Thursday, July 29, 2004
More fucking Yorkshire...
This Is Part Five Of The Enormous Embrace Exercise
A song-by-song directory and exegesis of my in-and-out-of-love affair with The Brighouse & Rastrick Brass Band On Acid
And so onwards and upwards we go, barely stopping for breath, but occasionally pausing to cry, both in abject frustration at all these wasted hours and miles, and in sympathy for those we lost along the way and also in relief that it’s almost. fucking. over. And so! And so…
Gravity
This is the weakest track on the album. I’ve grown to quite like it in its context there, as a lull, a sweet moment, a pause in the headiness. The production is lovely, the guitar to close spiralling and messy and bright. But it’s not the main event. It does sound like a Coldplay song because it is, and they are much simpler and less good than Embrace. But they did a job with it. People currently hyping this tune are going to pass out when they hear the rest of the album. It’s like Coldplay rewriting “Wonder” for people who don’t think enough and Embrace then seizing it and giving it balls again (the thing “Wonder” sorely lacked). If I was sitting on a railway station I’d now describe it as having a “simple, warm spirituality”. Which is Nickspeak for “it’s nice but it doesn’t excite me”.
The Shot’s Still Ringing
Starts abruptly, Standard Embrace B-Side style (not worked on long enough to create a proper intro? -they didn’t even leave a “1-2-3-4!”: they never do), standard 4/4 time signature, standard chugging guitars. But what’s this? An abundance of melody, and a host of lyrical nuggets (sinking ships [a recurring theme], noise, crashing cars, rubbernecking) just waiting to be devoured and chewed over and ruminated upon and cried too, probably. My favourite moment? “All this noise / I’m 19, I’m 22 / In between I’m blessed with you” – the first album having been released when I was just 19, a few months before university, and the third having been released when I was 22, a few months after university (“Hooligan” being slap-bang in the middle of it). Of course this song isn’t about me, don’t be daft, but it’s one of those tiny moments of oddness when your turn your head and think “was that…?” and realise that it was. The tune itself doesn’t do much for me, but I know at least two people already who love it (KARIM AND J LOVE IT). It wouldn’t make my mythical b-sides compilation, but it would probably make most other people’s.
Waterfall
The opening bars of this assure it a place on the legendary CDR though. Chopped-up strings, probably summoned from a sampler or synth, float out of the right-channel, stuttering like tears being desperately held back. Apparently it was recorded in one take, a la “I’ve Been Running” and “I Can’t Feel Bad Anymore”, and it has that same, lighter-than-air, easy feel to it, almost as if it’s been made up on the spot. The monochrome, aquatic stillness also give it a connection to “Satellites”. Halfway through it suddenly dawns on you that the verse has contorted itself into a chorus, and that everything has become much louder (it starts VERY quietly); there are some backing vocals which are endearingly, affectingly clumsy. Richard starts playing a guitar solo, well, less a solo than just a lovely fill, and after a couple of bars of perfection it’s as if he misses a note and then forgets where he is and what he’s doing, thinks “oh well, the others are still playing” and heads out of the room for a cup of tea. It’s lovely, there’s no other word for it (at 3.16 it’s especially beautiful, innocent and totally unaffected). Then some more singing (another chorus, easy, supine, like Marvin Gaye were he from Yorkshire and afraid of cows). And then those strings and that chiming, charming guitar to close. Oh those strings. Staggeringly beautiful. This would easily have fitted on IYNB, and what’s more been the second or third best track there.
Too Many Times
This would NOT have fitted on IYNB. Or any of their albums, including the new one. This is what it’s all about. This is savage, and one of the best things they’ve ever done. It’s like Timbaland producing The Verve circa 1995, when they were at their noisy, fucked-up, howling best. Apparently Youth was told to make the percussion at the start “sound like Manitoba”; thankfully he fucked that up, and what we get is much more powerful and intriguing as a result (indie goes laptop-glitch done to death: spacerock goes psycho-r’n’b not done at all). So what we get is an impossibly jerking rhythm, fucked-up handclaps, a banged-to-fuck piano, lots of distortion on the vocals and reams of evil, snaking, histrionic guitar. “Gravity” isn’t for me. This is for me. This might just be my favourite Embrace song.
Wasted
This surfaced a few years ago as a scratchy bootleg titled “Logical Love Song”. It was pretty good then and is pretty good now. This is re-recorded. It wont get on the mythical CDR but it is good to sing. There are some really great, shitty-synth horns, and some crunchy guitar.
And that’s the end of part 5. More to come… soon…
NJS
7/29/2004 11:07:00 pm
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