Tag: 2000s

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2001: #8 Pulp “The night that Minnie Timperley died”

<< #9    |    #7 >>

At number eight on my best tunes of 2001 list, we have “The night that Minnie Timperley died”, a track that also figured on my Top five Pulp tunes post I did back at the beginning of this year.

This particular song appeared on the iconic Britpop band’s seventh and final album, “We love life”. It was never released as a single so I likely didn’t hear it in 2001. You see, I didn’t purchase this album the moment it was released into the record stores. Indeed, and as I’ve mentioned in other posts in this series, I was rather poor when we first moved to Ottawa in 2001, with not enough disposable income to lavish upon the purchase of many compact discs. I certainly remember looking longingly on the album’s simple cover and its adornment of block letters spelling the band’s name when I tortured myself by browsing through Record Runner, my favourite independent music store at the time, long since closed down. I had to content myself to the snippets I could catch on the internet, like the first single “The trees”, until I had stowed enough money working overtime at my call centre job.

When I finally put the CD in the tray and pressed play, track number three hooked me on first listen. To my ears, it most certainly should have been a hit, save the dark subject matter. Not that this has ever stopped Jarvis Cocker and company before. Never one to shy from the dark underbelly of humanity, Cocker mines a dream here, telling the story of a teenaged girl’s murder, lurking in the minds of both the victim and the predator. A song that starts so upbeat (“There’s a light that shines on everything & everyone”) but ends so dark and twisted (“And he only did what he did ’cause you looked like one of his kids”). It feels like Jarvis is playing with us. And if you didn’t pay enough attention, you could be easily fooled and taken in by the funky drum beats, handclaps and jangle, alien synth washes, and Who-worthy rock and roll guitar and bass slam riffs.

It’s brilliant stuff that proves this group was great right up until the moment they broke up.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2001 list, click here.

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Decemberists “Castaways and cutouts”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: The Decemberists
Album Title: Castaways & cutouts
Year released: 2002
Year reissued: 2011
Details: 180 gram

The skinny: If you’re following me on Instagram or Twitter or are friends with me on Facebook, you’d know that I’ve been attending Ottawa’s CityFolk festival this week – five days of live music outdoors is always fun – but tomorrow’s headliner is icing on the cake for me. I’ve seen The Decemberists live twice before (and Colin Meloy solo once as well) but it’s always a rollicking great time. And although they likely won’t play much from their debut, “Castaways & cutouts”, it’s still one of my favourites of all their great albums. Ghosts and legionnaires and sordid reasons to eat your collard greens (see below) and crooked French Canadians. What’s not to love?

Standout track: “A cautionary song”

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2001: #9 Spiritualized “Stop your crying”

<< #10    |    #8 >>

When we first moved to Ottawa in 2001, my wife Victoria was working for Rogers Cable, having transferred there with her job in the company’s call centre. After a couple of months, though, she ended up quitting the job when she found it too much with the workload that her studies demanded. It was good for her in the long run but we took a hit financially for a while and we lost the benefit we received of discounted digital cable service. I may be misremembering it now but I feel like we had every channel known to humankind for the low, low price of free. Of course, we couldn’t afford such luxury on my own meagre salary, so the cable service was cancelled completely when she left the job.

One of the channels I discovered during that brief period was the Edge channel. Connected, I believe, to Toronto’s alternative rock radio channel, it played more music videos than the traditional MuchMusic was doing at the time and of the specific type of music that often appealed to me. And it was here that I first heard the song (and watched the video for) “Stop your crying” by Spiritualized.

I knew that a new album by the band was forthcoming, of course. I had been hotly anticipating it since I fell hard for their third album, 1997’s “Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space”, and in the four year interim, had gone back to purchase and play and replay the previous two. Jason Pierce, meanwhile, had sacked the majority of the band after the “Ladies and gentlemen” tours, enlisted new players, and brought in over a hundred other hands to help record the new album. For “Let it come down”, he moved away from the shoegaze and space, towards a different wall of sound created by symphonic elements: horns and strings and choirs.

The aforementioned video for the song matches the mood and flow of the song perfectly, starting with Jason Pierce seemingly standing alone on a stage during the song’s quiet intro and punch-to-the-gut opening lines. “Nothing hurts you like the pain of someone you love. There ain’t nothing you can gain that prepares you enough.” Then, the lights come up, revealing a stage full of musicians for the exuberance of the chorus lines, while Pierce remains still, singing, oblivious to the other players on the stage, still alone. And he does this throughout, even at the end, when the orchestra is trashing the place and their instruments, he is focused on delivering his message of love and hurt. The video is cut with stills showing images of Pierce and members of his band at intimate moments, suggesting that each of them (and really, us) are all dealing with personal demons and angst. And Pierce, at the centre of this whole storm, wants to take all of our pain away. So great.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2001 list, click here.