Tag: 2003

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Best tunes of 2003: #10 The Postal Service “Nothing better”

<< #11    |    #9 >>

If memory serves, it was Jezreel, a former call center colleague and friend, that got me into The Postal Service.

I had, up to then, only just discovered Death Cab for Cutie, Ben Gibbard’s primary outfit, and their recent album “Transatlanticism”. Posters of the telltale crow pulling on a strand of yarn from its cover was, for a time, plastering the windows of ‘Record Runner’, the indie music store I had taken to frequenting after relocating to Ottawa a few years before. The name and the image had piqued my curiousity enough to get me hunting down tracks on the Internet and then borrowing a copy of the CD from the main branch of the public library, which was how I discovered music I couldn’t afford to buy back then. Some time shortly after, Jez handed me a burnt CD* one day at work with the words “Postal Service” and “Give up” chicken-scratch-scrawled on it in blue marker. Taking it home, I recognized the voice but found the sound very different from the Death Cab songs I had been becoming infatuated with. Nonetheless, all ten tracks were ear worms and I was hooked.

The Postal Service was a collaboration between the aforementioned Gibbard and electronic artist Jimmy Tamborello, who also performed under the moniker Dntel. Their work together happened over a period of months during a time when Death Cab were inactive and their future uncertain. The two artists would send ideas back and forth on CDRs through the mail two and three songs at a time, which is where they got the idea for their name. Melodies would be layered on melodies, vocals layered on rhythms. The two really only worked together in the studio during the final mixing stage, the rest being done in isolation, collaboration and communication and conversation done old school but the end result was very futuristic in sound.

“Give up” is the project’s one and only proper album, released on Sub Pop records early on in 2003. They had discussed working together again after the album’s unexpected success and indeed, recorded a handful of tracks a couple of years later, but in the end, it was decided that the one album would have to stand. Its magical moment couldn’t be repeated, no matter how much they forced it, and magical it was. But though there’s been no new material to speak of, Ben and Jimmy have gotten the ‘band’ back together every ten years since and toured to celebrate the anniversary of the album’s release**.

“Would someone please call a surgeon
Who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart
That you’re deserting for better company?”

“Nothing better” was never released as a single for the album but it grew to become one of my favourites nonetheless, reminding me of Human League’s “Don’t you want me”***, which was evidently a big inspiration for this song. The Postal Service track, much like elsewhere on “Give up”, hearkens back to the synthpop genesis of the late 70s and early 80s but with an ear to modern computer sounds, retro futurism, so to speak. It is distorted church organs echoing through a wind tunnel, rife with blowing snow, and then the twitches begin, computer glitches and erratic rhythms, all conspiring to get the body moving. Then, bass synths with LED spotlights do the rest. All the while, Ben Gibbard is plaintively trying to convince the object of his affection not to leave him, dressing up their relationship in optimism and hope, viewing things through technicolour tinted glass. Of course, like “Don’t you want me”, the vocals are call and response, two sides to every story. Seattle indie rock musician, and close friend to Gibbard, Jen Wood channels Susan Ann Sulley, and explains that there are reasons for her departure and that it really is the only course of action. Beautiful and real endearing stuff.

“You’ve got allure I can’t deny
But you’ve had your chance, so say goodbye
Say goodbye”

*The other way we got and traded music.

**I was lucky enough to get to see them perform the album at the 20th year mark.

***One of my first ever exposures to modern music, more on that another time.

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

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2003: #11 The Decemberists “Los Angeles, I’m yours”

<< #12    |    #10 >>

I’ve spilled plenty of virtual ink already on the Portland, Oregon based indie-folk quintet led by Colin Meloy. However, the band keeps coming up on these lists of mine because I love them so much, so I might as well spill a little bit more.

“Los Angeles, I’m yours” is a track off The Decemberists’ second album, “Her majesty The Decemberists”. As I’ve already shared, I first heard this album, along with the debut, a year after its release and promptly fell for the literate tales* that frontman Colin Meloy spins into his globalized and folkloric indie rock. Apparently, he wrote this track after his band’s first visit to the great metropolis on the west coast and found that he hated it. The song is a hilarious number where he pokes fun at its denizens and their collective fashion sense**, the sights and the smells, and likens the entirety of it all to vomit from the Pacific Ocean.

“It’s streets and boulevards
Orphans and oligarchs are here
A plaintive melody
Truncated symphony
An ocean’s garbled vomit on the shore”

In true Decemberists fashion, though, the song is not a straight-ahead diss track. The music tells a completely different story, giving the feel of an answer to Sinatra’s “New York, New York”. The melody is at times joyful and wistful but always upbeat. There’s an aggressive strum on the acoustic that sets the mark and the tone. There’s strings. There’s a harmonica. You can almost hear birds chirping at one point… but maybe that would be too much.

As a post script to this entire thing, it’s worth noting Meloy’s story about the first time The Decemberists played this song live in LA after it was released into the world. He had been half expecting to be pelted by tomatoes by the crowd. Instead, the crowd all happily sang along, loudly and proudly, and this changed Mr. Meloy’s mind about the city and its people.

Happy endings all around.

*It was no big surprise to me when Meloy started publishing works of fiction, all of which are great. I just finished “The stars did wander darkling”.

**The women with their underwear straps showing about the waist of their pants and the men with their pants hanging off of them, well below their bottoms.

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

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2003: #12 Coldplay “Clocks”

<< #13    |    #11 >>

There are times while making and posting all these lists of my favourite tunes and albums of each year, times that I err and omit an important (to me) work of music. Indeed, I don’t have a perfect system and my memory is not at all what it used to be.

And so it was, that while counting down my favourite tunes of 2002, I somehow forgot to include “The scientist”, one of my favourite Coldplay songs. However, I can’t very well go back when redo the list at this point so I decided to right this wrong by fudging this new series a bit. “Clocks” appeared on “A rush of blood to the head”, the same 2002 album as “The scientist”, and was released as a single in the US in November 2002. Nevertheless, given that was released in the UK a few months later in 2003, I decided to bend my admittedly malleable rules of inclusion and insert “Clocks” here, a year late, as a sort of reparation for the earlier error. Besides, “Clocks” is a great tune in its own right.

I’ve already shared a few times on these pages about my intro to Coldplay via “Yellow“and ultimately, their debut album “Parachutes“. By 2002, we were all champing at the bit for new music but as it turns out, the group weren’t at all happy with their efforts on the recording sessions for their sophomore record. It was delayed a number of times. In fact, after putting it off, they went out on a world tour and started recording their third album. And it was during these sessions that “Clocks” came out of the woodwork and would go on to save “A rush of blood to the head”.

“Clocks” begins and ends with that piano riff that is instantly recognizable, has been used and sampled by other artists, and is nearly impossible to evacuate from your head once it’s lodged there. The song was built around this riff and despite “Clocks” being planned for a later album, it became imperative to include on the gestating sophomore release.

“The lights go out and I can’t be saved
Tides that I tried to swim against
Have brought me down upon my knees
Oh, I beg, I beg and plead”

The lyrics are unclear in literal meaning but they give a certain impression that is unmistakable. An emotion. An energy. And paired with that intense piano riff and the relentless drum beat, it all spells an immediacy. A sense that you are in the eye of the storm, feeling in slow motion while everything and everyone else is whipping around you triple time fast forward speed. This is life. This is the dream. And Coldplay is soundtracking it.

It’s a beautiful thing and no amount of radio overkill can dull the bright colours and rosy fragrance.

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