Thursday, January 13, 2005
MORE FUCKING SONGS BY THAT BAND (look away if you hate Embrace) (or don't actually - read it and then listen to them again and see if you still hate them)
This Is Part Eight (8!) 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
More B-sides, this time for the release of “Looking As You Are”, the third single from Out Of Nothing. The A-side has been slightly rejigged, but I’ve yet to hear it, so it can wait till another time (possible infinity, possibly forever, probably never) before I wax lyrical about it. I’ve not jibbered separately about different versions of songs before; why start now?
I Ache
Embrace’s evolution continues with “I Ache”, the most instantly noticeable of the new b-sides, an oddly dramatic piece of subdued acoustic spaceblues (figure that out – “oddly dramatic” and “subdued” at the same time) lashed through with caustic streams of silverblue guitar that makes you feel dizzy. Dark and narcotic, it sits alongside “Too Many Times” and “Flaming Red Hair” nicely, although it’s slower than both and much less digital than “FRH”. This gets on the 10-track b-sides CD, when I make the next one.
Soldier’s Hours
A fuzzblown grooving rocker with a raucous chorus, something akin to The Jesus & Mary Chain playing at Happy Mondays for a laugh. Messy in a very good way, energetic, audacious and layered with clashing cymbals and buzzing, fuzzing guitar. Weren’t the two rockers on the debut album meant to sound like this? Possibly. The title is cribbed from “Flaming Red Hair”, the arrangement from a version of “Milk & Honey”, a tune they’ve been trying to nail since the OON sessions and which has been through several incarnations. The version I might have heard a few times has a wonderful, anti-gravity, Spiritualized-esque intro, and a wonderful string arrangement to close which reminds of REM for some reason. It also has a slightly dodgy, tacked-on chorus pinched from a song called “Forever Young” which they played at the RAH years ago. It was very good, apart from the dodgy chorus. Anyway, “Soldier’s Hours” is a 3-minute fuzzrocker, and I like it. It would get on the long-form version of The Infamous Nick Southall-Approved Embrace B-Sides Compilation CD.
Madelaine
This is going to become a firm, firm favourite with fans. Scorched ballad, with perhaps the most honestly autobiographical lyrics Danny’s ever written, detailing his failing lovelife despite the level of fame and success he has achieved – witness “don’t let it go / I feel like everyone’s calling my name and I’m still alone / you ought to know / that I would change everything just to sing to you when you’re alone / and later I’ll wade in again / over my head / all my mind / I wanted to see what you meant / and I’m out of time / I’m useless and stupid / I suppose if I had you I’d let you go / there’s something inside me which stops me / I wish I could break its hold”. The titular girl (“I wanted to feel how I felt on that day I met Madelaine”) is incidental in identity; she’s a signifier for the idea of being in love with love rather than in love with a person. Our protagonist is infatuated with infatuation, and once the decline to steady company and easy passing time begins, once the butterflies and dizzy headaches begin to pass, he panics that it’s over and that he feels nothing. He’s said in the past that he worries he doesn’t feel things as strongly as other people do, doesn’t experience emotions in the same way others do. I used to think the same. Perhaps he’s an emotional adrenaline-junky, hooked on the fix of intense empathic sensation either positive or negative, the peaks and troughs, and unable to appreciate and live with the middling, semi-contented (medicated?) calm we mostly walk through in a daze, finding it claustrophobic. Perhaps that’s why he needs to be onstage, needs to be singing, needs to heighten his sense of awareness and be the centre of attention, repeatedly loading himself into a gun, placing himself in a position that many of us would fear intensely (but still love to be able to do). Sonically “Madelaine” starts quietly, piano and guitar, but it grows across four minutes, Richard adding layers of guitar until it becomes powerfully laden with noise, strafing and rising like Johnny Greenwood or Nick McCabe used to do, matching and then beating his brother for intensity. “Madelaine” is very, very good, and would get on the uber-discerning 10-track b-sides comp CD, never mind the long-form version.
The Final Say
Quite poppy to start, acoustic strum a la “Hooligan” or “Save Me” perhaps (actually sounds very familiar) but quieter. Some excellent, cheeky, really poptastic backing vocals over the verse, and a big dynamic lurch into the chorus that might have been described to me as being like “Caught In A Rush”. It is, I guess, but less jarring. A guitar bit, a chorus, more ace backing vocals; this is good, very competent, very nice tune. Apparently it was in the running to be on the album but was too “…cheeky?” according to a certain guitarist. I need to listen to it more – it’s the one that’s grabbed me least thus far.
NJS
1/13/2005 10:06:00 am
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1 Comments:
thanks for that :) .... now i want to here it n ive got 2 weeks still left! n im now gona have to buy all 3 versions.... do u know if ill be able to get the final say in cd format at all?
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