What were they thinking?

I love Dark Side of the Moon. Not an inflammatory or unusual statement in the slightest I know. But, depending on my mood, I generally have two different experiences when I listen to it, due to certain aspects of the record.

What is it that makes this album so polarising for me? The sound effects. The clinking coins, cash registers, clicking adding machines and quotes that pepper some of the albums best songs.

Random is an overused word these days, but some of these are pretty damn random. Sometimes I love the album because of them, thinking they are meaningful and innovative, and sometimes I love it in spite of them, and I’m left asking, what is the point? Obviously it make sense to a certain point to have money sounds on a song called Money, but what is the need? We all know what money is.

And this led me to think about other songs that feature unusual, abstract or just random bits in them. Some that work, and some that don’t. Early disclaimer, I love all these bands and understand I have no right to question their genius, try to relax.

Anyway, one of the first songs that came into my head with this train of thought was Everlong by Foo Fighters, a great song no doubt, that features some inaudible whispering during the instrument break.

Apparently, the whispering heard is three different things being read on top of one another, a love letter, a technical manual and a short story.

It’s a great song, one of my favourites, and I’m loathe to criticise it, but I’m not sure what the whispering adds to it, or why they included it. Sorry Dave, it’s pointless, thanks for Nirvana though.

Which leads me on to my next revelation, that I spent my teen years painted black, listening to only rock, metal and emo, caught up in the first wave of emo before it soon lost what little credibility it had and the audience grew up. My favourite band of said era was Funeral for a Friend.

I remember being as excited for the release of their second album Hours in 2005 as I have been for any album, based on the pre-album single Streetcar, which I loved.

The song begins with the sound of someone dialling a phone, the dialling tone beeps along in the background as the guitar intro comes in and then a female voice answers Hello just before the vocal starts.

I thought it was awesome the first time I heard it and still think it gives the song a great burst to begin with. But it is utterly meaningless really, and I even read somewhere that fans used the dial tones to work out the number, which was lead singer Matt Davies’ phone, and bombarded it with calls, forcing him to change it. Meaningless and a hassle to boot.

Radiohead. They are beyond questioning in my eyes. I go all gooey-eyed fanboy at the very mention of them, and criticise them around me at your peril, apart from these two words, Fitter Happier.

The two-minute recital of slogans by an electronic voice has been described as ‘everything the album Ok Computer stands for in one song’. Personally, it’s never done it for me, and another song as perfect as the rest of the album would have been more appreciated.

Another of my favourite bands is The Kills, whose debut album Keep On Your Mean Side is a lo-fi, garage-blues classic.

They’ve (quite correctly) been held up as a throwback, a band where attitude and appearance is as important as the music and, in Alison Mosshart, have one of the coolest women alive today.

However, they may have believed their own press a little too much when including a couple of rambling monologues from Alison on this album. At the end of first song Superstition, she says a few unintelligible lines before coughing and saying Oh fuck. Rock on!

Later, as an interval, they include her telling a story about how weathermen used to draw the weather on a board and needed makeup on their hands. Hmm, ok. Still an amazing album, and I could listen to her ramble all day.

Like I said I love these bands, but feel free to defend them against my sarcasm, or to suggest any other songs that include weird effects, quotes, samples or anything really. There are plenty more out there.

Puzzling lyrics.

While I was listening to my iPod on shuffle recently, a couple of songs came on, one after the other, and caused exactly the same thought in my mind, what the hell are these lyrics about?

The two songs in question just happened to be The Kills’ Alphabet Pony and Motorcycle Emptiness by the Manics.

My thought harked back to an experience I had playing Motorcycle Emptiness to my dad quite a few years ago now, thinking he would enjoy the song’s guitar parts. Instead, he listened attentively to the six-minute song and then promptly asked ‘What is motorcycle emptiness then?’ And I had no answer. That was all he had to say about the song.

FYI, the song’s Wikipedia page says the following: The lyrics have been interpreted by the band as an attack on the hollowness of the consumer lifestyle offered by capitalism, describing how society expects young people to conform.

Oh right, that’s clears that up. Well, anyway… For me it is an example of a lyric/song title becoming a distraction, overshadowing the music with questions about meaning and rationale.

While rubbish lyrics are obviously worse, a lyric that is confusing, cryptic or bizarre is instead harder to shake off. Am I missing out on some obvious reference? Are they trying to exclude people like me? Am I just stupid?

I like both of the aforementioned songs but I don’t want to spend my time wondering what the hell an alphabet pony is. And these aren't the only songs I like that confound and confuse me.

On The Smiths’ Bigmouth Strikes Again, Morrissey sings, ‘Now I know how Joan of Arc felt, as the flames rose to her roman nose and her Walkman started to melt.’ I’ve always wondered what the hell that line was about? Any ideas? Mozza is a great lyricist and I’m sure he had some meaning when writing that, but it’s beyond me whatever it is.

Vampire Weekend are a band for cryptic lyrics, with one particular line stuck in my mind as it features in two of their songs. ‘But this feels so unnatural, Peter Gabriel too.’ is a line from the choruses of Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa (also WTF?) and Ottoman. And I have no idea what the reference to the former Genesis frontman means.

Massive Attack’s trip-hop debut album Blue Lines is one of my favourite albums, and the title track is a high point of the album. However, when looking through the lyrics, this line stands out as particularly strange and nonsensical. ‘She told me take an occupation or you lose your mind. And on a nine to five lemon, looking for the lime.’

While I can’t (or shouldn’t) really rap along with 3D and Tricky anyway, I refuse to join in on that line. ‘Take my piece of mind and sign my name across your heart.’ is one of the best last lines of any song ever though.

Do you ever find yourself confused, scared or angry by any lyrics you hear? Which ones do it for you? And if anyone has any info about the lyrics I've mentioned, feel free to share it with all of us.

This Is My Jam.

Apologies for my tardiness, January has brought to me a resolution to read rather than write and this has meant spending my time with Hemingway and Fitzgerald rather than Something for the CV.

But now it’s February, it’s time to pull my finger out.

My last blog on winter songs got some great feedback and with that in mind, I will continue to write equally short, sweet and hopefully interesting pieces.

This week I’d like to highlight a new music-based social website I’ve started using. My first interviewee on this blog, Laura Snapes (@laurasnapes) recently introduced it with a blog on NME, and if you follow me on Facebook to Twitter, you may have noticed my posts from this new service.

This Is My Jam is a website for you to namecheck the one song that you are currently loving. It’s a simple as that.

You pick a song at a time to be your Jam, which is effectively your ‘status’. Friends can listen to your song, like it and follow you so your choices appear in their feed.

The website is still in its Beta phase and you need an invite to sign up, but I think it’s great, especially for a sharer like me. You can easily post your Jams to Facebook and Twitter too if your friends are too lazy to get on the site.

As someone who frequently posts links to songs on YouTube, SoundCloud and Spotify, it’s quicker and easier to manage This Is My Jam than posting links across different accounts separately, and the site finds videos and songs from these websites so I'm sharing the same source material.

You can have as many Jams as you want, I’m going for one a day as that’s easy to manage and yet enough to share the songs I’m really enjoying.

The only thing is that you can only listen to your current Jam, not your previous ones, and you can’t see a full list of your former Jams either, only your last five. I understand the only being able to play your current Jam is due to an issue with space, but just a list of all your former Jams would be great to be able to refer back to, even if you cannot listen to them. Hopefully this is something they can iron out because otherwise it’s a great and simple new site.

If you’re interested in knowing what I’m listening to, check out my This Is My Jam.

My Jam for today is Ben Howard’s Promises.

Winter.

So it’s winter. It’s cold, it’s dark, the sky is grey, the SAD syndrome excuse is being banded about and the chunky knits are out in full force. But it’s not all bad.

The upside of winter for me is that some music finds its home in this season. Someone once told me they loved The Cooper Temple Clause, but could only listen to them when it was a grey day. I knew what they meant.

A walk or drive in the cold, with a really affecting piece of music playing loud, is maybe the best thing about winter for me. If there is snow, even better. I love nothing more than walking through deep snow playing Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) by Arcade Fire while staring at that strange orange colour the sky goes.

In the same way Let’s Go Surfing by The Drums benefits from being played whilst driving in the sun with the windows down, some music is enhanced when the surrounding world is bleak and uninspiring. That isn’t a slight on the music at all, its just obvious some music doesn't fit a sunny day. Kate Bush’s new album is one I look forward to putting on if it snows this year, I'm not sure I'll put it on at a BBQ though.

If music was put into a colour spectrum, wintery, washed out earth tones would almost definitely be my choices. The soft browns of acoustic and folk, the greys of minimal indie and electronica. I like them all year round, but they resonate most in winter.

So what songs, bands and albums are good for making it through the long dark British winter?



The band that inspired this blog was The National, whose High Violet album I’ve been listening to a lot this winter and did last year. It’s bleak imagery, the baritone vocals of Matt Berninger, the atmospheric, building sound that they create, it all works on a grey day.



A reasonably new album that has also dominated my listening this winter so far has been Benjamin Francis Leftwich’s Last Smoke Before The Snowstorm. It’s a fitting title, and his echoing, whispery vocals and delicate acoustics certainly capture a wintery sound.



Other favourites include the aforementioned Cooper Temple Clause, in particular their second album opener The Same Mistakes, James Blake’s sparse debut, Radiohead’s desolate Kid A, Fionn Regan’s charming The End of History, Bon Iver’s flawless For Emma, Forever Ago, I Break Horses’ Winter Beats (in name and atmosphere) and Warpaint’s dark The Fool.



So enjoy the winter while it lasts, there’ll be plenty of time for Best Coast and Vampire Weekend in the summer.

Happy New Year.

Having had a break over the Christmas and New Year period, Something For The CV is back with a damp squib, bloated, tired and in need of a new years diet. But I haven’t rethought, rebranded, redesigned or repurposed anything. It’s very much a case of groggily soldiering on, realising that this blog is very much like sitting in a dark room talking to myself. Oh well, I enjoy it.

So, with an increasing lack of free time brought on by various developments (my new Kindle I’m looking at you), I hope to write more posts this year, but make them shorter in length. Short and sweet, less is more etc. As well as trying to secure more high-profile interviewees.

And so onto 2012, and I’m in a reflective mood. I didn’t receive any new music for Christmas, and haven’t heard anything new I’m particularly excited about since being back at work. So nothing to report there.

The most contact I’ve had with music recently was a large amount of time I spent creating a playlist for a NYE party I attended. My obsession with sharing music with others is well documented on this blog and this party was another opportunity I couldn’t resist, though I wish I had.

Caribou's Odessa made the playlist, but did anyone else notice?

Here is what I learned, the good and the bad:

• Old music unites people far more than new music
• Hardly anything I liked from last year reached a mainstream audience
• It probably speaks more about my taste but most of what I enjoyed last year wasn’t suitable for a NYE party

And a few tips for any other playlist makers:

• Don’t spend large amounts of time cutting out gaps in between songs, no one will even notice the transitions you have worked on and think are amazing
• Don’t take out a song that you think no one else will like – you’re the only one paying attention anyway
• Equally, don’t include something you hate to please others, again they probably aren’t listening
• Why bother? I mean really, why bother?

And a few musical resolutions too for good measure, this year I will try to:

• Buy more vinyl
• Go to more gigs (Ben Howard + Daughter, Florence + The Horrors and Summer Camp tickets already booked)
• Listen to more new music
• Spend less time on playlists
• If a playlist does need making, make it self-indulgent beyond belief

Happy New Year.

2011.

Here are my picks from 2011’s releases. It’s been a good year, with several debut albums making my list alongside some firmly established favourites and even a new Radiohead album. I’d love to write a bit on why everything is where it is, but who has the time?

Just remember, I’m not saying these are the best, they are just my favourites, and we all have different taste. If you agree with anything though, feel free to compliment me on my excellent taste.

 Holocene by boniver

Albums of the year

1. Bon Iver – Bon Iver
2. Anna Calvi – Anna Calvi
3. Radiohead – The King of Limbs
4. The Drums – Portamento
5. Yuck - Yuck
6. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
7. James Blake – James Blake
8. The Kills – Blood Pressures 
9. Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know
10. Benjamin Francis Leftwich – Last Smoke Before the Snowstorm

Honourable mentions: Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues, The Horrors – Skying, I Break Horses – Hearts, The Joy Formidable – The Big Roar, Ben Howard – Every Kingdom, Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Belong, Death Cab for Cutie – Codes and Keys, Florence + The Machine – Ceremonials, Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes, Daughter – His Young Heart EP + The Wild Youth EP.

Crystal Fighters - Plage

Songs of the year

1. Crystal Fighters – Plage
2. Metronomy – The Bay
3. Anna Calvi – Desire
4. Laura Marling - Sophia 
5. Bon Iver – Holocene
6. Summer Camp – Better Off Without You
7. The Drums – Money 
8. Bombay Bicycle Club – Shuffle
9. James Blake – The Wilhelm Scream
10. Yuck – The Wall
11. Ghostpoet – Liiines
12. Metronomy – The Look
13. I Break Horses – Winter Beats
14. Little Scream – Cannons
15. Lykke Li – Jerome
16. The Kills – Baby Says
17. Daughter – Candles
18. Benjamin Francis Leftwich – Butterfly Culture
19. Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Belong
20. Ben Howard – Old Pine
21. Florence + the Machine – What the Water Gave Me
22. Radiohead – Separator
23. Outfit – Two Islands
24. Hooray for Earth – True Loves
25. Noah and the Whale – Waiting for My Chance to Come

Although this is a music blog, here are a few films I’ve liked this year, in no order because I’m lazy.

• Drive
• Never Let Me Go
• Midnight in Paris
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
• 50/50
• Submarine
• Black Swan
• The Rum Diary
• Bridesmaids
• The Fighter

Merry Christmas and thanks for reading this year, here's to a successful 2012

Festive Three for all.

It’s the week before Christmas and we’ve all been saturated with the same old stuff for going on a month now, is anyone else fed up yet?

It’s still hard to pick out just three Christmas songs though, knowing I may never do so on this blog again (my effort lasting until next December is questionable). There has been some debate, with a colleague pushing for the 'breathtaking buoyancy and melodic momentum' of Elton John’s Step Into Christmas. Ahem, I’ll leave him to it on that one.

While my favourite Christmas song is the obvious and most played of the 21st century, The Pogues and Kirstie MacColl’s Fairytale of New York, I’d like to highlight a few lesser-known or just alternative Christmas songs. Of which there are a surprising amount, with The Ramones, Smashing Pumpkins, The Raveonettes, RUN-DMC and The Killers amongst many to have released credible efforts.

I should preface my list by saying that, although I am no Scrooge and enjoy Christmas as much as the next guy (in spite of annual comparisons to Tiny Tim), I’m particularly fond of melancholy Christmas songs. The long dark nights, the bleak weather, the excessive drinking, the arguments, spending time with family, it’s a perfect time of year for being justifiably miserable.

And this has been reflected in music over the years, with a number of seasonably sorrowful songs making it into the mainstream xmas canon. The aforementioned Pogues, Mud’s Lonely This Christmas, The Pretenders’ 2000 Miles and even Wham’s Last Christmas are all stories of misery.

So first up, from a festive EP released a few years ago called A Snowflake Fell (And It Felt Like A Kiss), a perfectly melancholy name indeed, is Glasvegas’ Please Come Back Home.

Raw, emotive and containing one of the most poignantly realistic lyrics ever put in a Christmas song - ‘The beauty and the elegance of this time of year only heightens all the darkness in me’ – this tale of lost love is tragic and yet hopeful. Perfect for a post-argument moment of reflection.



Next up is Joni Mitchell’s River. Famed for her lyrics of longing and disillusionment, Christmas was probably a pretty easy target for her, and this piano ballad with an arrangement similar to Jingle Bells certainly resonates.

From her celebrated Blue album, it tells of a longing to escape from the Christmas spirit around that we can all identify with sometime over the festive period.



And, just to put my credibility through the roof, Robert Downey Jr. did a pretty good version on Ally McBeal, which you can see here. Everyone loves RDJ.

Finally this week, to lighten the mood somewhat, is a new song I heard this week from Gruff Rhys. The Super Furry’s frontman, who I caught at Moseley Folk earlier this year, will release the brilliantly titled Athiest Xmas EP on Monday (19 December). But its more upbeat than its name suggests, even this track, Post Apocalypse Christmas, a jaunty romp about, well, what the title suggests.

 Gruff Rhys - Post Apocalypse Christmas by PIASGermany

And because this blog is the gift that keeps giving, I’d also recommend a couple of new albums for Christmas 2011. Firstly, A Very She & Him Christmas, an album of reworked classics and a few lesser-known covers featuring Zooey Deschanel’s beautiful, old-timey vocals, check out a live vid here. And for something a bit more alternative and fun, This Is Christmas from Tim Wheeler and Emmy the Great, featuring songs such as Zombie Christmas and Jesus the Reindeer, and Home for the Holidays.

No one can say I haven't got in the spirit now, just look at this picture.