A Review of OVO (2000)

Anyone who's been in my company for more than five minutes - and some might say that's still too much - will know that I am terminally obsessed with the Y2K aesthetic. The visuals, trends, fashions, tech music and general pop culture of the late 90's and early 2000's, the big, shiny chrome beacon at the end of the 20th century. This makes zero sense if you also know that I was born in 1992, far too late to be able to appreciate any of those trends in any capacity. By rights, I am a 2000's kid and should be into Frutiger Aero, Green Day or literally anything else that was out around the early 2000s. But nope, give me the drum and bass, give me the chrome and aqua, give me the vague appropriation of anime and manga aesthetics.

But nostalgia is a double-edged sword, and it's all to easy to swing it the wrong way and hack your own feet off. Looking back on stuff like this can give you a real insight into how trends in culture, art and society change over time, and it's fascinating to see what was considered fashionable back then and what that says about us at the time it was made. But then you get slapped in the face with some casual homophobia or racism and remember that oh, right, this was a different, not neccesarily good time. You have to take these things as a warts-and-all deal to fully appreciate them, otherwise there's a real risk of learning the wrong lessons.

That is, if there's even anything to learn from them at all. Which brings me to... this thing.

Full disclosure, I rewrote that opening spiel about three or four times because I had no idea how to approach this thing at first. Listening to this thing for over a week, parsing over each song, trying to wrap my head around the frankly bonkers narrative, I suspect that my feelings matched that of somebody like Cao Cao as he plotted his next great battle. I wonder if, like me, he ever considered reaching for a glass of wine to fortify himself.

Right, okay. Let me back up and just give a little context.

Penned by former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel, OVO was created to soundtrack a Cirque du Soleil-style show performed at the Millennium Dome in London during the year 2000. The show, and by extension the album, is a high-concept affair dealing with themes of generational responsibility, overcoming prejudice, coexistence with nature, the shaky co-dependency of humanity and technology, grief, uncertainty in a changing world and hope for the future. All of this is told in the allegorical parable of three generations of a family on a fantastical island and their conflicts with another tribe as they struggle to ensure the ongoing survival of their fellow beings.

If all of that sounds like pretentious guff, then that's because it is. But we'll get to that in a minute.

I'm being a bit cheeky with this one, in all honesty. While I started the series to cover all the music that I delibaretly ignored as an angsty teenager, this one's going much father back. I was about eight at the time the Millennium Dome was a thing. I have vague memories of visiting the Dome maybe once for a Pokémon-related thing, although I wonder nowadays if those are fake, retroactively created by my own brain. I certainly never saw the show this album was penned for. I suspect that a lot of it would have gone over my head and I would have had zero understanding of it.

Listening to this now, I can state that kid me wasn't missing much.

Two things are working against OVO. The first is that it's a soundtrack album, written with a visual element in mind, so listening to it divorced from the context of the stage show is definitely not going to bring across the intended experience. That's an unavoidable pitfall when you listen to any soundtrack album, of course - I love Kung Fu Panda 2's music, but part of that love comes from having it be paired with the on-screen action. It loses a lot if you haven't got the film in front of you, or if you haven't even seen the film at all.

 But this is compounded by the second thing, in that said intended experience is about as substantive as a cotton wool life raft. The album progresses from sleepy folk music to spine-tingling industrial to thrashing battle drums to new age strings to probably the worst rap I've ever heard in my life, but so little of it feels like it has anything real or profound to say. And I sincerely doubt that watching a bunch of leotard-wearing performers jumping about elaborate scaffolding is going to help fill the gaps.

And the second problem is the album's biggest handicap, because OVO is trying to say something. It's a concept album wearing the skin of a soundtrack. The entire structure, from track ordering to sound to lyrics, is telling a story, albeit an allegorical one. But the story on the surface level is complete nonsense to the point that I had to stop several times and nurse my forehead to make sure my brain hadn't tried to escape my skull. And even then, said story is just a vehicle for empty platitudes about mankind's place at the dawn of the new millennium, about as filling and meaningful as fairground candy floss.

But I get ahead of myself. Let's just take this thing track-by-track, as always, and see what we can make of it.

--- 

Low Light
I initially mistook this for an instrumental, but there are actually some spoken words in Irish Gaelic in here. This track, low-key and slow like a rising sun, works as an opener, giving a very "dawn of time" feel to ease you into the overall narrative, but you probably won't remember it by the time the album's over.

The Time of the Turning
Richie Havens and Allison Goldfrapp do some back and forth about the cycles of the seasons, agriculture and the steadfast hardiness of those who live in nature. It's fitting for the vaguely mythological/fairy-tale atmosphere of the album, but not that much of a standout. The chorus gets stuck in my head, though, which is at least something noteworthy.

The Man Who Loved The Earth/The Hand That Sold Shadows
The first major instrumental of the album, and it's... not good. Half of it is droning digeridoos punctuated by the occasional drum hit, and the other is an oddly-sinister whirlwind of timpani, flute and electric guitar that ends up being tonally jarring. It feels like two tracks hastily shoved together, regardless of whatever narrative it's trying to bring across.

The Time of the Turning (Reprise)/The Weaver's Reel
Two remarks. One: I feel it's odd to have a reprise so early in the album, and so soon after the track that it's reprising. Normally you'd want a fair distance between those. And secondly, I think this track's been named backwards - the segment I think of as "The Weaver's Reel" comes first, followed by the reprise of "The Time of the Turning".

Regardless, this song mostly picks up in the second half. We get something akin to an Irish jig or harvest festival with lots of fast-paced flutes, followed by sudden and frantic clattering drums as though something had gone horribly wrong. I definitely remember that particular drum beat from the commercials for the Millennium Dome - I wonder if they sampled this track for it?

Father, Son
Odes to fatherhood don't work on me. Mostly because my own dad was an alcoholic womaniser who sold me and my sister's GameCube for booze money. And mawkish, crooning songs don't work on me, either. Peter Gabriel going on about doing yoga with his elderly dad to a bare-bones piano and string backing fuses those two things into a something that I bounce off of like a golf ball bouncing off of an elephant's arse. Bad, bad track.

Call me heartless, but a song with a lot of personal relevance to the person who composed it can still suck. Even if you had a good relationship with your father, I can't see anyone un ironically enjoying this.

The Tower That Ate People
Okay, this is a track I like. After all the folk and woodwind, the sharp turn into industrial, with pounding, metallic drums and distorted flute, is a welcome relief from everything else that's come before. I've found myself bopping my head to this more than once on the walk in the park or on the train to work. Peter himself clearly isn't ashamed of this track either - it's recurring on his set-lists and turned up in a few compilation albums.

And out of all the tracks, this is one of the few that remains surprisingly prescient in today's times. Between  the concerns over the rise of AI and the increasing prevalence of social media in our lives the image of people increasingly becoming prisoners inside the tower, yet unable to cope without the shelter of it, only gets stronger. "Man feed machine, machine feed man", indeed.

Revenge
Filler instrumental with rapid-fire drumming meant to invoke a sudden battle or uprising. Skippable.

White Ashes
A slow, weird mix of wild calls and lyrics on the fall of the tower and the death of the one in control of it. Feels weirdly post-apocalyptic, more of a semi-sarcastic celebration of societal collapse than of true joy and relief. Still not that memorable a track.

Downside-Up
Another double-act song, this time between Elizabeth Fraser and Paul Buchanan, that muses on the sudden collapse of stability and upending of status quo. Again, nothing much to say, which is becoming a running theme of this review. I do have one thing to say about it, but that'll come later.

The Nest That Sailed The Sky
A weird, floaty instrumental spiritually akin to those binaural ASMR music vids you watch to help you go to sleep. I definitely don't hate this one - it's weirdly calming and pleasant, and I can definitely see myself turning it on for a few minutes when I'm a bit stressed out. 

The Tree That Went Up
Yeah, trees tend to do that.

Sarcastic comments aside, I keep getting this one confused with The Nest That Sailed The Sky. And I have a distinct feeling that this track might be out of order with everything else. Really, this thing should come before Downside-Up, if we're going by the bonkers narrative that this thing is strung around. But when a lot of these airy instrumentals bleed together in the way they do, I suspect that the people putting this thing together didn't much care overall.

Make Tomorrow
A ten-minute encore from every performer on the album thus far as they appeal to the audience to actually go out and make the new millennium happen. Put down the distractions, figure out what mankind is worth. And while there's a definite poetry about this one that I can appreciate, ten minutes is too much time to spend beating the listener over the head with your album's final unifying thesis with the care and grace of a drunk clown with an industrial mallet. Maybe I need to listen to it a few more times for it to really resonate, but still, ten minutes. Ugh.

The Story of OVO
Ooooh, boy. This is what you all came to read.

See, I've been pulling a bit of a fast one on you all. The track listing I've been using isn't the one used by the album's public release. It's based on OVO: The Millennium Show, an alternative version of the album originally exclusive to the Dome. That version of the album has this track, a rap-based summary of the fictional narrative of OVO, as a separate disc. The public release removes the track "The Tree That Went Up" and sticks this track at the very start.

That was a stupid fucking decision for two reasons. One: The backing to this track is directly taken from "The Man Who Loved The Earth", so if you hear this track first, it makes the latter track come off as the derivative one and cheapens it. Two: this song fucking sucks. It's the lamest, frill-less, commercial rap I've had the misfortune to inflict upon my eardrums, with its unenthusiastic vocals punctuated by a droning "Ovoooo" chorus akin to a broken forgorn. There's no enthusiasm or energy, no lyricism, no care for the material, and given that the material reads like something a bored primary school kid would scribble out, can you blame them?

"Father, Son" just makes me roll my eyes - this one's genuinely embarrassing. Putting it at the front was a mistake and I hope the executive responsible for that idea steps on a Lego brick.

---

So... yeah. This isn't very good. A few redeeming tracks, but it's ultimately nothing. A smashing together of various disparate genres, attempting to tell a bonkers narrative that is essentially meaningless hoorays about mankind making it to the year 2000.

I don't know Peter Gabriel. I don't know his work, especially his post-Genesis stuff. And I highly suspect that you'd already need to be a fan to be into this any more than surface-level. Because I've seen people glazing this album online as though it was another work of creative genius from the man. As someone who's exclusively stuck with classic heavy metal, indie rock, 90's trance, gangsta rap and the wild card that is Gorillaz for much of his life, I just don't get it. And based on this album alone, I'm not in a hurry to check out more of this work.

But for all of that, I can't bring myself to hate this album. Yes, it has the worst rap song I've ever heard. Yes, it's narrative concept is akin to self-masturbatory candy floss. And yes, it's got its name attached to one of the biggest boondoggles in British history, an upturned salad bowl on the banks of the Thames. But there's things to like! The Tower That Ate People is a song I keep coming back to, and I'm even prepared to say that The Nest That Sailed The Sky and the middle of The Time of the Turning/The Weaver's Reel are enjoyable! Hell, maybe you'd like Father, Son - I sure as hell don't, but maybe you will!

I think, at the end of the day, OVO's only real crime is being a product of the manufactured 'Y2K hype' of the era. Like the Dome, it's what you get when somebody, either a corporation or government, tries to cynically sell you an idea of what a new millennium means, but hasn't got the first idea of what that idea actually is. And because they haven't, and because they need to appease as many people as possible, nothing they can sell you on will sound sincere in the least. No stance is taken other than "make tomorrow today", nothing that would exclude or offend.

The one saving grace of OVO is that, unlike the Dome, it was ultimately harmless enough that it didn't stick in the collective memory. And in that respect, it's lucky. It gets to evade the mockery and bitterness that still cling to the Dome, the tabloid headlines and political spanking. Nobody remembers the show and nobody remembers the music. But everyone will turn to each other, nearly three decades after the fact, and still go "Hey, you remember the Dome? What a load of old shite that was!"

I still love the Y2K aesthetic. And I'm still gonna snort that shit like the finest Columbian cocaine wherever I see it. But this thing, I reckon, is best left to gather dust on the nostalgia shelf. 

Next time, because The Story of OVO offended me so much, I'm going to listen to some actually good rap (hopefully) with Outkast. 

A Review of Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (2006)

We're taking something of a turn with this review. Because I already sort of liked Gorillaz and had come around to them during the pandemic prior to my review of Demon Days. And I'd always thought fondly of The Killers in spite of not being as familiar with their first two albums.

Arctic Monkeys, though, I was always certain I didn't care for.

As a teenager, I didn't have patience for a lot of stuff. And one of those things I didn't care for was the sort of loud, drum-thrashing rock and roll of the time period. So the moment I heard Arctic Monkeys, I disliked them. Not hated them, that's too strong a word. I heard it a lot, and maybe there were one or two songs that I liked, but most of it just completely bounced off of me. It just wasn't a sound that I took to, and it's been that way for the longest time.

But I'm thirty-three at the time of writing this. And in the vast gulf of time between then and now, I managed to understand that something can be good even if I personally don't much care for the IP, the genre, the sound, whatever it is that turns me off. So the purpose of this review is less about proving my teenage self was an idiot and more about finding out if, now that I have that ability, I might actually like Arctic Monkeys now.

 

One advantage of being older is that you can actually think to look up the context and history of media you experienced when younger. When you're a teenager - and especially if you're a particularly shitty teenager like I was - you might not care for any depth and can only appreciate things on the surface level. But as an adult, I can admit I didn't know that much about the people behind the band and did a little research before diving into this. 

And quite frankly, if the fact that these guys got famous by sharing their singles via MySpace isn't a fascinating story, then I forgive you, because who the fuck thinks about MySpace nowadays? But the point is, it's an incredibly smart move. Taking advantage of the internet, which was quickly growing in versatility and popularity at the time, and spreading by online word-of-mouth tells you everything you need. These guys are clever and passionate about what they do. They don't ask for record deals, record deals come to them. They're not doing this because they want to be famous or rich, they do it for the craft.

Which, in a world that teeters violently on the edge of anarchy as the bloated elephant of capitalism paws uselessly at the steering wheel, is to be appreciated. There's no pretention about them - they're not going to waste time writing soppy, metaphor-riddled love ballads when they could be smashing out a loud dance-floor sensation or introducing you to more local slang. Even if you don't like the music, you have to appreciate that at the very least.

The whole idea of "working man's music", the kind of tunes and lyrics about what the average joe goes through, isn't new. But Arctic Monkeys, arguably, managed to breathe new life into it by doubling down on the core concept. They're unapolagetically loud, honest and Sheffield. Their songs are all about coming home drunk from a party, getting chewed out by a moody partner, reminiscing about lost youth, complaining about the townies that turn up to ruin your Friday night. Hell, their first album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, is damn near a concept album revolving around hazy memories of drunken nights at the club, on the pull or nursing headaches from the night before.

We've all been there, which is why we relate to music like this. As somebody who spent four years in Sheffield studying for a useless degree, I very much relate - a lot of my night-outs ended in similar fashion. But how does said first album hold up, twenty years on? And does adult me appreciate these songs a lot more than teenage me did? Let's take a look. 

---

The View From the Afternoon
The band introduces themselves by sarcastically commenting on how they might not live up to the hype, in the same way that an average night out on the town might not. A good stage-setter, but drags a bit too long for me.

I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor 
One of the band's signature tracks, a high-energy headbanger encouraging the listener to not be a wallflower. Naturally, since this is one of their biggest hits, it's one that I've heard a fair amount already and grown to like.

Fake Tales of San Fransisco
A story of people getting fed up at a shitty concert held by a poseur weekend band. Good tune and also quite funny.

Dancing Shoes
A classic story of going out on the town, seeing a girl you fancy the look of and then completely bottling out of making the first move. We've all been there. Unfortunately, I don't find the song itself that engaging.

You Probably Couldn't See Me For The Lights, But You Were Staring Straight At Me
One of my biggest pet peeves in anything is when people give things obnoxiously long titles for no apparent reason. Therefore, as you can imagine, I fucking hate the title of this song. It's a good track, no real comments to make, but did nobody ask the band to take some pruning shears to that thing?

Still Take You Home
No real notes on this one, either. A ditty about how even an average person looks great after you've had a can or two and their features are obscured by laser lights.

Riot Van
We've all been to parties that went south because the police showed up. This is one of those moments - a sobering, low-tempo and quieter track that encapsulates that cold-water-to-the-face "oh shit" moment when the bastards in blue rear their ugly heads. A good change of pace and put at a good point in the album, but definitely a filler track more than anything.

Red Lights Indicate Doors Are Secured
The album pivots here slightly, talking about the aftermath of a night out instead of the night itself - the banter, the drunken arguments, trying to figure out how to dodge paying for the taxi home. By the time the gang gets their brain cells lined up, it's too late - the doors are locked and they have no choice to ride out their mistake. If you've ever embarrassed yourself in the aftermath of a clubbing session, you'll totally get this one.

Mardy Bum
Another Arctic Monkeys signature songs, a more pop-ish affair (aside from the bridge) about the struggle to communicate with somebody who's naturally argumentative and moody, feeling like you're just going through the motions over and over. Ended up introducing a lot of people to Yorkshire dialect words, which is always fun.

Perhaps Vampires Is a Bit Strong But...
Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner and drummer Matt Helders, in an interview, talked about how condescending the people around them in their hometown were, asking how much the band was making on their early gigs. And now that they're famous, those selfsame people, who clearly had no faith in them or understanding of why they were doing what they did, are now dick-riding and claiming they always supported them. So this song is very much a sardonic "oh, now you support us" from Alex and Matt. Good stuff.

When The Sun Goes Down
The #2 single from the album, a reflection on the darker side of Sheffield nightlife. Sex workers used to ply their trade around the studio the Monkeys practised at, and Alex can only muse on what he sees from his window - his pity for the women who are doing it, his contempt for the scumbag pimps, his mocking disdain for the regular customers in their Ford Mondeos. Its easy to overlook these lyrics, though, because the song is a damn banger from beginning to end, with a natural rise and fall at each end and nothing but high energy in the middle.

From The Ritz To The Rubble
A nice filler track abnout getting turned away from the big, fancy club, only to have a more productive night out at a more down-market local. Just goes to show that you can have fun without going to the places that demand you empty your entire wallet just to get through the door. 

A Certain Romance
I find it rather odd that one of the more layered tracks of the album ends up being at the end. It's simultaneously a dig at the belligerent, drunken chavs who suck the soul out of partying and a swipe at the music industry for churning out artless guff designed only for ringtones. And yet, at the end, the singer admits that he can't be too mad, because some of his best friends fit the stereotype too in both categories. Makes me wonder who in the music industry he was pals with for that kind of commentary.

---

I walk away from this album reassured that Arctic Monkeys are, in fact, good. Perhaps still not my cup of tea - the repeated use of loudly-crashing drums grates on my nerves when I just want to listen to the guitar or vocals, and said vocals often get a bit too close to Oasis levels of slightly annoying for my tastes. But I can definitely see how they exploded, how people latched onto them. And I can definitely point to more than two songs on this album and say "yes, this is good" if people ask me about it.

Maybe in future, I'll look up their second album and see where it takes me. Maybe I'll like this more than the first one, in accordance with the law of sequel quality. Maybe it'll be more of the same. Who knows? That's a question for future me, and honestly, fuck future me; he's had something against me ever since he started getting alcohol cravings. 

Next time, I either talk about Outkast, of whom I only know one song, or an obscure concept album from the year 2000 that only appeals to me. Flip a coin.

A Review of Sam's Town (2006)

The Killers are one of those bands that, for me, comes up in conversation now and again. And that's weird, because I feel I should be talking about them a lot more than I do.

The reason being that. for much of the mid-late 2000's, they were huge. One of the biggest bands of all time. It seems bizarre that a Nevada-based band, fronted by a Mormon out of Utah, would end up having such an influence in Britain as they did, but there it is. I wonder, sometimes, if this is how America felt when the Beatles or One Direction crossed the pond the other way and made it big - this mix of appreciation for the musical talent on display and bewilderment as to how it took off as much as it did.

I think the Killers were one of those very few bands I latched onto as a teenager, nevermind the shitty meme songs or disparate singles I fixated on. Again, I was too wrapped up in my own shitty self to pay much attention to pop culture, but I definitely remember liking the Killers a lot - although that was tempered a bit by the exapseration of classic radio overexposure. I couldn't tell you if any of the lyrics spoke to me or if it was just the sound of them, but I definitely remember that they were the band that made me seriously think about what I considered 'good music', outside of niche interests like Gorillaz.

But for some insane reason, as good as their early work with Hot Fuss and Sam's Town, it was their third studio album, Day & Age, that I latched onto. I can't really explain it, but as much as I liked songs off of those first two, I hyperfixated on tunes like A Dustland Fairytale, Neon Tiger, Human and Spaceman. And while it's a good album, I knew for a fact that it wasn't up to the level of the first two albums. My mind was weird when I was young.

Then Battle Born came out, and it just wasn't as good, so I fell of the Killers really hard. But with that level of introspection, I thought I'd give one of the older albums a try - and, on recommendation from my sister Jade, picked the second one, Sam's Town.

 

Sam's Town is a deliberate attempt by the band to get away from their reputation as "Britain's Best American Band". The entire thing is steeped in themes and ideals unique to America - growing up in a small town and wanting to break out, the struggles that come with that conflict, the failed relationships and personal demons that occured in such a place. It's very personal to band frontman Brandon Flowers as a result, who openly admitted that it was an attempt to capture all the major events that got him to where he was at the time of it's recording. I wouldn't put it on the level of something like Pink Floyd's The Wall, but it's definitely something that comes from a personal place, and it can be hard to relate to those kind of themes if you didn't have a similar upbringing.

And while I don't relate, I'm very happy to say that the album makes up for it with an awesome sound. It's a step up for the band's high propduction levels, with a harder, more "rock" sound than even Hot Fuss had, deliberately shunning the synths and vocal effects for a more sincere acoustic performance. All in the name of capturing the "small town childhood" vibe. It's gritty, melancholy and raw, yet punctuated by a poetic lyricism, a combination of flowery yet unflinchingly honest that elevates it a step further.

So let's takle this one track at a time, as before.

--- 

Sam's Town
You gotta have balls the size of a semi truck to put your title track as the first in the album. That's not something a lot of albums do - you normally put it around the middle or near the end of the album to provide a crescendo to the themes and sound the album provides. This is the kind of power move you only do if you know for a fact that the track's gonna be a banger. 

And Brandon had better count his lucky stars, because this song is like a musical cannon blast to the face. A huge, bombastic, warts-and-all anthem to growing up in small town Americana and a perfect summation of the album's themes to come - wanting to break out, failing relationships, the struggle to find identity. Awesome shit.

Although that makes this next track... weird. 

Enterlude
This is just the voice of Brandon welcoming us into the album, set to a humble piano backing. I find it odd that this track isn't the first one on the album, considering that it's entire purpose. I guess Brandon didn't want us to get whiplash going from this to Sam's Town, but then that just results in whiplash the other direction, so I'm very confused by this track's placement here.

When You Were Young
This is one of the Killers' songs, and for good reason. Catchy, soulful and with an unforgettable hook, the song deals with the idea of finding personal salvation in somebody less-than-perfect, who doesn't quite match up to youthful ideals but proves to be exactly what you needed. They don't have to look like Jesus, but they just have to be there for you, and that's alright.

Bling (Confessions of a King)
Brandon claims that this song was about his dad overcoming his alcoholism and rejecting Catholicism to become a committed Mormon when Brandon himself was five. The song reflects this in the internal struggle of the singer, who at times seems to be two voices talking to themselves - one lamenting their poor circumstances, the other telling them that things aren't so bad and there's still a chance for them to get things together. Not my favourite, but it's definitely a powerful song in that context and I wouldn't blame anyone who did name it as their favourite.

For Reasons Unknown
Yet another signature Killers song. Utterly iconic guitar riff plus Brandon's vocals on the inherent pain of falling out of love for no discernable reason make for an unforgettable combo. Out of the (admittedly large) number of Killers tracks I care to go back to, this is absolutely one of the top three.

It does, however, feature the worst rhyne/lyric in the whole album:

There was an open chair
We sat down there, the open chair

Yeuch. Maybe a second draft would have caught this one, Flowers.

Read My Mind
A more low-key track (relatively speaking, the chorus is just as bombastic as anything else on the album), filled with a bittersweet melancholy. It reiterates the desire to break out of the limiting world of the small town that the title track presented, but throws a wrench into the works with the idea of having to leave something fundamental behind to make that dream work. It's all about the struggle to make peace with the idea that two people's dreams are incompatible, and wherever they can still make it work in spite of this. 

And I can't find a way to make this paragraph funny, so here's a picture of a dog in a hat. 

Uncle Johnny
I don't really vibe with this track very much - it's kind of forgettable, and rightly so when you see what songs it shares the album with. Also, it kind of lacks a lot of the poetry of the other songs, in my opinion - it's literally just about Brandon's uncle and his struggles with cocaine addiction, with nobody really knowing how to help him. In an album that's dripping with flowery (hah) imagery, its a bit of a let-down.

Bones
Time for an embarrassing confession. When I first listened to this song, I hated it.

And that was down to a huge, huge misunderstanding of the song's subject matter. Based entirely on the chorus alone, I thought it was about some creepy "nice guy" coming onto a girl who didn't like him. The chorus' use of lurid imagery of bones and skin and insisting it was "only natural" rubbed me completely the wrong way. So for over twenty years, I've hated this song. I hated whenever it came on the radio or on the CD player in the car and I would always push it as my least favourite Killers song based entirely on this premise.

Having re-listened to this song now, as an adult, with full understanding of where the band came from and in a better mindset to listen to the actual song... yeah, I was way off-base.

What I thought was a "nice guy" anthem is, in fact, an open defiance of conservative and superficial views on sexuality that frustrates his desire for intimacy and human contact. The singer isn't being gothic levels of creepy when he presses his lady love for sex, he's appealing to her to join him in an act that throws aside surface-level superficiality and gets down to the "bones" - what we're really about. It's simultaneously an appeal for sincere connection on both the physical and spiritual levels and a rebellion against the small-minded "wait until marriage" mindset that would tar this instinctive desire for contact as a sin.

So, yeah. Turns out, this song rules, actually. And now I hate my past self even more for being such a small-minded, media illiterate scrote who now needs a harder kick up the arse than ever.

Also, the music video has skeletons in it. And, as we all know, skeletons are hilarious. 

My List
Another track that I struggle to maintain much enthusiasm for, in all honesty. I don't even really know what it's about. I think it's about a man trying to keep a relationship from going downhill, but the song itself is pretty forgettable. Not much to say about this one at all.

This River Is Wild
The main attraction of the Killers, aside from their sound, is the poetry of the lyrics. Brandon uses a lot of vague metaphor and imagery to leave the songs open for interpretation, even if he is trying to carry a specific theme across. For me, this song reiterates the album's overarching theme of Brandon's small-town roots, now focusing on the push-pull of his conflicting his desires. He wants to step outside his small world and experience the wild river of life, but he fears the risk that comes with it, of being swept up by the currents of the wider world and falling into failure without the safety net of his community to catch him.

Powerful stuff. And the song's genuinely not bad, either, but it obviously doesn't hold a candle to stuff like Bones, For Reasons Unknown or When You Were Young.

Why Do I Keep Counting?
A final reiteration of the album's themes. When one goes into the world, they're still full of so many questions about what to do and how to face the challenges that will inevitably be thrown at them. Brandon muses on wherever he'll have enough time to do the things he hopes to do, wherever he can overcome his personal demons to find what he wants, and struggles with aformentioned questions, wondering if his father (or possibly God?) could have given him the answers to conquer his fear. 

Exterlude
Firstly, I don't think Exterlude's a word. Secondly, this is just Enterlude again but with more of the usual bombastic instrumentation and an extra verse tacked onto the start. I feel this would have worked better with some slight lyrical tweaks and - more important - if Enterluide had been the first track.

 ---

Going back to this album is... weird. I definitely remember listening to it before and liking it, but I don't remember taking it in very much. Granted, there's a fair chunk of songs here that aren't classics, but it's still a pretty great album - Bones, When You Were Young, For Reasons Unknown... they're all there and they're all iconic tracks. And now that I have a much better mind for understanding context and metaphor, it's all the better on the relisten. But I wonder now how it measures up to the first album, Hot Fuss, and if there's an argument to be made for which is better. Maybe the answer lies there, or maybe teenage me was fuill of it as usual.

Next time - Arctic Monkeys' "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not". A band I know that teenage me didn't gravitate to, so let's see if adult me can appreciate it better. 

A Review of Demon Days (2005)

I missed a lot of pop culture in my teenage years. And I have nobody but myself to blame for it.

Between the years of 2004-2009, I was living in a fog. The world was trundling on around me, churning out music and movies and tv shows, but I didn't pay any amount of attention. I was a shitty teenager actively refusing to get a grip on his own autism, stuck in a Catholic secondary school that prioritised spending money on shitty bike sheds instead of fixing up the gym. So I retreated into my head to avoid engaging with reality as much as possible. My days outside of the weekend were spent thinking about how much I hated the school, how much the lessons sucked, how much I wanted to punch anyone I met and which video game characters I wanted to bang the most.

I'm being as blunt as possible so that you get an idea of where I was when the 2000s came and went, and how much I missed as a result. Mostly in the music department. I was vaguely aware of trending bands like Green Day, Black Eyed Peas, Pussycat Dolls etc., but at the time I was listening to godawful meme songs like Bananaphone. My tastes in music hadn't solidified yet, being mostly limited to whatever sounded good to me in the moment... including Bananaphone.

It's taken a long time and a lot of forcing myself into new experiences for me to start clearing that fog out of my head and actually form solid opinions on things, including music. So now that I'm the ripe old age of 33, with a much firmer grasp on things, I figure now, more than ever, is a good time to go back and listen to as much of the music that came out in the 2000s-2010s that I actively ignored. And I'm gonna talk about it on here, so all of you can follow me on this journey.

There is one tiny flaw in this plan. I don't want to just limit myself to the music I heard, because that would still be somewhat insulating. I didn't even listen to that much to begin with, and there isn't much value in talking about the stuff you know you already like. I want to experience as much of it as I can. And I fear I'm going to struggle at some points, especially with genres I don't normally like or in eras that were considered a generally bad time for popular music. But damn it, I owe it to myself to make up for the mistakes of my shitty teenage self, so I have to commit to this.

Having said that, I'm now going to come across as a massive hypocrite by talking about a band I listen to almost constantly. 

 

On the off chance you don't know - Gorillaz are the pet project of Blur frontman Damon Albarn and comic artist Jamie Hewlett. The four cartoon band members - surly satanist Murdoc, eyeless himbo 2D, Brooklyn spiritualist Russel and Japanese supersoldier Noodle - are a deliberate mockery of the manufactured stars and starlets of the mainstream pop industry, and their antics are deliberately nonsensical chaff. Because the point is the huge pool of global talent that Albarn pulls in to create sounds that you simply can't do with your B*Witched's or your Backstreet Boys. Names like Bobby Womack, De La Soul, Queen Latifah, Peter Hook and Elton John grace their tracklists. And their sound is never consistent, either, roaming between the rooms of trip hop, electronica and world music like a drunken frat boy trying to remember where he left his kebab.

Of course, anyone with a passing knowledge of music, especially British acts, will know who Gorillaz are. You don't need me to introduce you to them. And you definitely don't need me to explain Demon Days, their second album, or why it was such a massive hit. The moment you hear Feel Good, Inc. blasting over a speaker, you know it's Gorillaz - it's one of those all-time classics, on an album that's dripping with so many good tunes you could moisturise yourself with them.

Where was I during this? As I said, in secondary school, being a shithead living in his own shitty head, wallpapering the living room with shit and watching shit on a shit TV. My brother and mother were definitely more into this than me and played this album a fair number of times. They were fans enough of the project to buy Plastic Beach when that dropped, although I don't recall them liking that as much. But me? I certainly heard the music, but I didn't make the attempt to absorb it.

Having listened to the album in full some months ago, I can honestly say that it's one of my biggest regrets.

It's a complicated album, this one. And that's by design. The entire project is reflective of the dark time period in which it was written and composed. We were well into the War on Terror, and the cynicism of the times was leaking into every facet of media, from TV shows to movies to music itself. Demon Days is no different; the song tackles themes of not only the personal demons that drag us down, but the demons that affect human society. I've heard this album described as being akin wandering through the post-apocalyptic world, wondering what the fuck happened and wherever it's going to get any better - can't remember where I read that, though, but it's an apt comparison.

And like all of Gorillaz's output, it wavers between sounds and concepts - but its not random. Every track is deliberately arranged to form the loose idea of a journey of sorts, exploring the troubles that affected us - and still affect us now - in a variety of moods and tones. It's one of those albums that works best as a whole, when you listen to it back to back and get the whole point of it, rather than listen to just the singles alone. Although I genuinely wouldn't blame you if you did that, because there's a lot to love on here.

I guess the best way to go about this would be to just list every track and give some scattered thoughts on each one. I don't really have the acumen of vocabulary to talk about music in proper, technical terms, so I can only really go on gut feeling on this one. This is probably the format of this little series going forward - I didn't have anything in mind when I started, but I didn't want to just copy the myopic ramblings of most so-called music critics, so this is the best I got.

--- 

Intro
Nothing to say here, just a sample of the Dawn of the Dead soundtrack with Roots Manuva screaming about chemicals in the food chain layered on the top of it. Not a song, therefore not worth considering.

Last Living Souls
The first real track on the album is Last Living Souls, and it's an immediate banger. Halfway between paranoia-inducing and melancholic, Albarn's echoing voice bemoans his - and the listener's - status as the only compassionate beings left in an increasingly cynical world. I still get honest to god chills listening to this.

Kids With Guns
Carrying on the melancholic feeling of the previous track, Albarn goes on to lament the desensitisation of  our children to violence and warfare in the media. Yet another great track, and that bass riff will get stuck in your head for days. Unfortunately, Splatoon means I can't take it seriously anymore, because I keep hearing the title as "Squids with Guns" and laughing.

O Green World
I genuinely don't know if I like this one or not. When it's playing, I shudder at the horror movie strings and the scratchy vocals pleading against environmental collapse. But when it's over, it vanishes from my memory like a prawn cocktail flavour Skip on the tongue. A hesitant recommend, but still a recommend.

Dirty Harry
A brutal yet catchy anti-Iraq war anthem, with Bootie Brown killing it on the rap section as a weary soldier frustrated by his inability to connect with his fellow man. Albarn once got in trouble in America for having an all-black kid's choir sing this - I'll leave it to you as to what that says about who.

Feel Good, Inc.
THE Gorillaz song. No further notes.

El Mañana
 I genuinely can't tell if this is meant to be about depression, lost love or what, but fuck. The saddest song on an entire album dedicated to being dark, and that's saying a lot. I struggle to get through this sometimes.

Every Planet We Reach Is Dead 
That guitar riff will stick in your head for days. Slightly marred by the presence of known piece of shit Ike Turner, though.

November Has Come
MF Doom fans will like this one (R.I.P. Doom), but I have trouble pinning down what this one's actually about. I do agree that November sucks as a month, though.

All Alone 
Roots Manuva and Martina Topley-Bird can't keep this track from being also mostly forgettable.

White Light
Okay, this one fucking sucks. Damon Albarn snarls like a bear with strep throat about alcohol for two minutes or until you hit the skip button. By itself, it's merely mediocre, but in an album with the likes of Dirty Harry, DARE and Feel Good, Inc. on it, that's almost insulting.

DARE
Thank God this song comes right after White Light so I can actually enjoy myself. Fun, catchy, poppy, and also Shaun Ryder's on it.

Fire Coming Out Of The Monkey's Head
Dennis Hopper narrates a parable about callous greed clashing with blind, good-hearted naiveté and the literally volcanic fallout of it. A fun listen, but I'd be hard-pressed to seriously recommend this one.

Don't Get Lost In Heaven
I think this one's meant to be about how organised religion sucks? Not sure. It'd make a good Stand name, though.

Demon Days
The aural equivalent of a reassuring mug of orange juice after a hangover. The reassurance that the dark days are behind and we still have a future to fight for.

---

And that's it. That's the album. And it rules. For a few stumbles, its an album that's a classic for a good reason. And that reason being, well, fucking listen to it.

Listening to it now makes me sincerely hate my past self - more so than usual, I mean. Because it really highlights how I was living in my own head by actual choice, and how fucking stupid I was for it. I could have been actually absorbing all of it and enjoying it, and all this other culture going on as well, rather than viewing it as a distraction from the outside world keeping me inside my bubble of self-loathing. If I had a time machine, I'd go back, kidnap my past self and lock him in a room with this album on loop until he could tell me what it was all about. And I'd slap him with a wet fish every time he got it wrong.

And that, I guess, is also the end of this first instalment of whatever this is. Not sure if I'm going to continue it or not, but it might be worth continuing if my explorations into the music I missed also continue. Stay tuned for partial excitement, and feel free to suggest music from around the time period. No novelty acts, though - I could go my entire life without hearing the Cheeky Girls ever again and be the happiest man alive.

A New Solution

Artificial limbs. Crop modification. Computer-aided design. Alternative energy sources.

Garrick has done all this, and so much more.

Founded in the post-Seanet world of the past, we've never stopped trying to solve the issues that are always arising in our modern world. We've helped carry Australia from the radiation-blasted hellscape of the Zoofights days and into a new, better and prosperous world. From biotech and artificial intelligence to networking and new energy sources, we've delivered time and again on innovative solutions to the latest problems facing society and our planet.

As Australia's premier technology solutions firm, we pride ourselves not only on our quality, but on our forward-thinking attitude and our outside-the-box approach to problems. We look at the issues facing our planet today as symptoms, not the disease, and work backwards to find the ways we can cure the ills of our valued clients and customers. Wherever it's providing longer-lasting, better-tasting food for the hungry, the latest technology solutions for the workplace or more environmental-friendly sources of power for your city, we strike at the heart of the problems facing modern man, ensuring a better tomorrow for everyone and anyone.

And Garrick doesn't just settle for meeting expectations - we surpass them, every time. That's why we specialise in so many fields. Expectations have never been higher, and our portfolio shows off not only our versatility as a company, but our excellence in quality in those fields. It doesn't matter what your issue is, Garrick can provide a wide variety of solutions to suit your needs, and then some.

And now, our products and services are making their way to Argo for the first time! Within the next month, you can expect to see our logo on items you use every day. Your tram to work might boast that our zero-emission, carbon free electricity keeps it going. You might use our specialised artificial intelligence to make those simple tasks at the office so much easier. Your news broadcasts or livestreams might come to you over our super-fast wireless connection. And businesses can look forward to using our tried and tested solutions for conference calls, meeting logs and so much more.

As our beloved founder, Nathan Garrick would say, "every problem has a solution". We are that solution.

 ---

"Good stuff, huh?"

"Yep. Talks us up, but not pretentious. The board sure loved it."

"And it's working already, too! We got our first clients only last week!"

"Really? I didn't hear about that in the SLT. Who is it?"

"Hard to describe them. Call themselves... Mantra PLC? Some kind of spiritual thing. They wanted our help with some sort of biotech project they were working on. It's weird, though... I've looked on the stock market and can't find any reference to a company by that name..."

"Hey, as long as they pay, I don't care what they're doing. And if they start trouble, well... there's the Kobbers. There's the police. There's the Kobber Police. Worst comes to it, there's the Ravenskies or the Cosineaus. They breathe wrong, we come down on 'em like a fuckin' meteorite."

"...I guess you're right. Wanna hit up the pub after work?"

"As long as you're paying."

~TO BE CONTINUED~

Threads Unbroken, Stave II

Christopher hadn't really needed to come to London at all. But he'd wanted to. He'd been an Oxford lad for as long as he could remember, having been practically raised within the Royal Academy, and as grand as Oxford as a city could be, it never held a candle to the capital city. He'd been there once or twice on field trips, but it had all been to the big tourist spots - Oxford Circus, Hyde Park, Windsor Castle, the London Eye. There was so much of the place that he hadn't seen until now.

And the place where he lived... it wasn't that it was bad. Far from it - it was the most idyllic, picturesque boathouse on the edge of a river that one could possibly imagine. The sort of thing that might have been a set for some children's variety show on television. Sam had deliberately moved there to avoid the attention and press that came with being the "Threadbreaker", and while it was still furnished with all the modern conveniences it was still half an hour's walk and back to the nearest village for groceries. And not much else.

So when Miss Thorne announced she has business in London and had offered to take him along, he'd jumped at the chance. His dad had simply shrugged and said "eh, why not". The man had wanted the excuse to get out of the house, and this one seemed as good as any.

There's no need to go into detail about all they did during their weekend there. It was as about as interesting as any trip to a big city can be, and if you have been to one yourself then you'll already have an idea of what it can be like. And their particular trip went about as pleasantly as one can expect such a thing to go. The weather held out, the crowds weren't overwhelming and the Underground ran on time, so it was as smooth and inoffensive as an experience could be.

Portobello Road was where it all went wrong. 

Threads Unbroken, Stave I

 ~The Royal Alchemists' Guild, London~

Victoria Thorne did not want to be here. She hated being here.

The phrase "familiarity breeds contempt", as old and tired as it was, continued to ring true even in the modern day. Places and names and faces that you see too much of lose their mystique very quickly and soon any and all respect or wonder you had for them dies away. And if you were Victoria Thorne, who had lived far longer than any person in the world had any right to live, you could become so familiar with a place that, in the end, contempt was all you had.

She was far too familiar with the council chamber in which the Royal Guild of Alchemists convened. Not that it made a good showing for itself besides - three hundred years of time had deteriorated the room beyond the wit of any duster, cleaning solution or stonemason to rescue. The marble stonework of the high, arched roof had lost its lustre and was worn in many places. A line of scuff marks crossed the dulled, cracked floor to the central podium, smearing out the faces of many once-worthy historical alchemists of Britain. And the high desks that surrounded the central podium, once a dark mahogany, had long lost their lustre.

What annoyed Victoria the most, however, was not the room itself. Her contempt came from the fact that, every time she came here, she had to deal with the five faces looking down upon her from over the lip of the desks. Each one belonged to a member of the High Council of Alchemists, the ostensible leaders of the Royal Guild - aside from herself. Blue-blooded to a man, woman and intermediate, and practically raised in the halls of the five great universities - Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Edinburgh and Cardiff.

They were also bunch of officious, bureaucratic idiots. As they were once again proving.