Tag: 2002

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Best tunes of 2002: #9 Oasis “Stop crying your heart out”

<< #10    |    #8 >>

Oasis. Yeah, I loved them. But there was also a period where we grew apart, me and Oasis.

As I wrote in my post detailing their appearance on my Best tunes of 2000 list with “Go let it out”, I found their third record, 1997’s “Be here now”, just a tad over the top, even for them. I didn’t even bother with the next one, “Standing on the shoulders of giants”, at the time, and took me many years before I gave that full album a chance.

My return to the Oasis fold started with their 2002 album, “Heathen chemistry”, their first album with new band members Gem Archer and Andy Bell (of Ride) and their last with longtime drummer, Alan White. It was marked attempt by Noel Gallagher to rein things back in a bit, and to try to recapture some of that magic that made the Manchester, England rock band so big in the first place. I’m talking here of the magnificence and exuberance that was their first two records. And I swore I heard a bit of that the first time I heard the lead off single from “Heathen chemistry”. I remember that I was back in Toronto for the weekend and driving around with my brother-in-law Nick and “The Hindu times” came on the radio. I also remember exclaiming aloud that it sounded like Oasis. To which Nick, thinking I was just stating the obvious, replied, “That’s because it is”.

As piqued as my curiousity was with this first single, it wasn’t until a few months later that I was really pushed to give Oasis another chance. My younger brother, Mike, came up to Ottawa to visit that summer and with him brought a bunch of CDs to keep him company on the long Greyhound trip from Bowmanville. One of the evenings that weekend was spent spinning CDs and sharing tunes and the two new ones that really stuck out for me was Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s self-titled debut and the CD single of “Stop crying your heart out” by the Gallagher brothers and their friends.

“We’re all of us stars
We’re fading away
Just try not to worry
You’ll see us some day“

Noel’s lyrics aren’t always clear and aren’t always deep but they’re well put together for the melody and still manage to evoke moods and feelings. “Stop crying” is a motivating and uplifting number. Yeah, it’s a piano ballad with Gem Archer earning his keep. But it soon gets anthemic because… of course, it does. Big guitars, shimmering and crashing cymbals, towering strings, and over top it all, it’s Liam, sneering and crooning and jerking our tears and pulling our heartstrings.

Sing it with me: “Hold onnnnnn!”

Man, that Noel knows how to conjure rock and roll, doesn’t he?

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

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2002: #10 David Bowie “Everyone says ‘hi'”

<< #11    |    #9 >>

Wow. It took almost three and half years for this blog to see its first proper post to feature David Bowie. Fittingly, it was his 2002 album, “Heathen”, that really set me on the course to fandom. Of course, I’d heard him before, knew many of the hits, heard a few of his compilations, but I feel sure that this was the first of his albums to which I listened in full and took an immediate liking.

Seen by many at the time as a comeback of sorts, David Bowie’s 22nd album was his highest charting album since the early 80s and was generally as well-received by the critics as it was the buying public. It saw him easing back from the electronic sound he focused on in the 90s, consecutively dabbling in soul/jazz, industrial, and electronica/rave sounds, and instead, playing with a more fulsome and organic palette. The cover art of “Heathen” felt like a play or self-parody, an older Bowie looking clean cut and almost too normal, except for those eyes, those eyes felt alien. Yeah, alien.

Right neat the end of album, at track ten, sits this tune, “Everyone says ‘hi’”, the album’s second single. You might think by its title that it’s a happy and light number and listening to it superficially might find you in the same place. But this big sounding tune that mixes solid acoustic strumming and plenty of chameleonic synths, is really a song about loss and missing someone so terribly that you can’t accept it and instead, choose to imagine them having gone temporarily, vacation-like.

“Said you took a big trip
They said you moved away
Happened oh, so quietly
They say”

This song is magic and the more you listen to the words, the deeper they cut. And suddenly, the cheerful tune becomes haunting, the saxophone rings in nostalgia, recalling his youth, the strings gather you all in. “Everyone says ‘hi’.” Everyone misses you, Bowie is saying, the pain is so great that everyone feels it, like pathetic fallacy. Just amazing.

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

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2002: #11 Levellers “Wake the world”

<< #12    |    #10 >>

Levellers have already appeared on these pages, care of a post a year and a half ago, in support of their appearance on my Best Tunes of 1991 list at the number nine spot with “One way”. I wrote in that post how I discovered the band and fell in love with their sophomore album, “Levelling the land”, on which appears the aforementioned track. The next album, their self-titled third, was just as a great and I purchased a ticket for their local stop on the ensuing tour but for some reason, their North American leg was cancelled.

Things were not so rosy with me and the five piece from Brighton, England after that. I continued to buy their albums but found them not quite as solid and I considered packing it in after their 2000 release, “Hello pig”, which to this day, is my least favourite by the group. Nonetheless, I was still enthused enough by their back catalogue to drag Victoria to see them play an acoustic set at Lee’s Palace when they finally managed another North American tour in 2001. Of course, it was excellent and when they announced a new studio album in 2002, I couldn’t help but check it out.

“Green blade rising” didn’t return the band to its former status as biggest indie band in Britain but it was still seen as a return to form. Indeed, the album’s title was taken from an earlier song the band had written but renamed. It breathed new life into their folk and granola crunching infused pop/punk rock, raising the fist and calling to arms, and preaching to their already converted choirs.

“Wake the world” wasn’t released as a single from the album but it closed it off perfectly. It’s a quieter number. A humming bass rumble lurks throughout its three and a half minute duration, haunting and sustained piano chords keep time and move it along, and of course, Jonathan Sevink’s plaintive violin pops in to say hello and add to the mood. On top of all that, frontman Mark Chadwick is wistfully railing against indifference and ambivalence to the world’s woes while sitting safely in our own lives.

“Been sitting in silence safe inside four walls
Trying to remember the moment when we changed the rules
Do you take to your bed or do you take the cure
Been getting out of my head lately that’s for sure

So tell me when are we gonna wake the world”

Indeed, Mark, indeed.

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