Category: Tunes

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1993: #11 The Breeders “Cannonball”

<< #12    |    #10 >>

The Breeders were formed in 1989 as a side project for Kim Deal (Pixies) and Tanya Donnelly (Throwing Muses). In the spaces between working with their primary groups, they released an album and an EP before Donnelly decided to part ways with both Throwing Muses and The Breeders to focus on a third project called Belly. Deal brought her twin sister Kelley into the fold in 1992 and when the Pixies disbanded the following year, The Breeders became her main creative outlet.

I still have never really explored The Breeders’ early work, nor am I super familiar with the work that came after their reunion* in 1996. However, I am very familiar with their huge second album, “The last splash”. You would have had to live under a rock to have avoided it back in ‘93. It was a huge commercial and critical success, making Deal a bigger name perhaps than her ex-Pixies band mate Frank Black. And a huge part of the album’s success was due to the ubiquity of this track here: “Cannonball”

“Spitting in a wishing well
Blown to hell, crash
I’m the last splash”

Just like how the album takes its name from “Cannnonball”’s lyrics, the tune really sets the tone and represents the havoc that Deal and company create with the album. Its nonsensical lyrics are merely fun to sing/scream along with and Deal does both, taking turns cooing into and trying to exceed the sound limits of the microphone, also employing the use of a harmonica mike at points to create that distorted effect during the intro and throughout the piece. Jim McPherson’s drumming starts off the song with a tickety-tack drum line before devolving into an Animal-like crash and bash course. The gurgling bass line is accompanied by a guitar lick that slithers and slides up and down your spine. The 3 minutes and 36 seconds of the tune’s duration is a seemingly random tennis match between groove and noisy chaos and when you throw in that false ending two-thirds of the way through, that crashing return has you more pumped than ever to jump into that packed crowd on the dance floor or mosh pit and freak right out.

“Cannonball” was all over the radio and its video graced television screens care of MTV and MuchMusic all the time after its release as a single but it was just one of those songs of which you could not get sick. I remember seeing them perform the album live at Osheaga 10 years ago in celebration of the album’s 20th anniversary and everyone onstage and in the crowd just lit up with the song’s energy. And you just watch the Deal sisters having a blast in the video below and you can’t help but join them in being more than a little crazy.

*The group took a hiatus shortly after the release of “The last splash” due to Kelley Deal’s drug and legal problems.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1993 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2003: #17 Metric “Combat baby”

<< #18    |    #16 >>

As I’ve mentioned previously in these pages*, it was my friend Jez that introduced me to Canadian-based indie rock group, Metric. He loaned me a copy of their debut album, “Old world underground, where are you?”, a CD he had purchased at one their shows, which I promptly ripped to mp3 and listened to quite a bit during my morning walks to work.

Metric must have come to Ottawa a number of times in the early 2000s because it seems to me that Jez saw them multiple times at very tiny clubs. After the first time, he tried to get me to come out for the next one, raving about Metric’s live energy, especially that of frontwoman Emily Haines. He would go on to describe in great detail her peculiar dance, which I’ve since witnessed personally a few times. However, I’ve often wished that I had had the funds to join him for at least one of those early gigs because I think that her almost awkward dance and nervous energy would have translated even better on those intimate stages.

“Old world underground, where are you?” was like a breath of fresh air when it was released, especially for me. The first couple of years of the 2000s were a bit of a rough go musically. I had felt in a bit of a rut after the high of Britpop and was having a hard time getting motivated about new music. Metric’s debut was probably the first album I had heard from the new breed of Canadian indie rock bands that would go on to catch the music world on fire for the next five years or so. I had previously focused most of my attentions on music from the UK, through much of the 90s anyway, so having some favourites from my home country was almost a new thing to me.

“Combat baby” was actually released as a single from the album a whole year after the album’s release and it started to catch a lot of radio play. Before that though, it was just one of many tracks on an album I knew intimately from so many repeats on my MPIO mp3 player. Like many of the tunes, it is a quick hit, short and high energy and though when I think of “Old world underground, where are you?” I remember it as mostly a synth pop album, “Combat baby” is one of the more heavy hitting tracks. It plays almost to the angular post-punk scales, or to the borderline new wavers, definitely some Blondie vibes throughout.

“Said you would never give up easy
Combat baby, come back”

It kicks in with a chugging drum machine beat before the bass line picks up the barbells and starts flexing. The guitars just drive like the wind and you can almost picture Emily Haines strutting her stuff and wagging her head back and forth to get her blond hair flailing. And all the while, she is snarling wistfully about a lost lover, an antagonist, a bustle of excitement that didn’t settle for the status quo, but that might’ve since perhaps gone soft and settled, and she is missing that edge. By the end, though, you get the feels that she is kissing off, that she will be “fighting off the lethargy” and “painting the town black” going forward. Yes indeed.

*Back when one of Metric’s later tracks, “Breathing underwater”, came in at number 15 on my Best tunes of 2012 list.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2003 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2020: #20 Nation Of Language “On Division St.”

<< #21    |    #19 >>

The story goes this way. Ian Richard Devaney’s band The Static Jacks had recently come apart and he was in a car with his father when his father put on a song he hadn’t listened to in many years: “Electricity” by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (aka OMD). It evoked a great measure of nostalgia in him and he decided to try to write a song in a similar vein. He never meant it to amount to anything but this playing around with synths eventually brought us a new synth pop act out of Brooklyn. Nation of Language became a trio when Devaney added Aidan Noell for more synths and vocal support and former Static Jacks guitarist Michael Sue-Poi on bass.

They released a string of EPs and singles between 2015 and 2020 but I didn’t get to hear the group until they released their aptly named debut, “Introduction, presence”, in 2020. And even then, I didn’t catch up with this fine album when it was first released in the spring. It took a Spotify playlist, ‘made especially for me’ sometime in the fall, to include a song that made my ears prick up, had me reaching for my iPad to discover what song was playing, and then, had me googling a band name that had previously escaped my attention.

That song was “On Division St.” by Nation of Language.

“A song so sweet
From back when I was born”

Originally released as a single back in 2018, it was re-recorded for our collective “introduction” and it was well met, indeed. It is a lovely and sad thing that feels like I’ve known it all my life, grew up listening to it during my ansgty teen years. It is just over three minutes of romance unrequited, a rain soaked black and white photograph, discarded scarf, and a single dried rose. It is a drum machine set to weep and a flickering and fluttering arpeggio of synths. It is a solo form dancing and singing to him or herself in the middle of a long emptied dancefloor, still waiting and hoping for the appearance of a dream.

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