We’ve all been there before. You only go for a quick drink to catch up with your best friend. It’s mid-week, so you’ve got places to go and stuff to do in the morning. It can’t possibly be a late one. But then one drink turns into five and before you know it you’re lost in the heart of the city, holding court in some dingy backstreet bar you’d usually never visit when sober.
While there, you constantly profess to anybody who will listen how you’re going to chuck a sickie tomorrow, while in between bouts of endless tequila shots you get up to sing about a cactus in French. For Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys and solo artist Miles Kane, they’ve just dialled this up a few notches by recording the morning after for their new live EP entitled The Dream Synopsis.
The rich orchestral arrangements and tales of love set within a sprawling metropolitan city that never slept made the duo’s debut album, The Age Of The Understatement, an instant hit when it was released in 2008. For Kane, The Last Shadow Puppets were his first real taste of success, while Turner was right in the eye of the perfect storm as Arctic Monkeys continued to rise to greater and greater heights.
A clamouring for a sophomore effort followed them everywhere for years, as fans and journalists all wanted to know when, or if, it would happen. The eight years in between left many to believe the time had passed and schedules were just not able to be synchronised. But on April 1st this year, Everything You’ve Come To Expect was released.
What followed was an extensive tour which saw the duo recruit two thirds of Mini Mansions, along with drummer Loren Humphry and a string quartet, to take their 1960s inspired music around the world. Whereas Turner often seemed rigid in his guise as main man for Arctic Monkeys, with the Puppets he seemed to actively revel in the looser style of the concerts. Gone were the tight structures and preconceived stage chatter, and in its place was a reckless abandon where cover songs were thrown in, frequent opportunistic guest spots were added, set lists were constantly changed and flipped, while the whole thing had a sense of debauched fun to it.
That’s translated here on the live EP that the band have recorded as a goodbye gift for the time being. Presumably budget restraints have meant that favourites like the late great David Bowie’s Moonage Daydream, which they performed at Glastonbury, hasn’t made the cut. And neither too has their Beatles cover I Want You (She’s So Heavy). But reworked songs of Leonard Cohen and The Fall still makes this compelling listening.
On the former Turner takes the lead, while Kane brings his usual visceral energy to the latter on the reverb-drenched Totally Wired. Cohen’s recent passing has only enhanced the interest in his work, as is the usual response, but the lyrics on his 1974 track Is This What You Wanted truly are flawless. “You defied your solitude, I came through alone, You said that you could never love me, I undid your gown,” Turner croons theatrically with added emphasis on the final couple of syllables.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8LtrwbEUow
The duo’s push and pull dynamics are best evidenced in the opening track Aviation, which sees Turner ably backing Kane as he takes the listener through the depths of the night where “glum looking beauties” lurk at every turn. The live setting bringing new life to the epic string arrangements that frequent collaborator Owen Pallet has brought to proceedings.
If the Jacques Detrounc cover Les Cactus is a raw, chaotic excursion into 1960s nostalgia, The Dream Synopsis is the antithesis of this. The most delicate song from their second album, barring bonus track The Bourne Identity, initially it seemed like an odd choice for the full live treatment. But it is here where Turner is able to fully showcase his honey-soaked vocals as the song is slowed down completely.
The lively studio talk in between captures a band at the height of enjoyment as they flick from a few originals to recording some of their favourite covers from the years gone by. And the choices are thoroughly eclectic as they swing from Glaxo Babies to Cohen to Dutronc. The year spent on the road has clearly enhanced the group’s connection with one another, and a live EP perfectly showcases this fact to full effect.
In the end it’s a short, quick bit of fun to remind you, in case you’d forgotten, of how good the night before actually was. Now, each member will return to their usual band and will go back to their day jobs. But don’t doubt it; the next time they meet for a catch up drink it will end up turning out just like this time. It’s inevitable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf5apyds8Xk
Read our review of Everything You’ve Come To Expect here.
Image: The Last Shadow Puppets
“They were rubbish,” friend and fellow musician John McClure remembered when asked how the Arctic Monkeys were during their early years. “But you knew they had something… It was pretty shambolic, but at the same time there was an x-factor there. You could tell they had something going on.”
Incredibly, at the beginning of this year their debut Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not turned ten years old. It would be an album which arrived amongst almost rabid fever pitch, as fans and media alike all wanted a piece of British music’s next ‘big thing.’
The quartet had spent the previous few years firstly learning how to play their instruments, and then travelling around the country performing at any pubs or clubs that would have them. From there, they gradually stumbled upon a sound and identity which would go on to see them release a generation-defining and chart-topping debut. But just how did the four teenagers from Sheffield do it?
All four members; Alex Turner, Matt Helders, Jamie Cook and Andy Nicholson had agreed to commit a year, before they went off to university and full-time work, to try and make it as a band. Early on their set lists were littered with covers of The White Stripes and Jimi Hendrix, alongside a few of their originals. But it wasn’t until one chance night in Turner’s local pub where he found himself watching punk poet John Cooper Clarke that things really began to come together. A self-professed tipping point for the aspiring singer, it was from here where he began to emulate the poet’s unique literary style within his own burgeoning lyric writing.
“One night it was The Fall playing, and Johnny Clarke was opening. He came on with a plastic bag full of these scraps of paper. His hair was branching off, and he had these little blue glasses and drainpipe pants,” Turner told Spin. “It was like, ‘What is that?’ And it just blew my mind, I couldn’t stop watching. Guinness was overflowing all over my hand. It was just one of those moments.”
Around this time the band began to record their first demos, which they funded themselves as they all held down regular part-time jobs in the meantime. It was these which gained them the attention of manager, Geoff Barradale, who signed them after only their third gig together. And finally it was through him and his industry connections that they were able to make a string of other demos which then catapulted them into the public’s attention.
The band’s debut EP Five Minutes With Arctic Monkeys soon followed and, along with the previous demos, it only seemed to heighten the buzz around them. In the middle of 2005 a label bidding war subsequently began, which eventually ended when the band signed for independent label Domino. Focus then switched to making an album.
“It was one day per song, plus one day for setting up and one day for clean-up,” the producer of the record Jim Abbiss explained to Sound on Sound.
Abbiss, a noted producer for the likes of UNKLE and Placebo, had registered his interest in the band early on. However, James Ford; the man who’d have a hand in producing every single one of the band’s next four albums, was already working with them at that stage. It didn’t quite work out with him the first time around though. So decamping to Chapel Studios for just two weeks in the summer, Abbiss joined the band to record their eagerly anticipated album.
“All of them stood around the drums and had headphones on. For a few songs we baffled Alex, because he wanted to sing live. But for two thirds of the songs he just played guitar, and overdubbed his vocals afterwards.”
It was agreed by both band and producer that the record should emulate as best as possible their live sound. There was no real studio trickery, what you heard was simply what you got. A Certain Romance, the closing track, was a prime example of this as it was done live in one single take on the final day of recording.
Meanwhile, The View From The Afternoon, which was one of the last written, became the first track to be recorded for the album. Its opening line, “Anticipation has a habit to set you up for disappointment” acting as an accidental caution to all listeners about just how great the band were expected to be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeQAZsyucbQ
Turner’s lyrics were undoubtedly a major draw card for fans of the band. The mundanity of teenage life was reported on, almost to the point where it felt as if the frontman had been following you around equipped with a knowing grin and a notebook in his back pocket the whole time. The social commentary came with a withering delivery, but it was also packaged with heavy doses of humour too.
“Have you been drinking, son? You don’t look old enough to me. I’m sorry officer is there a certain age you’re supposed to be, because nobody told me,” he sang on Riot Van.
Elsewhere, his ability to reflect on the trials and tribulations that exist within the blur of Saturday night were endlessly on show. There was the exciting thoughts that occupy the mind just before a big night out (The View From The Afternoon), the fleeting moment beneath the club’s lights where flirtatious looks are exchanged between two people (Dancing Shoes), and the fallibility of even trying to get into exclusive spots in the first place (From The Ritz To The Rubble). Beyond that, the pavements were littered with drunken revellers all in the pursuit of their own perfect nights, while occasional boxing matches broke out at the taxi ranks.
The album made an instant connection as it was the sound of youth distilled into music. There was angst, enthusiasm, mistakes, obnoxiousness, excitement, trouble, arguments and naivety almost at every turn. It captured the zeitgeist of those adolescent moments so well in fact, that Turner has admitted at times throughout his career he and the band have struggled to perform the songs live.
“It certainly feels like we’re doing a cover version to some extent. But it’s the best cover version anyone’s going to get,” he told Billboard. “The thing that gave that first record its oomph was the fact that we were playing to the very limits of our abilities from the moment the album starts. All that enthusiasm and naivety cannot be replicated.”
After their first single I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor went straight to number one in the UK, it was clear that the band were about to live up to the hype. The NME championed them as “our generation’s most important band” and the mad scramble to find out anything and everything about them got underway. However, the one story that emerged out of the hype fully-formed was that they were the first band from the Internet to make it big. They were dubbed as a ‘Myspace band’ and their success was seen as either a novelty or a danger to the entire music industry, depending on who you believed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK7egZaT3hs
The power of the Internet was still generally unknown then, but Arctic Monkeys became the face of the changing times in the mid-2000s. They cultivated their own fanbase from the start, and their DIY ethics payed dividends when their studio album was released. It was put out in January 2006 and became the fastest selling debut in British chart history. Yet the band members themselves had no real input into the use of technology for promotional or marketing reasons. They were simply at the right place at the right time to reap the benefits of a new Internet-driven culture.
“All we did was write songs and play shows and hand out a couple of discs,” Turner said about the misconceptions around the band’s intentions. “We never orchestrated any of it.”
Their debut catapulted the band to national stardom, the prestigious Mercury Prize, and was used as a springboard for a further four number one albums, a cabinet full of awards, and headline slots all around the world.
In the 1960s film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, in which the album takes its title from, Albert Finney’s character declares, “I’m me and nobody else. Whatever people say I am, that’s what I’m not because they don’t know a bloody thing about me.”
It was this steadfast defiance that perfectly aligned with the band’s ethos early on and earmarked their electric beginnings. Consistently placed near the top of lists for most important British albums in history now, it is still remarkable that out of nowhere a group of teenagers effectively helped changed the face of the music industry forever. It was accidental of course, but their youthful resistance and enthusiasm still sounds as brilliant and as vital as it did ten years ago.
Image: Arctic Monkeys
Sly & The Family Stone had spent their early beginnings crafting songs from blueprints that were almost illegible. There were all sorts of musical genres and ideas mapped out, but they all skewed off in different directions, which meant the music just missed the mark at times. However, on the tracks where they did manage to harness all their influences and impart their own sense of identity within them – the results were amazing.
The endless possibilities prevalent during the latter years of the psychedelic explosion of the sixties was what bandleader Sylvester ‘Sly Stone’ Stewart drew on. The former radio DJ had spent his formative year’s zig-zagging between all kinds of music (folk, pop, rock and soul). So when it came down to making his own, it was only natural that he would approach it with a similarly wide open mind-frame.
His vision was perfected on 1969’s Stand! But in the two years it had taken to record and release its follow-up, things had changed. America was in the grip of severe civil unrest, the Vietnam War was plundering on with no end in sight, and Sly had reached such a high level of fame and fortune that he locked himself inside a Hollywood mansion armed with a bottomless pile of cocaine as he tried to escape away from it all.
“If the previous Family Stone records were ‘tight but loose’ then what followed on There’s A Riot Goin’ On could only be called ‘loose but tight’,” one reviewer wrote about the resulting album, which was released 45 years ago last week(November 20th 1971).
As the dawn of the new decade arrived, Sly moved into an illustrious mansion owned by John Phillips, from the Mamas And The Papas. It had been a difficult year for the front man as he had slid into a decline. Of the 80 concerts his band had been scheduled to play, Sly had missed 26 of them. His increasing unreliability and erratic behavior had understandably created divisions within the band. And these circumstances only worsened when he took off for Los Angeles.
Eating up studio time with the sort of nonchalance and righteous debauchery that Keith Richards would soon make his trademark, Sly attempted to create the next album at Record Plant studios. However, despite also having a fully equipped Winnebago to record in, neither option particularly appealed. Instead, it was at his house where the album would gradually be made.
His vicious pet dog, appropriately named Gun, patrolled around the property while all manner of people came and went during all hours of the day and night. With cocaine available in frightening abundance, it is easy to see how the scene unsurprisingly wasn’t really conducive to getting work done.
“There was nothing but girls and coke everywhere,” jazz legend Miles Davis remembered in his autobiography Miles. “I told him I couldn’t do nothing with him. Then I told Columbia I couldn’t make him record any quicker. We snorted some coke together and that was it.”
Davis wasn’t the only star to show up at Sly’s door though. With the majority of his band left behind in San Francisco, apart from trumpeter Cynthia Robinson and saxophonist Jerry Martini who moved in with him, the sessions took on a free form structure. The likes of Bobby Womack and Billy Preston helped Sly record whenever the mood took him. They were usually the only ones left around. Band members flew over intermittently to record their various different parts. But these contributions were often just recorded over by Sly, which gave the album its distinctly worn sound.
“The funk never lets up on Riot. But it’s not dance funk or party funk or even P-Funk. It’s lonely, claustrophobic, 3am funk,” Robert Cass described in Pop Dose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YzitR0IKW4
The sombre sounding record traded the irresistible rhythms of previous albums and instead fixated on withdrawn grooves that captured a slow decline. The horn arrangements were sparse, only occasionally breaking through in triumphant blasts. While the drums provided a steady beat beneath Sly’s drugged-out vocals.
His delivery is where the music gains some of its greatest moments though. The slurred words, which are at times indecipherable, only adding to the general sense of decay around the whole album. Lines come and go, but on specific lyrical points, Stone attempted to momentarily raise his game. The fact that his drawled register that cries out in desperation doesn’t hit the required marks only makes it that much more harrowing and real.
In Just Like A Baby Sly’s vocals are swamped within the murky instrumentation like a fish swimming beneath a surface of visibly impenetrable water. Confined to his mansion, he overdubbed the vocal takes to such an extent that the tapes began to audibly smudge.
Lyrically, the focus was mainly switched from what was going on in society to personal matters. On Brave & Strong he declares “Out and down, ain’t got a friend,” and you sadly tend to believe him. The fact that a rich man who had the adoration of millions could feel so hopeless and alienated was striking in its very notion at the time.
With the group essentially disbanded, and a host of big names acting as Sly’s own personal backing, he needed to get creative with his song arrangements. The drummer, Greg Errico, had quit part way through the Riot sessions, which led the frontman down an entirely new avenue of instrumentation. Utilising the new Maestro Rhythm King drum machine, Sly found a key component of his new sound.
“He used it like a stripper pole,” Sam Sweet wrote in Wax Poetics. “It was a solid, stable median around which he could allow his woozy music to writhe and gyrate.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdiRhzTsSnk
The dark funk that seeped out was a significant departure from the sunny disposition of the band’s earlier recordings. Gone was the optimism to be replaced by pessimism. And in the place of Sly’s extravagant showmanship and energy was the shell of a man who had retreated into his own world. Where before there were messages of hope and excitement to the people, now there was nothing but a resigned ‘fuck you all’. Their earlier notions of idealism and togetherness had been banished, just as the sense of social disillusionment soared to its highest point in quite some time.
The isolation, paranoia and bloodshot eyes are prevalent all over the record. If there’s ever a song that warns you about the adverse effects of sustained cocaine use it is Spaced Cowboy. In a house that was famous for its complete lack of clocks, the track captures the sound of 4am delirium almost perfectly.
Meanwhile, Family Affair is a dark piece where the divides between just about everyone from siblings to newlyweds is as inevitable as it is heartbreaking. “You can’t leave ’cause your heart is there, But you can’t stay ’cause you’ve been somewhere else, You can’t cry ’cause you’ll look broke down, But you’re crying anyway ’cause you’re all broke down,” Sly sang on what would be his third and final number one hit single, capturing a dysfunctional relationship at its very core.
And that is perhaps how Riot can best be summarized too. It’s a statement on Sly’s dysfunctional relationship to his own country, his own band and with drugs. It is not an easy album to listen to and only occasionally could it actually be classed as enjoyable, but that is not what it’s meant to be. Given Sly’s own personal circumstances at the time, and indeed that of the world, it is hardly surprising that such a challenging record was the outcome. The unflinching struggle is raw and uncompromising, but beauty can be found in it.
Upon its release the record, which now regularly features in ‘greatest ever’ lists, wasn’t met with any particular affection. It was only later in the decade when dark funk and soul began to emerge fully that its influence was recognised.
“If you don’t have any Sly & the Family Stone albums in your collection, you undoubtedly and, (in many cases, unknowingly) have pieces of their music embedded within other albums now,” Zeth Lundy wrote.
The sound of disintegration has perhaps never been so accurately captured as it was on Riot. The bones in the body crack and ache, while there are heavy sustained blinks regularly. There is a voice that is weary after it has been kept up for far too long into the morning for its liking, and an assortment of sounds that linger around in the background seem as if they were double-dipped in tar. It is woozy, dirty, sleep-deprived, anxious and dissatisfied, and it is also classic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtPZhq58nwQ
Image: Sly & The Family Stone
Last month (October 31st) marked the 16th birthday of Outkast’s critically acclaimed fourth album Stankonia. Released as the follow up to Aquemini, the duo of André “3000” Benjamin and Antwan “Big Boi” Patton decamped to their newly purchased studio in Atlanta and came out with a hip-hop hybrid that continued their hot streak. So, how did they redefine the boundaries of the genre while simultaneously becoming leading figures in popular culture?
After making their debuts as two fresh faced hopefuls a year earlier, André and Big Boi arrived at The Source Awards, held at Madison Square Garden’s Paramount Theatre in 1995. There, the imposing Suge Knight, owner of Death Row Records, was in part responsible for an ill feeling plaguing the night, using his stage time to try and recruit artists who were on an opposing label (Bad Boy).
“If any artists out there want to be artists and stay a star, and don’t want to worry about the executive producer all in the videos and all on the records dancing…come to Death Row!” he said.
The New York crowd didn’t take particularly kindly to the obvious jibe aimed at P Diddy and the night descended into hostility. So when the little known Outkast, not affiliated with either and from the South no less, won Best New Rap Group, they were caught up in the crossfire. But amongst all the jeers and uncertainty, Three Stacks was unmoved.
“I’m tired of folks, you know what I’m saying, closed minded folks. The South got something to say,” he declared resiliently.
He would go on to be proven right as Outkast became hip-hop’s most popular and revered group at that time. Their debut Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik had put them on the map, but the three which follows stuck a giant red pin in their location, firmly, and permanently putting Atlanta on the hip-hop map, right there next to New York and Los Angeles.
“It finally gave a clear-cut incision from New York wannabe-ism,” Killer Mike, whose break came on an Outkast feature, explained in ATL: The Untold Story of Atlanta’s Rise in the Rap Game. “It was a great thing that they were handled in that way, because it finally cut the umbilical cord saying, ‘We don’t have to impress you. We’re gonna show you.’”
Following that night they took the ignorance and disrespect in their stride as they attempted to prove that region had no real bearing on the quality of music. ATLiens and Aquemini featured spacey, thematic explorations that floored fans and critic alike. But it was their fourth effort that cemented them as one of the most important and popular artists at the turn of the millennium.
“Stankonia is the sound of every cracked-open door being kicked off its hinges,” critic Mike Driver wrote.
Outkast’s debut album was recorded in a studio known as Bosstown, owned by Bobby Brown. Brown had purchased it in 1991 with the vision that it would become something of a genre-founding hub, similar to Motown Records. Indeed, he saw considerable success from the Bosstown recording booth.
“Me and Dre used to catch the bus up just hoping that we’d see Bobby or somebody who could hear us rap,” Big Boi remembered. “We would never see anyone though.”
Eventually, they were spotted by the production trio of Rico Wade, Ray Murray and Sleepy Brown, also known as Organized Noize. This would be the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship with the trio and the studio. After recording several albums and smash hit singles there, they would purchase the studio themselves from Brown.
“He was like, ‘Hey, man! You can have it!’” Big Boi told The Boston Globe. “But our manager was like, ‘Get out of here. Bobby’s just messing with you.’” When the duo finishing touring and returned home, however, they quickly found out that the studio was in foreclosure. They paid the required money without a second of hesitation and it was officially theirs.
“We then made it into Stankonia,” Big Boi said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JfEJq56IwI
Now afforded the opportunity to spend as much time as they wanted in their newly christened studio, the duo got to work in the spring of 1999. Having produced seven out of the 15 tracks on Aquemini, Earthtone III (Outkast alongside Mr.DJ) joined together again and supplied 13 of the 16 actual songs on the album. It was this familiarity, coupled with an exploding level of creative freedom and desire for expression, that fuelled the album’s sound. They knew what worked, they knew what would get a rise from their fans, but that didn’t stop them from attempting to push the boundaries and experiment – and in turn, that experimentation made their music even stronger.
“We’re just trying to make music for the times,” Andre explained in an interview with XXL Magazine. “We’re trying to show the subculture. People in the streets losing their minds- that’s the tempo.”
A prime example of this was the first single to be taken off the album entitled B.O.B. Over a wailing choir, heavy guitar riffs and apocalyptic drums, both rap about a world that is crumbling down all around them; with reference to then-President Bill Clinton’s bombing of Iraq made in the chorus just for good measure.
Elsewhere, the provocative Gasoline Dreams put the whole of America under the microscope as well as the rest of the world. And while the supposed ‘American Dream’ was burning before everyone’s eyes, there was also the issue of climate change. “I hear that Mother Nature now’s on birth control, the coldest pimp be looking for somebody to hold.”
However, global issues were just the tip of the iceberg when it came to lyrical content as everything from teenage pregnancy (Toilet Tisha) to skewed drug laws were dissected. “My cousin Ricky Walker got ten years doing Fed time on first offence drug bust,” Big Boi raged in Gasoline Dreams.
Along with depictions of drugs taking a hold over the street, and the ensuing violence that was subsequently unleashed, (Spaghetti Junction), there was also room for the massively popular Ms Jackson. Impressively, Three Stacks recorded every single instrument on the song himself, except for the bass. It was the single which would quickly catapult the duo into the heady, previously unfathomable heights of mainstream mega-fame. That it was about a crumbled relationship and the bitter divide that centred on the couples child was not exactly ground-breaking. But the fact that a hip-hop song professed a sense of vulnerability, and extended a genuine apology to those who were hurt, was certainly unique at the time.
“When people pick up the album ten years from now, they can feel what’s going on. It’s a soundtrack of the culture,” André concluded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVehcuJXe6I
The instrumentation flicked around at a chaotic rate. Funk keys a la Parliament provided the bedrock for a few tracks, while heavy guitars more inclined to rock music surroundings fleshed out others. It was a dizzying concoction of sounds, instruments and influences, all flawlessly glued together by lean drum tracks and incredible verses from André and Big Boi.
Explaining the differences in lyrics and flow between the pair, André said, “Big Boi freestyles, I don’t,” he said. “But he’s most definitely Outkast’s anchor. He kind of keeps it grounded.”
The juxtaposition between them is not a new concept. Since their beginnings critics sought to separate the two and assign labels to differentiate them. The “poet and the player” was often what was harkened back to, but on Stankonia this wasn’t always so well defined in the lyrical content.
Instead, the major difference on their fourth album was André’s changing approach to the music as a whole. No longer listening to hip-hop while making the record, focusing instead on George Clinton, Prince and Jimi Hendrix, his delivery began to drift away from that which rap fans may have expected. This experimentation with his vocals and functionality as a rapper actually paving the way for future generations to reap the benefits, who toyed with singing and rapping, as well as unique rhythms and meters.
“Outkast is about personal expression and individualism,” he told The Irish Times. “I can’t force Big Boi to be something he’s not and he can’t change me. That’s the beauty of it.”
One of their crowning musical achievements, Stankonia would sadly be the last time the pair worked so effectively together in the studio. They won the 2002 Grammy award for Best Rap album and sold over four million copies in the meantime, but the surge in mainstream popularity came at an obvious price.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYxAiK6VnXw
“We do things separately now but it’s a good kind of separation, like an incubation period,” Big Boi explained of their later recording processes.
“The biggest thing that’s changed is that we’re not in the same place at the same time. But we both learned how to write, produce and do the melodic funk thing together. It’s like having two separate cubicles in the same company and meeting in the boardroom to get things right.”
This setup inevitably perished as the years continued, with the two high school friends drifting away from each other and the band over time. But while their union (kind of) ended just six years later, Stankonia still stands as a startling record.
It was an album both of the times and incredibly far ahead of them. There were cultural keys thrown in there that could unlock the whole world of the early millennium, yet at the same time it was all so futuristic. References rained down in a scattergun approach, while wrapped up in sounds that would come to dominate the hip-hop landscape for years to come.
In a way it was both a textbook and a how-to guide, which just about everybody in hip hop has read at least a thousand times. The fact that some are still none the wiser, as to how they did it, all these years later is a testament to its creative longevity.
Read more: Outkast’s Aquemini, the first hip-hop epic
Image: Outkast
In much the same way as David Bowie did with Blackstar, you get the sense now that Leonard Cohen’s new album You Want It Darker was always intended to be his epitaph. There was the frank admission in a recent interview about how he had been readying himself for death for some time, the difficult process of crafting his album while he was essentially immobile, and then there was the music itself. A dark lament that featured a scarcity of instruments mixed together in a symbolic stripping back of everything but the essentials. However, while his last album will act as his final statement there is an abundance of poetic verses, love-torn laments, and midnight observations that he left behind.
Although Cohen may not have generated quite the same level of public outpourings of grief that Bowie did when he passed away on Friday at the age of 82, there is no doubting his quality and influence. He was, after all, one of the few men who Bob Dylan championed as a song writing genius.
“As far as I’m concerned,” he was reported as saying once, “Cohen is number one. But I’m number zero.”
Cohen grew up in Westmount, Quebec before his literary ambitions took him all around the world. The likes of New York City and London were taken in. But none of them captured him quite like the Greek island of Hydra did. He withdrew there and progressed from a little known Canadian poet into a well-respected author, poet and musician over time.
Using the money he had acquired from his deceased grandmother’s will, Cohen purchased a large three-story villa that acted as both his home and his workplace while on the island. There was no electricity or running water and the rooms were empty from a lack of furniture. It was a place of distinct isolation at times, where he was kept company by kerosene lamps and very little else. But it was the place where Cohen began to emerge as the writer he had always intended to be.
“I was trained in what later became known as the Montreal School of Poetry….We would meet, a loosely defined group of people, and we would read each other poems. We were passionately involved with them. And our lives were involved with this occupation of writing,” Cohen explained to Paul Zollo in 1992.
“We had in our minds the examples of poets who continued to work their whole lives. There was never any sense of a raid on the marketplace- that you should come up with a hit and get out. That kind of sensibility simply did not take root in my mind.”
His most popular single, Hallelujah, came from 1984’s Various Positions. When that was released he’d already completed six albums and had a number of novels and poetry books behind him. But while he had always gained respect from fellow musicians and gathered a cult following since his debut in 1967, Cohen never sold a lot of records. He remained, essentially, fixed on the peripheries.
“For many years, Cohen was more revered than bought,” The New Yorker’s David Remnick wrote in his recent profile of the singer. “Although his albums generally sold well enough, they did not move on the scale of big rock acts.”
Away from the island of Hydra with its many uninhabited houses, horseshoe-shaped harbour, and his muse Marianne Jensen, Cohen took up residence in New York. It was a world away from what he had grown accustomed to over the past decade, and proved to be a difficult time. Jensen, who was a married woman when he first met her, joined him, but their relationship would not last and collapsed amongst a host of infidelities on both sides.
Death of A Ladies’ Man, the infamous album made alongside producer Phil Spector, captured Cohen at the height of his womanising ways, although it was clear it was never going to continue. “My reputation as a ladies’ man was a joke that caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone,” Cohen once revealed. He would go on to make just two more albums over the next decade as he retreated away from the attention and limelight once more.
On his late 80s classic Everybody Knows he returned to paint a grim picture of a buckling society, as he stated ruefully that everybody knew that “the good guys lost”, that the “scene is dead”, and that the “plague is coming.” The act of self-medication was always on hand to whisk you away from the truth, but in Cohen’s worlds that he constructed this only served to prolong the pain. Everybody may know that you live forever when you’ve done a line or two of cocaine, but his delivery of it left no doubt in the listeners mind that this wasn’t a good thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lin-a2lTelg
As well as mortality, the concept of isolation was entrenched like creases in an old shirt within Cohen’s lyrics. The imperfection in his character was never dismissed as a reason for his loneliness though. But nor was it relied upon for pity. It instead acted as a counterbalance to the story, allowing him to paint in grey and not just the usual black and white tones.
“I smile when I’m angry, I cheat and I lie, I do what I have to do to get by,” he sang on In My Secret Life. It displayed a deeply conflicted character who could see his flaws yet was unable to change, despite the dire circumstances they found themselves in.
Much of Cohen’s lyrics throughout his career grappled with these sorts of issues- be them religious, ethical or societal. The observations and experiences were filtered through and then discussed with unbelievable honesty and compassion. However, while he was noted for his lyrical proficiency, other elements of his music were often overlooked as a result.
“When people talk about Leonard, they fail to mention his melodies, which to me, along with his lyrics, are his greatest genius,” Dylan said. “Even the counterpoint lines—they give a celestial character and melodic lift to every one of his songs. As far as I know, no one else comes close to this in modern music.”
Noted for his patience in creating a song, years would often pass by as Cohen worked and then reworked different components of a track over and over again. The tireless work illustrating how Cohen viewed writing his songs as a profession. There was no luck or divine inspiration as far as he was concerned. It was all down to the dedication within the craft and submission to the work that yielded the best results.
“I have whole notebooks for lyrics,” he told Zollo. “I’m very happy to be able to speak this way to fellow craftsmen. Some people may find it encouraging to see how slow and dismal and painstaking the process is… But why shouldn’t my work be hard? Almost everybody’s work is hard. One is distracted by this notion that there is such a thing as inspiration, that it comes fast and easy. And some people are graced by that style. I’m not. So I have to work as hard as any stiff, to come up with the payload.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttEMYvpoR-k
Painter Chuck Close once declared that “inspiration is for amateurs– the rest of us just show up and get to work.” This mode of thinking aligned perfectly with Cohen’s own stance. The words went from the likes of a back of a cigarette packet and then into a notebook. And once in there, any number of edits were conducted until finally a song reached its own individual sense of completion.
The descent into detail was what differentiated Cohen’s work from many of his contemporaries. It had to be based in truth, but it also had to be constructed inside a world that was built in and of itself. The little details in life gather up to help form a complete picture- without these, worlds within a song can be devoid of these facets that combine to create reality. Life is in the details, and Cohen obsessed over this concept throughout his career.
“You don’t really want to say ‘the tree,’ you want to say ‘the sycamore,’” he explained. “We seem to be able to relate to detail. We seem to have an appetite for it. It seems that our days are made of details… It’s better to not just say ‘I’m watching TV in my room’ but to say, ‘I’m in my room with that hopeless little screen.’ I think those are the details that delight us. They delight us because we can share a life then.”
After another extended period away from the music industry which saw Cohen relocate to Los Angeles and devote himself to Buddhism under the tutelage of Joshu Sasaki Roshi, he returned at the new millennium reinvigorated. The final years of his career saw him at his most productive, as he toured relentlessly and to critical acclaim. While he also released some of his best loved material, like Nevermind.
“They say life is a beautiful play with a terrible third act,” his son and producer of his final record Adam Cohen told Rolling Stone in September this year. “If that’s the case though, it must not apply to Leonard Cohen. Right now, at the end of his career, perhaps the end of his life, he’s at the summit of his powers.”
Image: Rolling Stone
Last month, September 23, marked the 25th year anniversary of Primal Scream’s incredible third album Screamadelica– a record which many fans and critics alike have cited as one of the most popular and significant of the era. Fusing club music with dashes of their rock and roll past, the Scottish outfit came out with a defining statement on the acid house movement in Britain. But just how did a band who began their lives as punks trade it all in for a shiny, euphoric new beginning?
As the eighties clicked over into the nineties, Primal Scream were no longer the indie darlings that they had once been championed as. Their self-titled sophomore effort had left a lot to be desired and the band had quickly become, “very unpopular with the music press,” according to associate Jeff Barret.
Lead singer Bobby Gillespie was a close friend with Alan McGee who owned Creation Records, a small label which Primal Scream were signed to. McGee’s label would later go on to find huge commercial success with Oasis, but the years preceding this were often glum. There was no real hits prior to Primal Scream and bands had to fight and scrape for every bit of exposure and money they could get through relentless touring.
“The relationship between Alan and Bobby was fundamental,” Irvine Welsh detailed in the Creation Records documentary Upside Down. “They were two old-school Glasgow punk rockers who were best mates and they had this whole joint vision: Bobby as the artist, Alan as the enabler.”
However, after two albums the band were struggling to gain any momentum with unfavourable reviews and constant band member changes heavily weighing them down. Having left his position as drummer in The Jesus and Mary Chain to focus solely on his own band, Gillespie was starting to feel the pressure.
Along with two childhood friends in guitarist Andrew Innes and bassist Robert Young, the trio began to attend nightclubs while out on the road. Neither were particularly enamoured with the burgeoning underground dance scene. McGee, on the other hand, was immediately enchanted. In fact, the label boss moved to the centre of Manchester, where bands like The Stone Roses were performing legendary gigs at the Hacienda, just so he could be a part of it all.
Around the middle of 1989, McGee invited Gillespie out and gave him his first taste of ecstasy and along with it a look at the thriving club movement.
“Gillespie got it,” McGee said. “By about June, he thought he’d invented acid house!”
“McGee was literally… a big bag… ‘Open your mouth, open your mouth…'” Gillespie remembered. “And we started getting into it.”
After Gillespie slipped into the decadent nightclub culture, all the members of Primal Scream soon followed him. It was here where the band’s future would change, often pinned down to a fateful meeting with influential London DJ Andrew Weatherall. Both fans of the other’s work, Innes implored him to make a remix from off the band’s latest album.
I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have was played frequently by Weatherall during his sets, so he was only too happy to oblige. Adding a drum loop and various samples, including some Peter Fonda dialogue from 1960s film The Wild Angels, and the track Loaded was created.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3ixEzKA4k0
“Initially something of a dance/rock traitor excursion, Andrew Weatherall took I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have from their previous album and slipped it a couple of bad things,” Ian Wade wrote in his retrospective review for the BBC.
Loaded was the band’s first major hit. It landed comfortably in the UK’s top 20 singles chart and signalled the arrival of a new found sound and attitude for the band.
“We want to be free to do what we want to do. And we want to get loaded. And we want to have a good time,” Fonda said in the sample. It effectively spelled out Primal Scream’s new manifesto.
Come Together was then rush released just a few months later, in an attempt to capitalise on their success. It wasn’t as popular as the first single, but it certainly gave the band yet more evidence that they were moving in the right direction. An album was now clearly needed.
Initial demos were recorded across a lengthy gestation period in Innes’ bedroom, before the band moved to a rundown shack of a studio. Accompanied only by themselves, an engineer and a few sleeping bags, which they unfurled under the mixing desk whenever they needed to catch up on some sleep, they set about creating more songs.
Thanks to their two surprise chart successes, money started flowing into the label, and with that came greater possibilities. Not only in the sense of a better studio, which they began recording in while located in a posh suburb of London, but also new equipment with which to experiment.
Although previously caught up in the grind of earning money as a small-time touring band, their much-loved singles moved them onto a regular wage scheme. As such, they were able to now access a range of modern instruments, most importantly being an Akai S1000 sampler.
“That changed everything,” Innes recalled. “Whereas before we’d have guitars, bass and drums, suddenly we got a sampler and instead of being this ordinary band you could have James Brown’s drummer or you could have strings from an Indian record.”
“Now they all use computers and samplers,” Gillespie added. “But 20 odd years ago that was very unusual. It just opened everything up to us. We started to write and think in a totally different way.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUjW82je_38
Once they’d finished recording their songs, they sent them to Weatherall, with whom they had quickly formed a close bond with in a short space of time.
“They gave me what they’d done and left me to it,” he said.
After Weatherall had added his numerous touches; producing samples, cutting back sections and devising loops, the album was then passed on down the line. Alex Patterson, also known as The Orb, was next to get his hands on it. He became a soundboard for the band, offering his advice and making slight tweaks were he saw fit.
“The Orb did amazing mixes,” Gillespie stated. “Then Andrew [Innes] edited it all together. He did the edit to make it what you hear today.”
The album was consciously put together to tell a story to which both the band and its listeners could relate. It was an album which resonated with the feelings and behaviours of people involved in the acid house scene at the time; ecstasy culture had well and truly arrived in Britain, and Innes devised the album to fit around this lifestyle.
“Welcome to club Scream- A- Delica,” Weatherall wrote in his tour diary for The Face in 1991. “This is not just another pop concert, but entertainment for the nineties. For one crazy nanosecond I even think that the word ‘rave’ isn’t such a shite way of describing an evening of young people’s hedonism.”
The fact that the evening spread across a whole weekend in the drug fuelled nights of the 90s was not lost on Primal Scream. Movin’ on Up was the first track on the album, kickstarting the Friday with a hefty dose of anticipation and a fair few rounds of pre-drinks. Then it steadily built towards the middle section where the psychedelic dance songs (Higher Than The Sun And Come Together) transported you right into the middle of a sweaty and packed dance floor. Then, finally, once Friday night and Saturday night had been sped through with reckless abandon, the inevitable blues of the Sunday comedown arrived with Shine Like Stars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHjVIBDYgXg
All that was left was to create the album art and get it out into the world, and local artist Paul Cannel was the man who Gillespie called on for this. The sliding sun was taken from a much bigger painting by the artist, but it seemed to encapsulate the album perfectly. Gillespie would tell him only some of the names of the songs that were featured on it, and it was then up to Cannel to paint whatever came to mind.
“He would take heroin and magic mushrooms. Then he would paint for however long it took him until he’d call and say ‘the painting is ready,’” Gillespie said of the process.
While Primal Scream seemed to lean heavily towards aping their musical heroes on previous albums, Screamadelica kept fragments of these influences and fused them together to create something new and exciting. Rock, blues, jazz, gospel and country all collided with house music to make an irresistible mix.
“The meeting of unashamed, celebratory club music from Weatherall and rock star fandom from Gillespie is what gives it its particular mood,” Pitchfork wrote in their review of the album.
It was a thorough re-evaluation of what a band could be at the turn of the decade, yet it addressed this idea without actually providing any definitive statements. With their electronic leanings being left behind for more sleazy rock and roll pursuits in their follow up, Screamadelica was a bright, brief flash in the mirror reflecting a moment in time.
Showing no concerns at trying to hide its dilated pupils or clenched jaw, it was all about having a good time and was at times proudly wasted. Even though it is 25 now and old enough to know better, you feel that, if given the chance, it could still make some of its younger counterparts look rather silly on a night out.
Image: Primal Scream
“Tonight we’re not going to do any age jokes,” Mick Jagger said as he walked onto the Desert Trip stage alongside his Rolling Stones bandmates. “But welcome to the Palm Spring retirement home for genteel English musicians.”
The legendary rockers were bringing a showstopping end to the first night of the Desert Trip festival, which has taken place this week in California, organised by the same team behind Coachella. Bob Dylan played before the Stones, and over the next two nights Paul McCartney, Neil Young, The Who and Roger Waters would all also perform.
Dubbed “Oldchella”, it is almost definitely the last chance to see some of the most significant and defining artists of the last five decades, the Desert Trip offered a remedy to the rough year for deaths in the arts that 2016 has inflicted, which has undoubtedly led to serious thinking about musical mortality.
After the year had already started off on a bad foot with Motorhead’s Lemmy passing away at the end of 2015, in early January, David Bowie’s death caused the world to grind to a standstill. Since then, news of cultural and much loved icons passing away have kept on coming. Prince, Glenn Frey, Alan Rickman, and Phife Dawg just some of the more notable names that have reminded us of how temporary life can be.
Icons who we have all grown up watching and listening to, can’t and won’t last forever. So with that in mind it is easy to understand why an event such as Desert Trip, featuring a stable of 60’s music legends all in one place, appealed to so many. It offered a chance to see the undisputed greats of the last five decades across one extravagant event, the likes of which will probably never be seen again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtGQfzDbEGY
It’s fair to say that the founder and producer of the Coachella and Desert Trip festivals, Paul Tollett, has had a fair old year. Already responsible for reuniting the classic Guns N’ Roses line-up at this year’s Coachella festival, Tollet wasn’t done with just yet.
The idea first came to him in May last year, but it wasn’t until he had watched each respective act live again that it really started to gain momentum in his mind. What if he could put together the greatest rock and roll line-up ever assembled and combine it with a festival experience like no other?
Joining The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, the Who and Roger Waters together to do this became closer to reality when Tollet actually gained a permit for two weekends at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California.
Convinced that these six pioneering and legendary acts had the capabilities and followings in order to attract an audience demographic unlike anything witnessed before, the job then became about locking down the artists. With a rumoured talent and production budget of around $100M- the financial aspects of it were already extraordinary.
“I was in slow talks with each of the six,” Tollet explained to Billboard. “Once the specific concept was confirmed, I sent a financial offer out with a short window to accept.”
He billed it as one of the greatest shows of all time and after some initial trepidation from the artists involved all six of his targets signed on.
“A couple of them asked, ‘What are you going to do if we don’t do it?’ [I said] ‘If we don’t get these six, we’re not going to do the show.’”
Over the years, Coachella has become the prominent festival on the American music calendar. A success story that has made eye-wateringly high amounts of money in all of its recent showings. Just take last year for example, when it raked in over $84M in profit. Or in 2014, when it made $78M.
Latching onto the festival’s mass appeal and popularity, promoter Goldenvoice noticed a glaring gap in the market though which wasn’t being attended to. While festivals nowadays are catering to the youth of the day, there were none that were being constructed around the tastes of older generations, like the baby boomers. Yet this was essentially an untapped market full of disposable incomes, who were willing to spend a bit more money if what was on offer was deemed as worth it. Add to that the context in which so many musical greats have passed away, the timing couldn’t have been better.
The three day event spanning across the weekend promised to fix this, with a festival which offered not only great music but also the chance of recapturing youth. The Desert Trip was rooted firmly in nostalgia, but it needed to offer more than just that if it was to be classed as a success.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQEu65sZEP0
When news broke of its happening in early May, the fan response was unequivocal. Tickets for the first weekend sold out in just three hours. While amongst the mad scramble, it was decided by Goldenvoice that they would do a second weekend which they had initially remained silent about when tickets first went on sale.
“We were on the fence about a second weekend right up until the day we announced and saw the reaction,” Tollet said. “It generated four times the traffic of a typical Coachella announcement.”
The sense of being there at a significant cultural moment in music history weighed heavily as a drawcard for people who dashed to buy tickets.
“The audience is going to feel real special about being able to see all of this at once. It’s a celebration,” Neil Young declared.
Meanwhile, Gary Bongiovanni of Pollster magazine described it as a game-changing approach to festival creating.
“The event is expanding the boundaries of what a concert can be. This is a new concept and is aimed at a much different audience,” he said.
Alongside the two concerts performed each evening, there was also a wealth of other activities to do within the festival grounds. It appealed purposely to a mass selection of people looking for something more than just camping in mud and listening to music all day.
Clearly catering to an older and more comfort-driven audience, a “culinary experience” was offered with 40 of the country’s best chefs descending into Indio, California to serve up cooking classes as well as food. Luxurious RV camping packages were available as opposed to the old trusty tent. While there were free shuttle rides to the grocery stores nearby, before an afternoon of pampering at the “Beauty Bar” or a browse around arts and crafts stalls beckoned. More than just a music show, Desert Trip was packaged as a sort of all-inclusive weekend vacation. However, despite having so much variables to offer, the festival would have failed without the strength of its line-up.
“All the bands you’re seeing here have been playing music for 50 years or more,” Jagger told the crowd during last Friday’s set. “We think it’s pretty amazing you still want to see us, so thank you.”
The fact that all six acts are still highly regarded after such a long time in the industry is testament to not only their enduring appeal but also their talent. It comes as no real surprise that so many people still want to watch Jagger theatrically bounce around the stage like he’s still in his 20’s. Or Bob Dylan while he refuses to let his face be put up on the big screens as he strums through Like A Rolling Stone, one of the many songs which have just earned him a Nobel Prize in Literature.
At a time where many are mourning the loss of Bowie, Prince and others, this festival catered to an audience who not only wanted to take a journey back in time, but a chance to see artists who, quite seriously, may not all be around for decades to come. It acts as a reminder of the fragility of human existence but while also being a joyful celebration of the past and present.
Image: Billboard
“I had this thing for a while where I was falling through trap doors all the time into oblivion… It was happening towards the end of OK Computer. I was a complete fucking mess when that cycle had finished,” Thom Yorke told the NME back in 2000.
On the eve of releasing their fourth album Kid A, Yorke and the rest of his Radiohead bandmates were still partially lost within the processes of dealing with its predecessor’s incredible success. Released three years prior, OK Computer had catapulted the five friends to the pinnacle of rock music stardom. But what they encountered when there, from their commercial and critical high point, wasn’t necessarily understood or even enjoyed.
The result was a follow-up album full of shadowed sketches that were transfixed with this notion. That while success had been attained, it had failed to quell all manners of self-doubt and insecurities that had previously existed. In many ways the fame and fortune the band achieved only served to heighten this isolation and deepening sense of detachment.
“The thing is you’re always developing and expanding. It’s a protean thing. And a public image can’t keep pace with it,” bassist Colin Greenwood told The Guardian. “So it – the process of success – is like this slow-drying glue that sets around you. It slows you down and gums you up.”
Everything In Its Right Place was the first song on the record and the first anyone actually heard of a completed album track. It was a response in sorts to OK Computer – the title said firmly with tongue dug into cheek.
“Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon,” Yorke mutters as whirls of piano echo all around him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvMql9XgIg0
Recorded in four different studios, in three countries, across a fractious period, Kid A began in Paris in January 1999. Setting up at the Guillaume Tell studio and tasking themselves with effectively forgetting all that had come before in favour of creating something new, it yielded no real results.
“Basically it was all frustration,” Yorke explained about why the band sought to change their sound. “I wasn’t getting off on anything that we’d normally do. So it was just ‘we have to do something else.’”
However three months later and with no significant headway having been made, the band decamped to Copenhagen. Their stay in Denmark wasn’t a long one though. Just over a month later they were back on English shores, taking up residence in a Gloucestershire studio.
Yet despite the constant moving around which may have hinted at signs of unproductivity, the band had actually began to hit their stride. In fact, by the time they arrived back home they had recorded an incredible amount of incomplete material.
“It was a difficult process to get going. But once we were up and running, it started going too well,” guitarist Jonny Greenwood said. “We started recording good song after good song and it became difficult to stop.”
Approaching the album like it was a blank canvas, the band pieced it together one little component at a time, in order to create a collage. Delicate squiggles were favoured over broad, heavy strokes as they claimed it was more a process of reworking than recording once they started to click into gear.
“A lot of the songwriting now isn’t really about song writing at all. It’s about editing, building up a lot of material, then piecing it together like a painter,” Yorke told Select.
Each day Yorke would enter into the studio faced with a large whiteboard of sorts. The possibility of working on any number of things faced the band, as at times around 50 different snippets of music were worked on by various members. The process was an overwhelming but ultimately liberating one. Instead of walking into the studio and setting up to play through a song each day, the band set to work on a scattering of different parts.
The separation in working situations also resulted in a fragmented album as a whole. But this was something which Yorke, as band leader, actively encouraged. It was the sound of struggling both outside of the music and also within it. Unable to translate the sounds in his head onto record and recovering from his breakdown of sorts, Kid A offered a perfect representation of these factors.
However, with its standing as a classic album nowadays, it is easy to forget that upon its release it wasn’t always met with such adulation. It debuted at number one, but it seemed ill at ease in such a high chart position, while critics constantly questioned its legitimacy.
“What do they want for sounding like Aphex Twin circa 1993, a medal?” one magazine wrote.
Meanwhile, the NME was only slightly less cutting about the bands evolution away from guitars in favour of synthesizers and electronics.
“Making experimental music is the easy way out,” they wrote. “Time will judge it. But right now, Kid A has the ring of a lengthy, over-analysed mistake.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX-fDKWGbRs
The fact that the album is almost painfully insular left it open to being criticised as overthought and overanalysed, but Yorke argued that it actually represented the opposite of this. Tracks meander in fragmented pieces to create a whole, which is indicative of a constant pursuit. Nothing really remains for long enough so as to become comfortable with it. Instead it proves to be disorientating but invigorating as the listener is invited into a strange new world.
The distortions hide Yorke’s vocals to the point where at times they are indecipherable. But the unemotional delivery, coupled with a seeming aversion to melodies, meant that his voice acts more as an instrument in the mix. His cut up lyrical style, aping the work of the likes of William Burroughs, working perfectly within the music of programmed beats and restrained riffs.
“You’re not supposed to think about the words. That’s the whole point all through the record,” Yorke explained. “The lyrics are over before you have time to talk and worry about it. That’s how it works.”
The hidden nature of his vocals and the glacial instrumentations meant that not much initially makes a connection. It’s the equivalent of walking around in an unfamiliar city. The basics are all there; big concrete buildings, expansive skylines, and the cold grey pavement under foot. But it is only once you know where you’re going that hidden alleyways begin to reveal themselves and hidden treasures can be found.
At the inception of the record, Yorke wanted to address numerous political topics, but as both himself and the band fell further and further into the process of recording this idea faded away. Existential fears instead started to plague the album that was being crafted together.
When they were making, it all members were either approaching or past the age of 30. The realisation that time is always slipping away and no one can escape the inevitability of death weighed heavily, especially on Yorke’s shoulders.
“It’s about the fear of dying,” he revealed once in a rare unguarded moment.
On the string-laden How To Disappear Completely Yorke sings, “I’m not here, this isn’t happening.” It’s almost as if he is lost within a waking nightmare and is trying to convince himself that it isn’t all as bad as he thinks it is. Yet on Idioteque he addresses the Ice Age as a very real threat to humanity, while the title track strings together some of his most “brutal and horrible” words of his career. “We got heads on sticks, you got ventriloquists,” he sings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlNAF1bDXkk
With a plethora of finished material, by April 2000 the album was complete. The only thing left to do was organise the track-listing after deciding on what songs to actually include. The fact that every band member had differing opinions on what to put on and what to leave off meant this stage took a particularly long time though.
“’We operate like the UN,’ Yorke once told an interviewer. “But I’m America.”
In the end the result was an album that offered not just a peek inside a clouded mind as it attempted to function, but a full immersion. Fears and anxieties were wrapped around a skeletal electronic structure, which helped Radiohead escape from the constraints of what a rock band should be.
Disillusioned with a seeming lack of possibilities and struck by a severe case of writers block, the band stumbled upon the endless possibilities of what a rock band could be.
Image: Radiohead
An old Greek myth said that the female sirens lured you in like a fish on a baited hook. Ships sailed past the three of them and the men on board were enticed by the beauty of their voices. They were captivating yet dangerous creatures though, and their promise unfortunately far outweighed their reality.
Stranded on the island of Anthemoessa, the sirens lured passing ships towards them with their song. But the intrigued men would then meet a sad demise as they crashed onto the shallow reef in pursuit of these calls. In an album which Nicolas Jaar has openly admitted as being his most “topically cohesive and politically-minded record to date,” it is easy to see this as a potential metaphor for the current plight of his home country of America and also his adopted one of Chile.
“I need context. And I see this as a context record, for context around me and outside of me,” Jaar recently told Rolling Stone.
Sirens is the New York/Chilean producer’s second full-length album, after his first came five years ago in the form of the bewitching Space Is Only Noise. In the intervening years he kept himself busy with a constant stream of releases; be it a collaborative album with Dave Harrington (Darkside), standalone dance tracks (Nymphs), or a reimagined soundtrack entitled Pomegranates for a 1969 Russian avant-garde film. But it is here, on Sirens, where he really delves into the complex contextual and personal matters which have seemingly occupied his mind for some time.
It begins with the sound of a flag waving in the breeze on opening track Killing Time. But given the title and atmosphere of the record it could easily be a ship’s sail flapping in the open air. It seems to be getting closer and closer to some sort of conclusion, but the sound of the sirens never actually eventuate. The shattering of glass sees to that.
It’s a harsh break that ruptures the sombre soundscape that had been building up. But it occurs continually, as if shaking the listener out of the early malaise. The glass could be symbolic of a mirror reflecting all around it. And with its smashing comes the inference that reality has been shattered and the myths that go along with it have been broken too.
The crystal assault then gives way to lonely piano chords that strike out into the unknown. The stop start nature of them underlining the uncertainty that floats all around. After nearly five minutes of constructing his context, Jaar’s vocals finally make an appearance. His lyrics are hard to grasp though as they seem to dip in and out of coherence, almost as if they are getting lost in the wind upon delivery.
However, on his assertion that he’s “just killing time” there is a noticeable surge of clarity to be found in both his voice and the music. Almost as if an answer has suddenly emerged and revealed itself to him. But just when it appears that a solution has been stumbled upon, the track shifts and swerves once again, as it spirals into a crescendo of voices, before petering out with barely a whimper.
The messy and tangled The Governor then ups the ante as it builds gradually into a collage of noise. The jumbled drums fight against Jaar, as he does his best impression of an 80s synth pop vocalist.
“It was an 80 beats per minute song until I wondered what it would sound like at 160,” he explained. “I was thinking of it in regards to heavy metal and punk.”
The integration of these genres into an electronic producer’s music is an interesting one. The song stands as perhaps the greatest example of Jaar’s willingness to push boundaries and experiment with sounds, but it’s certainly not the only time he does it on Sirens. On No, for example, he incorporates Chilean harp from artist Sergio Cuevas, while the entirety of his lyrics are sung in Spanish beneath a bed of warbled synths.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2yrz4Yvr1c
In the three track run of Leaves, No and album standout Three Sides of Nazareth, home videos capture Jaar in discussion with his father when he was a child. The conversations are in Spanish but digging a bit deeper, political and personal messages can be found threaded through the fragmented components of speech and music.
Adorning the album cover is the Spanish sentence “ya dijimos no pero el si esta en todo.” It is also said during the beginning of No. This can be translated into “we already said no but the yes is in everything.”
It relates to decades earlier when the Chilean people were fighting for their right for democracy. After a coup d’etat had put Gen. Augusto Pinochet in power against the country’s will in 1973, he had been a ruthless dictator until a plebiscite was finally called in 1988.
“A ‘Yes’ vote would mean, ‘Yes, I want Pinochet to stay in power.’ A ‘No’ vote would mean, ‘I don’t want Pinochet in power. I want free elections,’” filmmaker Pablo Larrain explained.
The phrase then can be seen as displaying the dissatisfaction that freedom essentially seems to be but a concept. The belief may be that people have it, however society can seemingly have it stripped away at any moment. People in power can always manipulate outcomes to suit their own agendas, finding a ‘yes’ where it rarely, if ever, exists.
Political statements are packaged throughout the album, concealed at times, exposed at others. The eye-catching album cover may be one of the most obvious, as it features his artist father Alfredo Jaar‘s work.
“This is not America,” it reads on a building at the entry point of 7th Avenue. It’s lost slightly amongst the glaring white glow of a store that promises to sell “cameras, copiers and videos” and the onrushing, oblivious traffic, but it is there. The questioning of the state of reality is something which is important to both father and son, but in Nicolas’ case he seems to find less answers the more he looks.
“Chapter one: We fucked up, Chapter two: We did it again, and again, and again, and again,” he sings on final track History Lessons. Yet within that and the rest of the tracks, there are no offered solutions. It’s a bleak study in the perpetual cycle of failure both in personal and global matters. Amongst the statements on issues that have plagued the world continually though, there is also parts of Jaar left behind within the music.
“I felt I cannot be talking about me, me, me. Just my feelings, my private things,” he told The Guardian about his reasons behind making Sirens. “After Pomegranates and Nymphs I wanted to really look out. But then weirdly, when I started looking out, I started looking even deeper in somehow.”
As he looked to observe the world as it was around him, he inevitably found himself getting lost within this relaying of information. “If every now and then you feel like you’ve seen it all, then be sure to remember there’s always two sides to a wall,” he poses on Nazareth. Before he declares, “I found my broken bones by the side of the road. I found my broken home by the side of the road.”
It’s stark lyrics like these which convey the emotions of a man struggling to comprehend all that he has witnessed. The switch from third person narrative to first person also showcasing his troubles at exerting his songwriting away from the personal. There is an attempt at detachment, but it doesn’t last for long.
“I’m just not there yet. I failed at doing a combination of ‘looking out,’ still being experimental, and being as emotive as the Nymphs series was,” he admitted upon the release of his new album.
Yet it is this openness to failure that is one of the most intriguing parts of Sirens. It doesn’t judge the mistakes or context around which it was made, it merely reflects them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ulj6GY_gVE
You can also read our comprehensive feature on Nicolas Jaar here.
Sirens is out now via Other People.
Image: Rolling Stone
In October 1973, John Lennon enlisted the help of infamous producer Phil Spector to record an album. However, it didn’t all go exactly to plan for Lennon as he had recently split from Yoko Ono, became a regular at clubs all around Los Angeles, and fashioned a reputation for drunken antics as he slipped into his self-proclaimed “lost weekend.”
Meanwhile, a rapidly deteriorating Spector wasn’t holding up much better. He took the tapes from the sessions that they had actually managed to record and left Lennon with nothing. Ordinarily, this would have been bad enough, but the threat of legal action already hung over the former Beatles member’s head. “It started in ’73 with Phil and fell apart. I ended up as part of a mad, drunken scene in Los Angeles and I finally finished it off on my own,” Lennon later told Rolling Stone. “And there were still problems with it up to the minute it came out. I can’t begin to say, it’s just barmy. There’s a jinx on that album.”
The record, which would finally go on to be released in 1975, was entitled Rock and Roll and featured 13 covers from the ’50s and ’60s which Lennon had a particular fondness for. The whole reason for it being made in the first place though stemmed from six years earlier when the Beatles were recording Abbey Road. Come Together was the first track on the album which was released 47 years ago this week [September 26th]. Initially devised as a campaign song for psychologist and political activist Timothy Leary, Lennon changed it significantly once he got it into the studio.
In June 1969, Lennon conducted a “bed-in” with his wife Yoko to promote peace in the world. Among the guests who came to see him at his hotel where he was staying was Leary. Seen as a key component of the counterculture movement of the ’60s, Leary had designs on getting into power. He visited Lennon in the hope that the Beatle would be able to write a campaign song for him, as he plotted against Ronald Reagan in the race to become governor of California.
“Come together, join the party,” was Leary’s slogan that he was planning to run with.
Lennon agreed to support him and tried to come up with a song which utilised the slogan. However, he was unsuccessful. “I tried and tried, but I couldn’t come up with it,” Lennon remembered in Playboy. “But I came up with this – Come Together. It would’ve been no good to him. You couldn’t have a campaign song like that, right?”
Ultimately, Leary wouldn’t end up running for the position after he was imprisoned for cannabis possession. This freed Lennon up and allowed him to then take the song into the studio to show his bandmates. “The thing was created in the studio,” Lennon said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HONxwhwmgU
However once Leary was released from jail, he wasn’t too impressed when he heard the reworked version of the song that was meant to be for his campaign. He subsequently sent a letter to Lennon expressing his disappointment. “He replied with typical charm and wit,” Leary said of the response he got back. “He said that he was a tailor and I was a customer who had ordered a suit and never returned. So he sold it to someone else.”
When Lennon played one of the first incarnations of the song to the other Beatles, Paul McCartney immediately voiced his concern. “John acknowledged it was rather close to it,” McCartney said, when discussing its similarities to Chuck Berry’s 1956 single You Can’t Catch Me. “So I said, ‘Well, anything you can do to get away from that?’ I suggested that we tried it swampy – ‘swampy’ was the word I used. So we did, we took it right down. I laid that bass line down which very much makes the mood.”
Despite the instrumentation being changed significantly, Lennon decided to keep the opening lyric “Here come old flat-top, he come grooving up slowly.” When the executives at Chuck Berry’s label, Big Seven, eventually heard the song though they sued Lennon for plagiarism. They cited it as being too similar to Berry’s original lyric, “Here come a flat-top, he’s moving up with me.”
Morris Levy, Berry’s publisher, sued Lennon in 1973, after the singer had admitted to its similarities in an interview. This then resulted in a number of suits brought against Lennon, while he countersued Levy in an ugly exchange. By the end of it Lennon settled out of court and agreed to record three songs which Levy’s company owned the copyright for. The Beatles had long since broken up and all four members were now solo artists. So Lennon agreed that his next album would feature the chosen songs; however, he abandoned the ’73 sessions and released Walls And Bridges instead.
Yet more legal issues were caused by this release. Sensing that Lennon wasn’t going to hold up his end of the bargain, Levy rush-released a bootlegged album of the former Beatle performing covers. Entitled Roots, this move actually ended with Lennon suing Levy and winning the case. Roots was promptly removed from the shops and Rock and Roll was put out as a standard version of the covers album. It would prove to be the penultimate one from the Beatle though, as he withdrew into a quiet life with Yoko and their new son after it.
Come Together would prove to be his last politically influenced song within the Beatles and still stood as a favorite for the man himself despite the problems which later arose from it. “It was a funky record – it’s one of my favourite Beatles tracks…It’s funky, it’s bluesy, and I’m singing it pretty well…I’d buy it!” Lennon enthused of the number one single.
It remained in the charts well past the dawn of the new decade, but its consequences would stretch far beyond that for the songwriter.
Image: Joe Sia