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Best tunes of 2020: #17 Ezra Furman “Every feeling”

<< #18    |    #16 >>

I recently wrapped up watching the final season of Sex Education on Netflix and almost immediately, I found myself wanting to start over and rewatch it from the beginning. To me, that’s a sign of a great show and when it happens with books, it’s the same – the feeling of missing the characters and their stories and their worlds.

I wasn’t immediately sure when I started watching the first season back in the fall of 2019. It felt a bit weird to be watching a show that explicitly detailed the sex lives of teenagers, even though I knew that all of the actors would be of the age of consent. It did a great job, though, playing with reality, making the stories not about their age or the place and time*, and more about the great characters and how they reacted to universal problems and situations related to love and relationships and yes, sex.

The show lasted four seasons of eight episodes a piece, which seems quite long for British television in my own limited experience. Each episode in each season was quite excellent and of course, I loved the music throughout, a pastiche of hip music from the 70s to the present, with many songs that I recognized and some that I didn’t. A quick google search explained that many of those excellent songs I didn’t recognize were supplied by American singer-songwriter Ezra Furman.

In late January 2020, about a week after season 2 appeared on Netlix, Furman released “Sex education original soundtrack”, which collected together all of her songs that appeared in the first two seasons of the show. Of course, I made sure to peruse it and then found myself perusing more of her work and it was then, that I realized that though some of the tracks were written for the show, many were songs that were repurposed from her previous recordings.

One of the tracks that Furman wrote new for the show appeared at the end of episode three of the first season. “Every feeling” fits the mood of scene perfectly: the wind-down of an emotionally draining day. At the time, the song wasn’t available anywhere and viewers  immediately started clamouring to find out where they could get a copy. It’s a short piece that focuses on Furman banging away at her acoustic guitar like it was cause of her hurt and depression and her drained voice shaking out all the f-bombs. Because sometimes that’s the only word that’ll do to get your message across.

“I’m gonna feel every feeling
And only love
Only love will remain”

It’s a track full of pain but it’s also damned uplifting.

*Though there were plenty of homages to John Hughes’ teen comedies of the eighties, the hints to past and present technologies and trends made it feel out of time completely.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2020 list, click here.

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100 best covers: #44 Blur “Maggie May”

<< #45    |    #43 >>

I’ve already written about the Help Warchild album on these pages* and tagged it as my favourite ever compilation. Another one that I really liked was Ruby Trax, a 3 CD set released by the NME in celebration of its fortieth anniversary. They collected together 40 covers of number one hit singles from over the years done by current artists of the day. I remember finding a used copy of it at the long defunct Penguin Music on McCaul street, four or five years after its release, and didn’t hesitate to open my wallet for it. I wasn’t looking for it because, lord knows, I never thought I would see it here in Canada, but I certainly recognized what I had in my hands immediately. A friend of mine** had put this cover of “Maggie May” by Blur on a mixed tape for me and being a pretty huge fan of said band, just had to know of its provenance.

“Maggie May” was originally recorded by Rod Stewart for his debut solo album. It was released as a b-side to what was supposed to be his first single, “Reason to believe”, a song I’m reasonably sure I’ve never heard. The b-side started get more play on the radio and has since become his best known song. The album version of this song about a young man’s affair with an older woman starts with this out-of-place acoustic guitar solo. But once it gets going and the hammond organ meshes with the 12-string guitar and the mandolin, it reminds you why it’s a classic, especially with Rod’s inimitable vocal chords providing the words.

Blur’s cover sounds like Blur right at the height of Britpop… because… of course, it was. Rowntree’s loose drumming, James’s bopping baseline, Coxon’s wailing and feedback-laden guitars, and Albarn’s freewheeling organs and cheeky vocal turn. It’s trimmer than the original and at four minutes, feels perfect.

Sure, theirs is not the original but they put their own stamp on it. And well, I love their stamp. Sorry Rod the Bod fans, I’m going with one of my favourite bands on this one.

Cover:

Original:

*In fact, a couple of its tracks have already graced this very list at #74 and #53 and we’re not near done yet.

**That same friend who had made a personal favourite mixed tape of retro 80s tunes.

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.

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Eighties’ best 100 redux: #90 U2 “With or without you” (1987)

<< #91    |    #89 >>

The band responsible for track #90 on my “Eighties best 100” redux needs no introduction nor historical context. Ever since their near legendary performance at Live Aid in 1985, they’ve been a global act, fitting the bill of “biggest band in the world” for many of the intervening years.

Personally, I’ve never been able to call myself a big U2 fan but I am well aware of their contribution to music, especially that of their seminal 1987 album “The Joshua tree”. Even still, I gave away this very same compact disc to an acquaintance in university because I never listened to it. Despite all this, when Bono was convinced in 2005 by “friend” and then Prime Minister of Canada, Paul Martin, to add Ottawa as a stop on their monolithic world tour of the day, I purchased tickets to see them at the Corel Centre (now the Canadian Tire Centre) for me and my wife. The fact that a hot new band called Arcade Fire opened the concert for U2 certainly sweetened the deal for me but I can freely admit that Bono, The Edge, and the rest of their company put on an excellent live show. By that point, however, they’d been at the game for close to thirty years so I would have been more surprised had the show been a snoozer.

Back in 1986, they were still young bucks, riding a high off their aforementioned Live Aid performance and the success of their previous album, 1984’s “The unforgettable fire.” U2 once again enlisted the production team of wunderkind, Brian Eno, and Canadian guitarist, Daniel Lanois, to work on what would become “The Joshua tree”, arguably the band’s best work. The trilogy of songs that lead off the album (“Where the streets have no name”, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”, and “Without or without you”) delivers a three punch knockout of beautifully textured music, with Edge’s trademark guitar sound at the forefront. The problem for me was that I rarely got past those first three tracks.

“With or without you”, the song that just builds and builds and builds, is easily one of my favourite tracks that U2 has produced but much of it is due to nostalgia. It just screams the eighties to me… That and high school dances.

Original Eighties best 100 position: #90

Favourite lyric: My hands are tied / My body bruised, she’s got me with / Nothing to win and / Nothing left to lose.” But nobody can really sing it like Bono.

Where are they now?: Still at it, of course. In fact, they’d been at the top of the world so long that when I was telling my wife about their current residency opening the Sphere in Las Vegas and she asked how relevant they were, I was dumbfounded. But it did have me pondering the same question.

For the rest of the Eighties’ best 100 redux list, click here.