Tag: Indie rock

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2003: #5 Death Cab For Cutie “The sound of settling”

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“Bop-baaah… bop-baaah! This is the sound of settling!”

Yes. “The sound of settling”. This was my first of many favourite songs by Bellingham, Washington’s Death Cab for Cutie.

As I wrote back in August in relation to the number 10 song on this list, it was the many promotional posters, wallpaper style, in the windows of a local independent record store, The Record Runner, hundreds of blackbirds tangled in red yarn, that first piqued my interest in the band and their fourth album, “Transatlanticism“. I wasn’t immediately sold on their sound on first listen but there were a couple of tracks that did grab me right away, this one included, and those sustained me, drawing me back for repeat listens. Eventually, I picked up on the melancholic joy that “Transatlanticism” was laying down and the rest was history.

The band originally formed back in 1997, releasing three albums prior to “Transatlanticism” but those I could never really get into. Founding members Ben Gibbard, Chris Walla, and Nick Harmer found structure with their fourth drummer Jason McGerr in 2003 and this lineup remained a constant through their jump to the majors with their fifth album, 2005’s “Plans”, up until lead guitarist Walla departed the group in 2014. Without him, Death Cab has soldiered on, replacing him with a pair of guitarist/keyboardists, releasing three more albums and they remain active.

“Our youth is fleeting
Old age is just around the bend
And I can’t wait to go gray
And I’ll sit and wonder
Of every love that could have been
If I’d only thought of something charming to say”

But back to “The sound of settling”. The album’s second single was famously disliked at first by Gibbard because it was so upbeat but it had a big supporter in Walla, who was also producing the album. I’m so glad he won out*. The song is unbelievably catchy and immediately replayable. It’s got a driving beat that lasts the whole two minutes that is tailor-made for a mid-tempo pogo. It’s got the hand claps, the bopping baseline and Ben Gibbard’s unique voice and take on the dangers of searching for love, the anxiety, the fear that it might not be returned, and on the other side of the coin, the risks of not taking those risks. And yeah, those inescapable “bop-baaahs”!

Pure indie pop goodness.

*And I’m sure Ben and the rest of the band were also glad in the end given how universally loved it is.

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

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Clientele “Music for the age of miracles”

(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 Clientele
Album Title: Music for the age of miracles
Year released: 2017
Details: standard black vinyl

The skinny: Returning back to my series, spinning all of The Clientele’s long players from my collection, I thought it pertinent to quote part of the post (with some updates) I wrote when I shared the band’s sixth studio album as my favourite from 2017. “When I purchased [this standard black copy of the album] from my local record store Compact Music, Tyler, my favourite vinyl pusher*, noted the album with a grin and said it was a good one. He used all the usual adjectives dragged out when describing their music, but assured me that when that “hazy, epic tune backing a spoken word monologue” (“The museum of fog”) came on, he said to himself, “oh yeah… these guys”. And he nodded slowly in a way that suggested he was hearing the song again in his head at that very moment. When I put on “Music for the age of miracles” for my own first listen, it didn’t disappoint at all. It was like returning home and sitting in your favourite comfy chair and watching the greatest movie you’ve never seen before but with all your favourite actors and characters. Familiar yet mind blowing and new.”

Standout track: “Lunar days”

*Compact Music used to have two locations Ottawa. The location I purchased this record at in 2017 was on Bank street, sadly, now closed down and Trevor has moved on to other pursuits.

Categories
Tunes

100 best covers: #31 A.C. Newman “Take on me”

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If you’ve been following along with this list, as I know a bunch of you might be, you’d know that I came across a bunch of the covers on this list by way of compilation albums, many of which placed focus on cover songs. I had a bunch of these on my CD shelves before I started culling my collection and a good portion of them were tracked down in the mid- to late- 2000s. I was definitely on a cover kick in those days. So that would explain why I had a disc purchased from a Starbucks location on my shelves, an impulse buy*, after examining the track listing.

Starbucks actually produced a whole series of these “Sweetheart” compilations from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s. Often released just in time for Valentine’s Day on certain years, they were billed as collections of their “favourite artists” covering their own personal “favourite love songs”. The only one I bought (or even heard) was released in 2009 and was listened to in full only once or twice, though I did rip it to mp3 and keep it for the playback of certain songs that tickled my fancy.

The cover of A-Ha’s ubiquitous 80s classic “Take on me” by The New Pornographers’ frontman Carl Newman (aka A.C. Newman) was one of these.

The original version got a passing mention on these pages a couple of months ago when another single from that massive debut album, “Hunting high and low”, appeared on my Eighties best 100 list. And well, I would say that “Take on me” doesn’t really need any further introduction to anyone with a passing knowledge 80s New Wave. So I won’t go much further into the magnificent, synth pop epic A-Ha number here.

If I had to guess, I’d say that Newman likely recorded this cover around the same time and maybe during the same sessions in which he recorded his second solo album, “Get guilty”. It feels like it was recorded as a shadowy, half-remembered dream of the original. Newman strumming and banging away on his acoustic and singing into his mike, a mirror, his teenaged self smiling back at himself, singing a song he knew better than the backs of both hands, doing his best impression of Morton Harket, belting out those proclamations of love. He surrounds himself with smoky synth washes and every once in a while, that inescapable arpeggiating melody peeks out.

Such a fantastic cover. It’s very different but pays homage to the original, not trying to surpass it but to lift it up closer to the light. It’s hard to call it better but I can’t help but prefer it.

Cover:

Original:

 

*Yeah, those impulse racks do work on suckers like me.

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.