Tag: Alternative Rock

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2001: #25 R.E.M. “Imitation of life”

#24 >>

And so here we are, all hallow’s eve, as good a time as any to start up a new series. You might have noticed that I finished up my Best of 2000 list a few weeks ago, and so now we’re on to 2001. This list is a bit longer than the one I did up for 2000 but I still haven’t quite gotten to thirty songs for the naughties decade (perhaps for 2002?). First up here, at song number twenty-five, is R.E.M. with their track “Imitation of life”.

As I’ve already mentioned already in this pages, I’ve been following Athens, Georgia’s finest since “Green” hit the charts when I was a teenie-bopper and would most definitely call myself a big fan. I recently endeavoured to narrow down my top five favourite tunes by R.E.M., a rough task, given their vast body of work, and posted the results on these pages. Looking back it at now, it’s noticeable that not one of the songs that made the final five were recorded after the end of the 90s. I personally found the early part of the 00s my least favourite period in R.E.M.’s catalogue, a period of albums that for the most part sounded like watered down versions of their best work, but still, there were some gems to be found.

One such example is “Imitation of life”, the first single off “Reveal”, buried deep in side two of the mix. It bears all the hallmarks of their sound. Peter Buck jangles and Michael Stipe hems and haws through half-nonsensical lyrics. Buck himself has admitted that the song feels like it is plagiarized from one of their early tracks. And yet, there’s something about it (isn’t there?) that begs for head bopping and singing along, especially at the bridge at the 2:40 mark when Buck and Mike Mills sit back, ease off on their instruments and let Stipe do his thing.

“This sugarcane
This lemonade
This hurricane, I’m not afraid
C’mon, c’mon no one can see me cry”

And lastly, if you haven’t seen it, have a gander at the neat-o video below. It’s the same twenty second shot played over and over, in forwards and reverse, simply focusing at different segments in the shot. Good stuff.

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

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Blur “The magic whip”

(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: Blur
Album Title: The magic whip
Year released: 2015
Details: Black vinyl, 2 x LP, Gatefold sleeve, OBI strip, poster

The skinny: Blur’s out-of-the-blue 8th album came about by accident and was only ever released because of how good the band felt about recording it and how great they felt the end product was. For me, it’s like an incredible bonus/hidden track at the end of your favourite album. Who knows if we’ll ever see another Blur album?

Standout track: “There are too many of us”

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1990: #9 New Model Army “Purity”

<< #10    |    #8 >>

This fact may come as a shock to some of you but the truth of the matter is that I didn’t go to my first ever concert until I was 19 years old. I’m not making excuses here. It’s just that I lived in a small town in southern Ontario, country music territory for an alt-rock fan, and just far enough away from Toronto for a teen without a driver’s licence or a job to make things impractical. Add to that the fact that many of the concerts I really wanted to see were limited to attendees 19 and over and you have some serious challenges.

So the first show came in the summer of 1993. My friend Tim asked me if I wanted to go see New Model Army with him at the now famed Lee’s Palace and I couldn’t say no. He drove us into Scarborough Town Centre and we took the subway downtown, where we spent the day leading up to the show trawling the used CD stores. I purchased copies of Primus’s “Sailing the seas of cheese” and Buffalo Tom’s “Let me come over”. However, neither of them would make it home with me after being left somewhere at Bathurst subway station in our haste to catch the last subway back to Scarborough. I remember being particularly nervous when security was checking ID at the door to Lee’s (as I said, I didn’t have my licence at the time) and they did hesitate when I showed a roughed up copy of my birth certificate and some questionable photo ID but then, shrugged and let me in.

The opening acts that evening were friends and frequent contributors of the band: tattoo artist and poet, Joolz Denby and electric violinist, Ed Alleyne-Johnson. The latter performer made quite the impression on Tim and me, utilizing all sorts of tricks and pedals to bend and mutate the sound of his instrument and also to record, loop, and play back these sounds until it felt to us like he had a whole string orchestra up on the empty stage with him. It goes without saying that the headliners were the real highlight that night, effectively hooking me on the energy of live performances for the rest of my life, but Alleyne-Johnson’s set has also stuck with me almost 25 years later, whereas I had to do a bit of research to remember the other opener.

Ed Alleyne-Johnson was also a proper member of New Model Army between the years of 1989 and 1994, which is incidentally my favourite period in their 37 year career. His fiddle introduced a folk sound to the band’s already gigantic palette of music, whose oils always served mainly as an intriguing base layer for the lyrics of the band’s frontman and driving force, Justin Sullivan.

The rains move in eastwards, in waves of succession
Drawing lines of grey across the sky
With history just as close as a hand on the shoulder
In hunger and impatience we cry
The battle against corruption rages in each corner
There must be something better, something pure

These, the opening lines of “Purity” give you an idea of the types of words and the imagery invoked by Sullivan, the poet laureate of ‘hopeless causes’, ranking up there with Billy Bragg as one of alt-rock’s best political consciences. On this track, he takes arms against corruption in both the science laboratories and the church pews, making us question what is pure, what is good. All the while, the acoustic guitar is given a serious workout, the drums stomp and the Alleyne-Johnson’s fiddles scream and we wish we were anywhere else but this world described by Sullivan. Yet in all its dystopian angst, it’s a lovely track that always transports me back to an early summer night back in 1993.

If you’ve never heard “Purity” (or any other track by New Model Army), I strongly suggest you give it a spin now.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1990 list, click here.