day. Lead singer Benjamin Kowalewicz wondered what kind of evil would suit that riff, and found it one day when he read an article about a Catholic priest who was molested 150 children in the 90s and was then stabbed to death during his time in prison. As a result, one of Billy Talent's darkest songs was created. A song which gets the blood racing and sends shivers down my spine each time it plays.

The thing is - I wasn't so enthused by it when I first heard the song via its video all those years ago in 2006. Thinking about it now I am not so sure why. It was very quick, and was finished before I could absorb anything that was happening. The first time I really understood it was when I actually listened to it through my headphones - that's when it hit me.

Starting with Ian's lone menacing riff - the song explodes when the drums kick in along with an almighty "YEEEAAAAHH" from Ben. The verses describe the priest - the 'devil in a midnight mass' - whilst the pre-chorus and choruses depict the scene when the priest is killed in jail who will now sing 'silent night for the rest of [his] life.'

That is all well and... good, but the most threatening part is the last forty-five seconds of the song when the riff repeats on and on as Ben says what could possibly be the priest's last words before he dies, "Whisper, whisper, don't make a sound/Your bed is made, it's in the ground". That comes to a halt for a split second before those two phrases are ceaselessly screamed at you by Ben, Ian and the bassist Jon before climaxing with an astonishing shriek which echoes right into the next track.

This song is scary. This song is awesome. The best Billy Talent album opener. Hands down. I look at another one tomorrow though.

This is the band's impression of it when they heard the album mix for the first time.

My iPod #267: Nine Black Alps - Destination Nowhere

Not on YouTube. Available here, though.

"Destination Nowhere" is another song from Nine Black Alps' "Love/Hate" era. It was recorded and eventually released as another B-Side for "Bitter End", the second and final single to be released from that album.

I went into this phase during Year 10 or so, when new music was being released on streaming websites and I would listen to the songs and try and type up the lyrics simultaneously on this website "letssingit.com". I did that when "Locked Out from the Inside", the band's third album came out and I'm probably the reason you see the song's lyrics on the Internet when you search for them on Google. Go to letssingit, if it says 'Lyrics submitted by Jammerz.' Don't be surprised because 'Jammerz' is me. It's a silly username, I know.

Then I saw the B-Side player on the band's official website and saw that barely any of their lyrics were anywhere online. So I got busy with those, doing "Get Even" and "Idiot Riff #9" amongst others until eventually coming to "Destination Nowhere". The lyrics to that song were relatively easy to type because none of the phrases fall into one another, especially during the verses where one lyric is sung, followed by a pause, and then another lyric and so on. I had to repeat a few seconds of it many times in order to make sure that the words I deciphered were right and made sense. But it was no bother, because I ended up digging the song anyway.

I think the song's about being in an ambiguous state of mind (just because of the use of opposites: 'too scared to fight', 'too young and too old' etc etc) and finding oneself at a dead end. I could be very wrong. I probably am.

My iPod #266: They Might Be Giants - Destination Moon

Here today is the album track "Destination Moon", the thirteenth track on They Might Be Giants' fifth album "John Henry".

John Linnell sings this one, and it's from the perspective of a patient in hospital who is very, very sick but continues to believe that he/she is fine and dreams of escaping in order to go to the moon via rocket.

If you've read my previous post on "AKA Driver", another song from this album, you don't really have to read on anymore because it will contain the same information. For those of you who haven't, don't stop reading this - but do listen to "Driver" if you have the chance.

I heard "Moon" around the same time as "Driver" and that was when I was listening my own customised radio station on Yahoo. That was a good site. I thought I liked it back then because I added it to this huge list of songs that I had seen on MTV and others that I generally enjoyed on my MSN Space. Remember MSN Spaces? It died years ago along with MSN itself which is a shame.

The problem that came out of that was I didn't listen to the song for years and ended up forgetting the melody of the song altogether. That changed when I downloaded "John Henry" in 2010, then it all started coming back to me.

My iPod #265: Manic Street Preachers - A Design for Life

Noted for being the first track the band worked on after guitarist Richey Edwards' unexpected disappearance, "A Design for Life" was the first single released from Manic Street Preachers' fourth album "Everything Must Go".

I watched its video a long time ago having no idea who the band was and still left in wonder of the thing. That James Dean Bradfield is an astonishing singer. The vocals on this track are delivered with pure passion and power, and both the pre-chorus and chorus themselves are nothing short of shiver-inducing with those dramatic string arrangements. I will go on to say that it's not my favourite MSP song. But my god you can't say that it isn't epic. Finding out that it was the first song the band released after a time when the band members weren't sure if they were even going to continue makes it that bit more special too.