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Best tunes of 2002: #5 Doves “Pounding”

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I almost don’t want to share that this song has already appeared on these pages when I counted down my top five Doves tunes back in January 2019. If you go back to read that post, it might spoil the appearance of another song further up this list. However, it’s true, “Pounding” was definitely part of my list of five favourites when I counted those down. At the time of writing that, we didn’t know for sure what this reunion would bring and whether there was any new material forthcoming. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, we now know that the reunion shows that were only just announced were a huge success and so were the reissues of their first three records and then, 2020 saw them release their first new album in more than a decade, which wound up atop my favourite albums list for the year.

“The last broadcast” is still likely my favourite album by Doves. I wrote about my discovery of it and the group that performed it when I wrote about “Caught by the River” (which appeared at #17) for this very same series. It was Doves’ second album and landed right at the top of UK’s album charts upon release, was a hit with consumers and critics alike, garnering them their second Mercury prize nomination. It is a gorgeous album, calling to mind the hey day of Manchester acid house, as well as the dream pop movement of the same period. It is textured and danceable stuff, perfect for both zoning out and jumping around like crazed animal in a field of likeminded festival goers.

“Pounding” was the second single to be released from the album and as I’ve said before, it really lives up to its name. Many of Dove’s songs are built, layer upon layer, through the course of their duration and this one is no different, which is quite an accomplishment given that its starting point feels high up in stratosphere. Andy Williams’ drumming is inescapable, hammering down at a torrid pace on his snares and toms and you swear you can feel and hear sparkling confetti exploding from them with each hit. The guitars and bass lines race along with the rhythm and effects are thrown in to emulate the sounds of cars roaring past. This is very effective in making you forget yourself when played on your car stereo and your foot on the gas pedal seems to get heavier and heavier. Then, when you think the song can’t get any more uplifting, Jez Williams takes over at the bridge and just wails away at his guitar strings, a jangly explosion that feels ripped from The Edge’s playbook.

“Pounding” is just an injection of pure joy. It’s a track for picking you up when you’re down. A push in the right direction. A word of encouragement to enjoy your life, not to waste this chance we’ve been given.

“Seize the time
Cause it’s now or never, baby“

Beautiful.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2002 list, click here.

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Best tunes of 1993: #29 KMFDM “Light”

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Back in November, I wrote a truly nostalgic post in which I laid out my top five favourite Industrial rock tunes. It was a lot of fun to revisit a genre I hadn’t spent a lot of time with in many years  and one that represented for me a specific time and place in my life. All five of the songs were released within the period between the late 80s and early 90s, a specific span of time that I consider to be that genre’s renaissance. Number three on said list was “Juke joint jezebel” by KMFDM, a single off their 1995 album, “Nihil”. It was likely their biggest ever hit but it wasn’t my introduction to the band. No. That came two years earlier with the band’s previous record, “Angst”.

My friend Tim and I were constantly sharing music with each other back in those days. We’d record the entirety of an album on the first side of a C90 cassette and fill the other side with a seemingly random selection of other music, tunes that were tickling our particular fancy at that given moment. “Light” appeared on one of these B-side mixes at some point and it made such an impression upon my teenaged self that it wasn’t long before I was requesting the whole of “Angst” on the A-side of one these cassettes.

This album was a breakout of sorts for KMFDM, who had formed in Germany almost a decade beforehand and had already released six other albums. Their cult following grew into something more when frontman Sascha Konietzko relocated to the United States in the early 90s, bringing the project along with him and attaching themselves to the burgeoning Chicago-based Industrial rock scene and the infamous Wax Trax! Records. “Angst” was the first album recorded completely in the US and involved a lot more guitars in its sound than was present their previous work.

“Light” opens the album with a faint whir, which builds in volume to an explosion of chainsaw guitars. It isn’t the thrash speeds that are heard elsewhere on “Angst”, more mid-weight heavy, restrained for mass coverage, as the song’s title suggests. Nevertheless, “Light” rocks. It never lets up for its six minute duration. A mix of relentless drum machine beats, layers upon layers of guitars and synth darkness. Frontman Konietzko, in his almost self-parodying, militant, German monster growl, lays such lyrical gems on us as: “Deify data, hard but true, Godlike nonsense being thrown at you” and “Take a good plunge and out from the masses, bend over backwards and kick some asses”. Meanwhile, Dutch vocalist Dorona Alberti adds some noir fun with backing vocal interjections, call-and-response-like at the chorus lines.

On the dance floor, “Light” is pure joy, the message and angst secondary to the moment, and at its ending, leaves you completely out of breath and ready for a new beer to refuel.

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

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Best tunes of 2002: #6 Sam Roberts “Don’t walk away, Eileen”

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Do you have a song from your youth that you detest? And I’m not thinking because it was a bad tune or anything but that its sole offence was that it used your name in its title or lyrics and became fodder for use in teasing by your peers.

Yeah? Me too.

Mine came by way of El Debarge’s “Who’s Johnny?” that featured prominently in the 80s film “Short circuit”, another source of teasing (“Johnny five is alive!” Kids are so weird). I also got a lot of “Johnny B. Goode”, which I minded quite a bit less, because, well, that song rocks. And then, in university, I was introduced to a song by Madder Rose called “Beautiful John” that… okay… nobody really used that one to tease me…

Then, there’s the case of a friend of my wife’s and mine who had to grow up with people singing words to a certain hit Dexy’s Midnight Runners song, to the point that she couldn’t abide the tune. We were laughing about this very subject one night over dinner and the physical reaction she had at the mere mention of “Come on, Eileen” was hilarious to behold. But when I asked if she felt the same way about Sam Roberts’ hit tune “Don’t walk away Eileen”, her response was: “No! I love that song!” And she immediately started singing the song and drumming her hands on the table.

I don’t disagree with our friend Eileen’s assessment of the song at all. It was released as the second single off Sam Roberts’ debut EP, “The inhuman condition”, and is the second song from it to feature on this very list. Not bad at all for a release that only has six songs in total and one whose artist wondered whether the EP was a good idea for his first foray into music. It is basically a reinterpretation of half the demo tracks he put together to generate industry interest and well, the EP generated a huge buzz on Canadian radio. Then, a bunch of these tracks also appeared on Roberts’ debut long player, “We were born in a flame”, that was released the following year after he signed to Sony Music.

“Don’t walk away Eileen” is a thorough banging and crashing away at drums and guitars, a general racket, really, and Roberts seems less concerned about carrying a tune than emoting the feeling of anger and passion. It is punk without the trappings of being punk. It is a fun tune that many can identify with, a universal kick at a troubled or troubling love interest, a song to scream along with at the top of your lungs, whether in your car, in your room, in a bar drinking with friends, or in the middle of a crowd at a concert.

Yeah, it’s fun. I’m not quite sure it mitigates all those years of “Come on, Eileen” for our friend though.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2002 list, click here.