Song Project #4 & 5
Since the previous Song Project entry was the song that's most frequently concluded my mix cds in the last several years, I figured this entry would be the song that's most frequently opened my mixes -- in this case, two songs.
One of the drawbacks of being an obsessive music collecter is there is always more stuff around than I can possibly listen to and get to know. (The corresponding virtue is there is always tons of new stuff around to listen to when I want to.) Sometimes I'll have an album for years with only the vaguest idea of what it sounds like, then will be prompted to give it another try and will discover it's amazing and how could I have missed it the first time?
I can't remember why I bought Chisel's Set You Free [Gern Blandsten 1997] around the time it came out. It languished in my collection as an okay pop-punk album, until a few years later when Velma and I heard Ted Leo & the Pharmacists open for someone -- I think it was the Dismemberment Plan, but it might have been Spoon -- and were impressed with his biting, witty songs and catchy but hard-edged pop hooks. I researched Ted Leo, discovered he'd fronted a band called Chisel, and realized, hey, I've had that for years. So I put it on and of course it was great, immediately arresting, exciting and inventive almost from start to finish, an overlooked gem of the 1990s, and how had I overlooked it right in front of me?
Given what I've said about how I use them on mix cds, I guess it hardly needs saying that "On Warmer Music" and "All My Kin" is one of the best one-two punches to lead off any album ever. (The uninterrupted excellence continues for the first five songs, and there are only a couple clunkers among the album's seventeen tracks.) When you listen to them, get "All My Kin" to play immediately after "On Warmer Music", if you can, ideally with a space of perhaps a third of a second between them.
Listen:
On Warmer Music
All My Kin
"On Warmer Music" is dead simple. It's just two parts: verse verse verse verse verse verse until 1:30, then chorus chorus chorus chorus chorus till the end. (Anyone know other songs built this way?) The verse part strides along on the bass and guitar hitting all the beats together, the electric guitar held in check, playing a straightforward repeated sequence of four chords, eight notes to each chord. Leo sings a series of paired couplets; the rhythm is 1, 2-3-4, 1, 2, 3, 4 for the first couplet, with the 2-3-4 being a triplet, while the second couplet goes 1, 2-3-4-5, 6 rest rest rest.
After you've been lulled by this, the chorus kicks in. My god, I love it so much. First, the lyric is great (as is Leo's delivery): "Get ready for the invasion / self-satisfied smug-rock nation / cheers for the young idea! / so glad that you're all here!" Three (or four) chords, one guitar chord for each of the first two lines and one for the second two together while the bass continues to swing between two chords, the instruments played at the same rhythm as the verse but with all the restrained energy now released, the melody up a step, an one-note ahhhhhhhh backing vocal added to the second four bars of the chorus: the whole thing makes me bounce around the room, till everything cuts out on "get ready for".... and stops.
And "All My Kin" begins, with a squalling guitar hinting at a Gang of Four sound; but Leo asks, "Hey top ten?" -- at least, I think that's what he says -- and the central guitar hook of the song announces itself, the figure played through three different chords, once on the first two chords, with the rest of the band joining on the third chord and playing it four times. It's such a neat hook that the band just chugs through the verses with the guitar providing little decoration, mostly choppy little rhythm markers (reminiscent of ska), confident that that the return of that guitar figure at the beginning of each verse will propel the song. The first chorus is a half chorus, a trick I love and another one that shows the band has enough confidence in the song to delay the chorus payoff till the second time through. And when it comes, it's horns! It's as though Paul Weller integrated his Style Council inclinations into the Jam instad of breaking up the band.
A couple of little things I love in this song: I love the way the beginning of each verse is bridged by a quick up-down up-down bass then four loud guitar chops between the opening guitar figure and the verse proper. Those four guitar chops set off the bare verse. And I love the almost yowling female backing vocals on the chorus, sung by Chris and May Leo. And why not go out at the end with a reprise of that guitar figure, suggesting the beginning of another verse but instead stopping cold? Yeah. So glad to be here in the end with all my kin.