Ohrenschmaus

We’re only welcome for our drink and smoke

A song from one of my all-time favourite albums but a song which in comparison to most others from that record to me always seemed less spectacular, less immediately appealing, less lovable. But it perfectly encapsulates the sound of that album which is so relaxing and so warm. An album about searching a home when travelling. And only finding it on the road itself. The bass contributes a lot to this laid-back atmosphere, the bassist had found a unique way to make an electric instrument sound human. Unfortunately this was one of his last works.

We don’t need to argue
We just need each other

In a day, a second there was a song of this supergroup before. From the same eponymous debut album. This track is even stronger than that first choice. What a staggering dance groove. If you are able to refrain from moving your hips to this music chances are high that you are already dead. The funky keyboard, the hopping beats, the glistening guitar. And somehow this track manages to get even better near the end, when the keyboard starts reverberating and totally takes off into psychedelic wonderland in the instrumental coda. I really love those throwaway lyrics as well by the way. How could anyone not be moved by the naïve and the innocent?

I believe in love, I’ll believe in anything
That’s gonna get me what I want and get me off my knees
Then we’ll burn your house down, don’t it feel so good

This song is like an Irish Coffee. It warms you from the inside. Today I had my first day in the new Berlin office of my employer. And the sun was melting away the ice on the pavement. Yesterday morning there was still some snow falling and today it seemed as if spring had chased winter away. A good omen for my new life, I’d say.

This is a crisis I knew had to come
Destroying the balance I’d kept
Moving around to the next set of lives
Wondering what will come next

In my book they were the greatest of all rock bands. And live they were even more amazing than on the two albums they released. This song was played at the band’s last concert. You will probably know what happened after, if not read that last verse and it should be pretty clear. The singer’s delivery here is rather reserved, his voice is neither exaggeratedly low (in graveyard mode) nor does he shout like on many other songs. He has made a decision and he has found his peace. Besides him there are the two string manipulators. For once the bass is not playing lead, he takes himself back as well. A pounding background noise in the lower registers, that is all what is left of the bass here. And the electric guitar? Is adding little sketches of noise and slash, is not too prominent neither. How come that this song holds together despite all these instruments fading away into the off? It’s because of the drums which are very much upfront. They are played with a robotic precision and still they sound deeply human. They sound serious and powerful in contrast to the cartoonish and flat drum machines. They are played by the programmer and not by the program. Near the end there is a hiccup of the drums in comparison to the other instruments. Or vice versa. But somehow the band can get back into groove soon. The name of the song could refer to a religious feast but I think it is a synonym of passage.

Lovers kneel by the roadside in pools of broken glass
Gator tails fly like black angels from the wheels – as they pass

That oriental riff totally bewitches me. I feel like being hypnotised by a snake charmer. But unlike the dancing snake I am transfixed. The riff goes straight to my head. And then this incredible voice which makes Tom Waits sound like a show-off. Usually I don’t like heavy music but here it works. At the end the singer introduces the next song in the live set by saying what it is about. This band has got a soft spot for hallucinogenic substances combined with sexual allusions of the phallic kind. Guess what their name stands for!

I’ll think of you always
For you know it as well as I
That for you I would have died
and would still die

Yesterday I thought that winter was over as most of the snow had melted. Last night I saw a dark, low hanging cloud cover in the evening sky though and thought that we would have some rain today. But this morning everything was white again, huge, wet snow flakes were falling down and shortly after 9 am most neighbours were shovelling the snow off the pavement.

Today’s song is a love song by an indie band which never really made it. They had one „hit“ which got some airplay in the British indie pop world. The B-side of that single is this little ballad on the unfulfilled love between the male singer-songwriter of the band and the female singer. From the second verse on they duet here. This song – as most of said band’s œuvre – has got an innocent, naive and sentimental touch to it. An understated, wistful guitar melody opens the song which is about a love which was not meant to last. The man and the woman have to go different ways and they both seem to have accepted it.

Oh Elise it doesn’t matter what you do
I know I never really get inside of you
To make your eyes catch fire

Another band from Engeland. The one word describing them best is mopey. But here like on their phantastic single from the same album (it must have been their biggest hit, it came really late in their career) they are kind of upbeat and almost jubilating. This song makes me think of a love affair. Or more. There was this girl I was totally nuts about in L. I won’t tell a lot but in 1991 when I met her first and wanted so badly to be with her, she didn’t want to. One spring later she came back and shortly after this album came out we listened together to it and finally made out. But somehow it was too late.

I don’t belong to no one
But I want to be with you
I can’t be owned by no one
What am I supposed to do?

What a surprise. Another British synthpop (with a strong guitar component though) band from the 1980s. That is the genre which is apparently reigning the 5+ minute song in my music collection. We had this band before in this series but it was a song from the early 80s where they had to overcome the shock of the suicide of their original singer. A heavy, dark affair. Here we meet them at the end of the decade and they have honed their sound which is light and sad at the same time. They were the champions of catchy, melancholic tunes with straight lyrics to dance to. I really love the natural sound of the acoustic guitar in the beginning which is then topped by a second guitar playing the melody. Miraculous.

From the place that I stand
to the land that is openly free;
Watching rivers run black by the trees
that are vacant to greed.

I really have no clue what those lyrics are about. They seem to be about nature and environmental pollution. And when I hear greed I think about financial crisis and our dim future. This song surely was not about this theme, it is about a quarter of a century old.

Every time I hear the way the vocalist sings the line „Gotta give it up“ it takes me by surprise. There is so much positive energy in his delivery, everyone can hear that the words really come from his heart. Does he refer to giving up greed? I’d like to know more about this. By the way the album this is on is a great starting point for this band. They were just about to move from pop to post pop.

I am not certain if you are aware that a song of this group has already been chosen in this project. Anyways they have definitely earned it and I would not be unhappy for a third piece by them though chances are rather poor as they specialised in longish tracks.

Tonight
I’m in the hands of fate
I hand myself
Over on a plate

After the first 20 seconds or so for a wink I thought this was a different band, also British, also synthpop and also 1980s. But that band has more of a playful melancholic thing going on in their dance music whereas this lot has got more of a darkish goth component. Mainly due to the singer’s voice, I guess. Their hooks are also hookier in a massive way if you know what I mean. From the lyrics I thought this song was about a guy who was going to a party with his girl-friend, getting drunk there and then letting her drive him home (I have done it many times, I confess). But it could actually be about quite the opposite, i.e. a bloke who gives the control over to his partner, who likes to be dominated by women. Whatever. Who cares about lyrics in pop songs? On this track I hear all these little hammers punching the beat. They are ubiquitous, come from all sides, left, right, up and down. And somehow they seem to be melodic hammers. Of course it is the synthesizer playing the tune but in my mind it spills over to the drum machine. Which for once fits perfectly.

I wish that you were here
We’d have a tea party to celebrate
We’d drive a cop car into the lake
and hold our breath for two long boring days

More than the visual arts or the literature music has a direct appeal to the beholder. Either you like a piece or you don’t. Reflection or discussion will usually not change your mind. Music can repel us or overwhelm us, we are at it’s mercy. Sometimes it will take us some time to „get“ certain music, sometimes the impact will be direct. For me this is an example of the latter. Ten seconds in and I am already captivated by the miraculous guitar line appearing after the drum intro. Another twenty seconds and the singer joins in with his pleasant soft voice. And then the keyboard doubles that magic tune, it almost sounds a little cheesy but it has got a relieving effect. The subsequent humming and the intertwined singing of the two singers add some more harmony to this, it reminds me of the grapes of muscat which can be so sweet that they give you a headache. I don’t know where this song came from – and I don’t mean California here – but it sounds incredibly mature and wise. It must be at least ten thousand years old.

Still some people they brand you ya
Just because you are rasta
You move to the country
You live in the hills

Due to their signature sound it should be easy to guess this bunch. They just released a new album which has not clicked with me at all. Here they are on the height of their power though. A wonderful groove bathing in thick layers of dub. I also like the soft vocals very much on this one. The overall vibe is a special mix of relaxed reggae lightness and ponderous British murk. It gives the track which is about the intolerance towards the rastas in the cities an ambivalent character. Imagine some heavy rain in the city, you are in the cellar and suddenly the end of a rainbow peeks into the cellar window. And you start your sluggish dance of joy in the basement. The only problem: Why does the track stop in the middle? It could have gone on for an hour or so if you ask me.

you break away
without a sound

Why have fun on carnival if you can also be depressive and suicidal? The thing about this slow, dark, brooding song from sunny LA is that it never actually brings me down. On the contrary in a way it lifts me up, it works like a balm for the wounded soul, when I am in a bad mood this kind of heavy tuneful music is like a friend who comforts me. Besides that the CD this is on which was one of my 40 albums from this project is our favourite soundtrack for bed action. The gradually evolving songs with lots of pauses and the deep baritone make it easy to totally forget about the rest of the world and just do it. The slower, the better.

Heaven bless you in your calm
My gentle friend

This is the band that became more and more quiet with every album until they arrived to the silence which they haven’t broken for almost twenty years now. I would still not know which genre name this piece would fall under, it is neither rock, nor jazz, nor classical, nor world but it has something of all four. Just thinking of it, they were actually the band the term post-rock was coined for at the time. Something is for sure, this is very organic chamber music (it’s not by chance that all instruments are acoustic) and it has a spiritual vibe to it. Especially the way they use pauses and simple tones has always captivated me. There is also an improvisational feel to it, there are some dissonant parts which do not sound disharmonic any more to my ears after many times of listening. There is no band which has ever successfully continued what this band has accomplished and I don’t think I am the only one to hope that they will return one day. They – and especially their singer – are the Messiah of pop music.

There are things I want to do but I don’t know
If they will be with you, if they will be with you
There are things I want to say but I don’t know
If they will be to you, if they will be to you

The ninth song and already the third one from 1991. It definitely has to do with the fact that during that year I seriously got into listening to indie rock but I also think that 1991 objectively was one of the most exciting years in rock music history.

It took me some time to appreciate the music of the band in question. In the beginning I found it boring and too soft. In comparison to the other music at the time I might have had a point. But after a while I got into their extremely tuneful version of noisy pop (that’s how the French DJ from France Inter, Bernard Lenoir called this kind of music, others called it power pop). They are from Scotland and there is something about the knack of Scottish bands for melody. Could it have to do with their rough, hard, germanic accent which they can hide when singing? What always amazes me is that I can’t hear their accent when they sing but when they talk it kills me.

The name of this song which I only found out about a while ago still makes me smile. It basically condenses how I spent my vacations when I was twentysomething. The word is invented. Like many German words it concatenates two other words. It makes me think of the image for a hangover a Scottish bloke told me on my travels. It’s when your head feels like a box of frogs.

That verse above always breaks my heart when I hear them sing it. It is so bloody cruel. Because somehow I imagine she is in love with him which is probably totally off the mark. Anyways this is a song I can bath in and bathing (together with walking) is my favourite pastime. One last advice: I think on headphones this sounds better than on loudspeakers. But what good song doesn’t?

Look at me, I always get the blame
But I can’t even learn to spell my name
I like to read, I like to write
But where I live I learn to fight

Another light-weight song I also chose for nostalgic reasons. When this album came out everybody within our clique in Luxembourg purchased it within a couple of weeks. It was the soundtrack to the early summer of 1991. A very consistent album of easy-going europop numbers by a supergroup which for once delivered the goods. The lyrics were not exactly poetry but that has always been part of the charm of the songs the singer wrote in this or his more famous other band. It is weird that this beat driven music which uses a drum machine, a synthesizer and many electronic sounds from the can did actually find the way into my ear. One reason might be that I was younger at the time and more open, other and more important reasons are probably that the melodies despite all the elaborate production are breezy and that there is this sunny, good vibrations side attached to the tracks. There might be better songs on this album than the one I selected here but this one has the advantage that it lasts 5 minutes and 27 seconds. That’s what iTunes says at least.

At sunrise the monkeys will fly
and leave me with pennies in my eyes

Here we have a piano ballad as tender and restrained as few others. The slow, measured, grave, melancholic melody drills itself straight into my heart. Another example of the immediacy and urgency of beauty in music. And then this turns into a duet. With another one of my favourite female singer-songwriters. The theme of the song seems to be the crossing of a divide. Either from life to death or from childhood to adulthood. Money could play a role in both scenarios. Either for Charon to row the deceased over to the other side of the Styx or as a symbol for adult life. In any case the lyrics are pretty simple but their meaning is rather mysterious. After the small pause in the last minute comes the weird coda which consists of a rumbling noise with occasional squeaks as if a revolving machine was not oiled.

What genre is this? Kosmische Musik? New Age? Some sort of guitar synth pop? Let’s just note that this is one hell of an earworm, leaning slightly towards kitsch but still on the good side. The man behind this instrumental who has been on the cutting edge of krautrock around 1970 was breaking the chains of band memberships and was doing his own thing at the time this came out. Like always with beautiful melodies it is hard to describe what exactly is so lovely about them. There is the instant gratification aspect; as soon as this tune enters your ear you know it has got the little something to stay there for a while and you won’t be unhappy if it doesn’t go away. Irresistibility is another quality which comes to mind here. Even if I wanted I could not not listen to this and not be charmed by it. A characteristic which seems to describe the melody quite well is warmth, there is a pleasant cosiness from the inside mounting up in my body towards my head when I hear it. A propos „moving up“, a metaphysical dimension, an aspiration towards the immaterial, the out of this world, the inexplicable – the only one word nailing it I can come up with and it is with great hesitation I use that word (in German we would say Bauchschmerzen [bellyache]) is God – is absolutely indismissable in a piece of music to really make me fall in love with it. Last not least the perpetual repetition amplifies the effect of the enchanting tune and it was reflected in the title. Going round and round and round…

Mama never taught me how to cook
That’s why I am so skinny

One of my favourite female singers. She has got the punch, she has got the power, she is so cool. And she is smart and she has humour too. What else could a man want from a woman? Children?

And I have heard men saying
Hey baby, your love is the greatest show on earth
And hey baby, I’m your man with the perfect plan
And I’ll give you everything your heart desires
I want you and I give you everything you dream
Everything you need,
Just let me get close to you
I want you, hey baby
I wanna suck your honey
I wanna cop your conception
Take your energy, absorb your vibe and preach you philosophy
I wanna become you
I want you and I want you to die
So I can be you
Hey, come over here
And give your sweet vampire some blood
And I’m your man
Come over here and pay your landlord some dues
Hey baby, that’s what I call love
And that’s what I call a relationship
Now do you want to get it on?
And I say, hey man
My destiny is not to serve
I am a woman
My destiny is to create

Some days you waste your life away

This is not a fun song. It may well be a love song though. It captures a band in metamorphosis, a band which had to reinvent itself as its leader had abandoned the ship, a band in between post punk and electro pop. The song is build on an intricate bed of rhythm which is provided by the drums coming from all directions. After a while they accelerate and the song gets more and more menacing and moves up to a higher level. It is like a lift to heaven. After the earthly toms, the ringing guitar dominates now. In the middle the song suddenly fades out in a synth tone for a while. There is a pause where everything literally hangs in the air. The tension is mounting and is then relieved by the bass playing that little riff dominating the song. The drums, guitars and synthesizer join in as well and end the song on a firm base. This is from my favourite album of the reborn band. Later on they changed the heaviness for the lightness and became the electro dance band it was okay to like.

Wine in the mornin‘, and some breakfast at night.

There were four versions of this song on my iPod. Two of them were five minutes and thirty-three seconds long and both were live recordings. I chose the more conventional, the more polished version, the other one gives the impression that it has been recorded in a staircase with the drums sounding like a dozen of trash bins falling down the steps from the 5th floor down to the ground floor. Cherchez la femme!

Cut.

I’d like to dedicate this post to my friend T. who is beginning to see something he hasn’t realised before. Everyone around him in the last ten years has seen it except him. Or maybe it is more realistic to say he probably saw it himself but he didn’t want to admit it to other people. Now he has made the most important step to get out of the circulus vitiosus, it is only a question of time that he will see the light again.

Another cut.

Something about this song is really amazing. It does not date, it is undestroyable (unkaputtbar), the groove and the tune still sound fresh & young in my ears. Why is that? One reason must be the compact, dirty guitar sound, especially the strummed rhythm guitar, another one the forward movement, the perfect flow, the song pulls the listener toward the future. We cannot escape the promised illumination. That is another important aspect of the song and the album it is from: the spiritual vibe. Somehow it is so totally unexpected and on the other hand it feels so right. And then there is another little line which makes me hold on for a second:

I met myself in a dream, and I just want to tell you,
Everything was alright.

I never had that experience but fortunately I never received electroshock therapy neither. Unlike the singer of this song.

To lay underneath the red sky there

Tom Ewing, the person who started the wonderful music forum I Love Music about ten years ago has kicked off another project on 1st of January called It Took Seconds where he posts a song a day and writes about it. Nothing special really but there is a twist to it. He started with a track which was 6 minutes and five seconds long and he intends to finish on December, 31st with a one second piece. Each day he is going to lose a second. A lovely idea which I would like to take up. I am a month late so I start with 5 minutes and thirty-four seconds. I will neither name the artist nor the name of the song, of course you are all invited to guess or discuss about what I have posted if you like.

The band behind this song found a magic recipe. But unlike the alchemists formula of how to turn shit into gold theirs actually worked. They managed to create blissful melodies out of guitar noise. Who could have thought before that there is so much beauty hidden in distorted guitar feedback? Behind all those layers of mist there is a fuzzy ray of sunlight warming the heart. I was listening to the album this is on at carnival 1992 on my car hifi when a love was lost and I was driving by night through an impermeable fog with my VW Golf from Trier to Luxembourg. I was doing an average of 30 km/h, instead of half an hour it took me two hours. The slowdown, the poor view and the blurred music fused to something strange, something out of this world. I stopped and only listened to the music inside the car. I gave up all hope to ever arrive at home again. Somehow I got there in the early morning just before dawn but I don’t think I would have made it without this tape on repeat.