(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 great escape Year released: 1995 Year reissued: 2012 Details: 4 of 7 in Blur 21, anniversary box set, black vinyl, 180 gram, 2 x LP, Gatefold sleeve
The skinny: Released at the height of Britpop madness, Blur’s fourth album finds the boys and their music as big and bloated and commercial, almost caricatures of themselves. Still, some really, really great stuff here, the song below included.
At the number three spot is another fantastic track by Doves, the only band to make more than one appearance on this Best tunes of 2000 list, the other being at number #10 with “Catch the sun”. Both songs are from the band’s stunning debut album, “Lost souls”‘, an album I didn’t actually hear until two or three years after the fact but one that has since reached the upper echelons in my all-time favourites conversations.
“The man who told everything” is the third single to be released off the album and lyrically, though I can’t be absolutely sure, appears to follow the same sort of themes expounded in single number two, “Catch the sun”.
“Get out of bed, pick up the phone, time to tell the press
Say to myself, I can’t do no one else, there’s a whole world outside
I’m gonna tell it all, I’m gonna sell it all, I’m gonna sell
Get out of bed, come out and sing, blue skies ahead, the man who told everything.”
It’s almost like the band were writing about how they were feeling at the time of making the record. Being that it was a very long process and that they were drastically changing their approach to music, they couldn’t wait to unleash “Lost souls”. It all feels very transformative, like their cocoon had become way too small for all their grand ideas and they were bursting to get it all out into the big blue world and into the sunshine. They didn’t want to hold anything back and in this excitement, seemed to be pushing everyone else to do the same. Live big and bold.
And the music expounds all that.
“The man who told everything” is big, bold, and beautiful. But don’t mistake my words for inferring that this tune is high energy frenzy. Instead, for all the excitement of the words, the music has a more muted pace. The guitar strumming matches the easy drumming at the outset but at each chorus, another layer of guitars and string effects is added that has an arduous quality, at once daunting and stubborn and unforgiving. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s brilliant though. I like to listen to this one late at night, lights dimmed, earphones on, volume up, eyes closed, a pint not far from hand, and just let the waves of it all crash over me. So much awesome.
For the rest of the Best tunes of 2000 list, click here.
What happens when you’re a teenaged girl with aspirations of being in a rock band?
If your father is an established producer/musician, he puts together a band made up of other teenaged daughters of musicians and producers and sets you loose on the music world. Right?
Okay. So that doesn’t happen every day but it is an approximation of the beginnings of Z Berg’s now-defunct girl group, The Like. And this story could easily have ended up being a cautionary tale of satisfying your kids’ whims if she hadn’t been at all talented and proficient at writing pop songs. The Like’s first album, 2005’s “Are you thinking what I’m thinking”, mined the poppier side of 90s grrl rock, sounding a bit like Elastica or a more upbeat Garbage. Then, things were quiet for five years before Berg returned with a slightly different lineup and an overhauled sound.
It’s very likely to me that it was producer Mick Ronson that inspired in the now twenty-something ladies a taste for sixties girl groups and mod culture. You can hear this old school essence in some of his other work but with The Like and their second album, “Release me”, everything clicked. Z Berg, along with Tennesse Thomas, and newcomers Reni Lane and Laena Geronimo, dressed the part, made videos that looked from the 60s (see the one below) and put together some really fun tunes. And the critics took notice, many of them calling the new album a marked improvement on the debut. Unfortunately, the band in this form didn’t last much more than a year, going on hiatus in 2011 and performing a one-off show in Japan in 2013, before disappearing again for good.
“Wishing he was dead” is the lead off track on “Release me” and instantly transports you back fifty some odd years to a brighter and vividly technicolor time. It calls to mind the heartbreak songs of the era but changes the plot somewhat in that the singer feels more anger than sadness and feels called to more action than just crying at home into her pillow. “If I could kick his head in, fickle little boyfriend, I’d be satisfied,” Berg sings. “If I could smack some sense into his senses, I might feel alright.” But even with all this inferred violence, it takes a page from “My boyfriend’s back” with a sound that is almost cheerful in its angst. “Wishing he was dead” is peppy drumming, jumpy guitar riffs, dancing organs, and Z Berg’s delicious vocals, backed up, of course, by her tough girl gang. Good fun, all of it.
For the rest of the Best tunes of 2010 list, click here.
My (life in) music lists 