A Cripple Walks Among You

Frightened Rabbit have a new album out, prompting me to re-listen to their previous album, "The Midnight Organ Fight." The Scottish accent and the fuzzed over lyrics did not allow me to really understand it when I was first listening, but with a little research and some close listening I get it.

This time I feel like I was kicked in the nuts--in a good way.

This isn't a blues "baby come back" or a where did we go wrong album. This is not a country "Woe is me" album. This is early Replacements meets Scottish twee. This is a "don't let the door hit you on the way out" album, oh but maybe it wasn't so bad, yeah it was. This is about a relationship that is truly over. This is about the mix of emotions involved in the end and trying to pick up the pieces.

Modern Leper
The album leads off with an almost out of tune acoustic guitar, then lyrics "A cripple walks among you, you tired human beings."  The song goes on to capture the alienation and aloneness a person feels as a relationship falls apart.  The hopes, the confusions, the self-recrimination, the self-medication, are all described.  The relationship does not end in this song, but it is not long for the world.

I Feel Better <--click for live version on youTube
"I left the house without a fucking clue."   It is upbeat and by the end almost joyous.  The singer describes singing songs he wrote about the girl, "And this will be the last one."  The chorus includes, "I feel better and better and worse and then better."  The real dynamics of ending a bad relationship in a fun song.


Good arms vs. Bad arms
"…they are built to hold…You don't need these now that you have found another pair."  "I decided this decision six months ago…I might not want you back, but I want to kill him."  He is angry and hurt, worried that being touched by her might make him confused.  This was the one song that I really noticed when the album came out.  Sometimes I think we understand far more than we think we know, and I think was true for me when I first heard this song.   Now, it doesn't grab me quite as much as many of the other songs on the album.


Fast Blood <-- click for song on youTube
Nothing like little drunken sex to move on.  The lyrics are nearly all metaphors of sex.  Sex and metaphor, how much better can it get?  "midnight organ fight, yours gives into mine…this is the longest kiss goodnight."  "And now I, I tremble  because this fumble has become biblical." "I feel like I just died twice was reborn again for all our dirty sins"  It was an amazing job of being dirty and literate at the same time.   The music compliments the lyrics of a 2 a.m., several pints into the night, tumble.

Old, Old Fashioned
This is the Paul McCartney song on a John Lennon album.  Upbeat, straight-forward nostalgia, driving drum and bass guitar.  The lyrics imply that if only they had only been old fashioned, they wouldn't be in the mess.  But of course, this isn't the past, and it doesn't really matter or help to feel nostalgic.

The Twist <--click for song
Driving piano and soft tambourine accompany a plaintive voice.  The singer needs someone, any one.
"So twist and whisper the wrong name
I don't care nor do my ears
Twist yourself around me
I need company I need human heat
I need human heat"

Bright Pink Bookmark
is a short instrumental interlude.

Head Rolls Off
Church like organ…"Jesus is just a Spanish boy's name…"  Its time to get existential and ask what it all means.
"Just when nature's had enough of you.
When my blood stops
Someone else's will not.
When my head rolls off
Someone else's will turn.
You can mark my words, I'll make tiny changes to earth"

Backwards Walk
If only we could go back and change the past, and not meet that person who broke your heart.  "I am working on erasing you."

Keep Yourself Warm <--click for song
Melancholy organs and guitars played in minor chords.  The desperation of finding someone and oneself is the theme of this song.  "You won't find love in a hole."  By itself the song is interesting, coming a few songs after The Twist, it is brilliant.  Those two songs, along with I Feel Better make the album for me.  They capture that confusion about what is needed, or wanted.  Do I want this or that?  Will this make me feel worse?
 "It takes more than fucking someone you don't know to keep warm.
Do you really think that for a house-beat you'll find your love in a hole?
 Oh, you won't find love in a,
Won't find love in a hole.
It takes more than fucking someone to keep yourself warm.
I'm drunk, I'm drunk
And you're probably on pills
If we've both got the same diseases
It's irrelevant girl"

Poke
Simply acoustic guitar, and the singer.  He laments that has to poke his own eye to feel bad, or that the breakup is like having one's eye poked.   However, singing is too matter of fact to be a lament.  "Just say you don't want to be with me an I will go."  The song swirls up,  You can tell he is gone.  The end of the song gets me nearly everytime:
"And now we're unrelated and rid of all the shit we hated,
But I hate when I feel like this and I never hated you."


Floating in the Forth
This song feels like Scotland in February.  It is dark, cold, and damp.  "You just stepped out of the front of my house and I will never see you again."  More than any other song on the album, this one is the most direct about the end of the relationship.  He sings of the end, and finishes the song with the lyrics:
"Down the Forth, into the sea
I'll steer myself
through drunken waves
these manic gulls
scream it's okay
take your life
give it a shake
gather up
all your loose change
I think I'll save suicide for another year."
He's depressed and optimistic. Its time to go on, and he can.


Who'd You Kill Now
A drunken throw away song.  This is the song that the album could really do without.  Great album, and it ends with a whimper.  Its not a bad song, it just doesn't fit with the rest of the album in quality or emotion.

The first time I really heard this album, I was blown away.   Perhaps it was the raw emotion of album, perhaps it was great to share the pain.  Time has passed, and it doesn't have the same punch, but it is still a great breakup album.  It will never be as popular as Rumours or Blood on the Tracks, but I would put it in the same league.

Alex Chilton

"Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton, to come home.  "

Alex Chilton is dead, and despite not being a big Big Star fan, I am really moved.

Growing up I had heard the Box Tops song The Letter many times, but my real introduction to Alex Chilton was a Replacements song titled Alex Chilton.  From then on knowing Alex Chilton was the equivalent of knowing the secret handshake.  If you knew him and his bands, you knew your stuff.  You were a member of important but obscure music geekdom.

Thanks Alex.  Glad you made it home.

Sheena Easton????

This is really not cool. I woke up this morning with Sheena Easton's "Morning Train" stuck in my mind. I kind of figured it would disappear fairly rapidly, but nope. It is heading toward noon and I still have it going.

It made me think that there might be a kind of cool and easy research project looking at what makes a song stick in one's mind. There would be two aspects to the research, one is characteristics of the song, and the other is the characteristics of the person. One is environment and the other is internal. It turns out that is just a variation on my usual types of research.

Music could be analyzed using the Music Genome Project...better known by its commercial product Pandora. A shared Pandora channel could be created, where people could enter the songs that get stuck in one's head. Then genome project could then analyze the common characteristics of the songs.

The personality aspects would be more difficult. The suspected characteristics would have to be measured, and then the people would have to indicate how often they have music stuck in their mind. The problem is that how often has the potential to be very subjective, or influenced by memory which could covary with the personality measures. This can be worked out, but would require care.

Now the key question: Is it worth the effort?

New Favorite Song

Yesterday I ran into this song that made me laugh a couple of times. Its a perfect song for someone in my place. Feeling like leftovers...still something to offer, but a day or two old.

The artist is Jarvis Cocker, formerly of the band Pulp.

Great lines from the song:
Well, he says that he loves you like a sister
Well I guess, I guess that's relative
He says that he wants to make love to you
Well instead of "to", shouldn't that be "with"?

Well this is my CV and I've got no one else to blame
So I will state, state my case, I will state it again

Come and help yourself to leftovers
Got a little surplus love and affection
And getting cuddly, so won't you cuddle me?
I could be your teddy bear... oh yeah

I know I ain't no eligible bachelor
This is no mouthwatering proposition
Make no mistake, you're in big trouble, little lady
If we start a-hugging and a-kissing

The singer is so pathetic, and still somehow maintains a sense of humour about himself.

A new blog

What the world needs now
is a new blog.
That's the only thing
that there's just too little of...

Oh great! I guess I can only blame myself for getting that song stuck in my mind. I once heard that phenomenon referred to as an "Ear Worm." I like that metaphor. The song worms its way in through your ear, and then sits there. Well not really sits there, but goes around and around.


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Now playing: Frightened Rabbit - I Feel Better
via FoxyTunes