Aglet EatersWHAT, Secret Shine are ripping off My Bloody Valentine
again? HOW CAN THIS BE?!?!
If what ran through your mind is something along those lines plz drop
your Shoegazer Club Membership Card at the desk and GTFO for any
‘gazer worth his salt and membership card knows that photocopying MBV
is Secret Shine’s USP.
Behold – their version of ‘Sometimes’ which they fondly refer to as ‘Last Words’
One of Todd Rundgren’s assorted bands – Nazz – has a song
called ‘Open My Eyes’ which I only know of because it featured in a
Nuggets compilation. This is because I don’t really swing the
pre-1980s way. There are exceptions though, and one of those
exceptions is The Who and that is why it took me mere
milliseconds to go from ‘hey that’s The Who!’ to ‘oh. No it’s not’
when I first heard ‘Open My Eyes’ because you know as well as I do
that the opening is blatantly Mr. Townshend’s. I think Todd R. ruins a
spectacular riff, though, when he decides to buzzsaw into it 3 seconds
after it launches. You need to revert to the ‘original’ for auditory
closure.
I have never, ever been so desperate to get out of a café.
I spend hours in coffee shops, making sure my nerves don’t dare sink into complacency. They must always be on edge, the system always in fight (of fight-or-flight) mode, constantly wired, perpetually in a state of DO SOMETHING – it’s how I balance university, work, life, music (that counts as life, surely?), and half a dozen blogs all at once.
And today is a beautiful day by anyone’s standards – even a sun-loathing vampire such as myself is a fan of the delicate warmth shrouding the city today. Not blindingly bright and the air still nippy – I’d suckle on cups of coffee for an eternity if eternity was this weather.
But I didn’t today. I thought I would. But I couldn’t. I had a craving for a song I’d been listening to for two continuous hours yesterday and still hadn’t got enough of.
It’s called ‘Bashling’ and it’s by Emperor X. He’s been hopping about Australia for the past couple of weeks. I was clever enough to not say no when a friend of mine and fan of his asked me to come to one of his shows. Suffice it to say his performance left me a bit stunned.
This isn’t a live review, though. This is about what happened after I patched the cracks in my chin from where it had hit the floor. I decided to go discography exploring. And that’s when I met Bashling.
I feel a bit guilty about how quickly I fell in love with a song that’s been around forever. How long? About six years or so. I am so late to the scene, I am a n00b in the Emperor X clique and I already have a My Song, that’s not right.
Never mind, I am too busy playing it over and over and over again on a university PC alternating the official gazer version with a ‘live’ version which may as well be a different song for its lack of gaze but that I love to pieces all the same.
I think it’s because I can make out the words in the non-gaze version (thus the gazelessness). And it’s beautiful even when it’s stripped down to six strings (not counting vocal chords). There’s this line that frames the song – “wanted to climb to you… on the swing set” – and it absolutely kills me. I think it’s so devastating because you can’t really clamber about effectively on a swing set without the risk of moderate injury. So for someone to want someone else so much that they’re willing to take that risk in a setting as innocently harmless as a swing set – that’s just heartbreaking.
Of course I might be wrong. The ‘swing set’ might be more than the couple of steel-threaded planks of wood that I see. But that’s what I want it to be so THAT’S WHAT IT IS. Don’t question my interpretation, I’m not questioning what a ‘bashling’is now am I?
What’s a bashling?
I saw the Silversun Pickups‘ Melbourne show last night. They didn’t play either of these songs but I know them well enough to have noticed the resemblance between Swoon‘s ‘Draining’ and Carnavas’ ‘Waste It On’ when I heard ‘Draining’. Now, let it be known that I am a Carnavas-girl through and through. However I must admit that I much prefer ‘Draining’ to its older doppelganger – I love that cello, it’s marvellous. I love SPPU. I can’t believe I saw them. Here, listen:
It started with ‘Mind The Wires’.
‘Mind the Wires is a song off Tears Run Rings’ first album. It is one of the most exquisitely understanding, most sympathetic songs I have ever had the privilege to hear. I am (unsurprisingly) not quite sure what they’re saying, and while I would like to know, I am quite happy in my lyrical ignorance thanks to a comforting Discernible Lyric Template that ensures the involuntary filler lyrics you insert can do no damage.
You do want to know, though. A template that looks like this:
“Mind the wires, let your love…
Slow down – slow down, be careful
A million stars…”
And also includes:
“Say goodbye…
… stay a while.”
leaves you craving the words you miss every time you listen.
Tears Run Rings don’t get enough credit. Even within shoegaze circles they are oft overlooked and perhaps the most unfairly ignored of all neo-gaze bands. This might be because they don’t appear to travel in the same incestuous musical circles* as several of the others appear to. But they are easily somewhere at the top of the pile in terms of expertise and expression. You can see their honesty manifest itself in their delicately vague song titles, the hazy abstractness obvious in such detached album names as Always, Sometimes, Seldom, Never and even more glaringly so in Distance… which is what I’m supposed to be talking about, by the way. Sorry, ‘Mind The Wires’ always distracts me from the task at hand.
‘Happiness 3’ is a lovely way to start Distance and is, in my humble but somewhat reliable opinion, better than its prequels. It is a stunning, twilit vocal waltz – two voices swirl in each others’ metaphorical arms melting into one another in the kind of blinkered love that leaves you oblivious to your surrounds. Lost in themselves, twisting elegantly into a dewy double helix.
‘Intertia’ is the song with the most personality on the album thanks to some rebellious drums that develop a mind of their own mid-verse and wander off the set path for a few liberated seconds before snapping out of their reverie, gathering their bearings and reining themselves back in. And ‘Reunion’ is surprisingly psychedelic, radiating the echoes the Jesus and Mary Chain trademarked. The only song I find myself not such a fan of is the much hyped (by TRR standards, of course) offering, ‘Forgotten’. Don’t misunderstand me, ‘Forgotten’ is a great song. But I am left slightly cold by the jarring in-and-out-ros, the guitars screaming a little to harshly to follow the cradle set up by Happiness 3 and appearing out of place in the song itself.
I’m having some trouble adequately expressing how transcendent the title track is. ‘Distance’ the song is an absolute gem, with a melody and words tender enough to coax even the most ardent insomniac to, if not sleep, at the very least a state of out-of-body other-worldly suspension. “We are tired but we can’t go to sleep” – you couldn’t have asked for a more compassionate statement. Tears Run Rings say the words for you and then – “here I am” – say the words to you. You can feel them gently stroking your hair right up to the magnificently crashing close that unfailingly sends ripples through your bloodstream.
It’s quite obvious how much I am in love with this song isn’t it? It’s a seven minute long track and I listened to it five times in the course of writing the preceding paragraph. 35 minutes. I may as well have blinked.
‘Distance’ is followed by the unsettlingly sweet-sounding ‘Divided’. “I try to scream…” says a voice of icy, crystal honey that you know is incapable of such an unmelodious act – and this very thought is what makes the song so disquieting.
I’m quite happy with TRR’s relative elusiveness. It’s not just a matter of having a band you love all to yourself. It goes beyond the mere selfish protectiveness we tend to coat our favourite possessions with (though, no doubt, I am rather pleased with how much more mine this makes them). No, I am also in favour of this because it means there’s less pressure on them. You know? As in, I’d imagine they’re their own strongest influence. Distance takes its time to unfurl. It’s unhurried and natural – untouched by expectations from peers or industry. Like its predecessor, it’s unadulterated.
[*I love how those incestuous circles are so reminiscent of the original ‘Scene That Celebrates Itself’ mentality. It’s like an involuntary homage to classic shoegaze.]
I could scarcely believe this one myself.
What I could believe even less was how no one else on the internets appeared to have noticed.
It’s not like ‘Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean’ by Explosions in the Sky and ‘Grounded’ by Pavement are exceptionally elusive search topics for Google. Explosions in the Sky, maaaan, there is only one.
It’s also not like there’s not an overlap in listeners of both bands. Sure, the styles of music are different but jeez, indie kids, you have failed me.
This is my favourite Pavement song.
As always, I might be alone in a corner with my observations, but dammit, I make the connection EVERY TIME and that’s reason enough to post it.
The more I listen to this, the more I think it’s just me. Perhaps it’s the ‘if’ bit. Perhaps the songs are too well-known to everyone else. Perhaps I need to do a better mashup to prove my point. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps HEY AT LEAST I’M STILL AROUND, eh, how about some credit there?
“Oh it’s another mess of a day
I’m lifeless and I’m sick and tired of what you’ve got to say”
Blind Mr. Jones – the shoegazers’ favourite obscure band. Obscure only because no one’s heard a peep out of them or about them since about 1994 when they vanished sans trace after releasing one of my favourite Classic Shoegaze albums – a gem called Tatooine.
“oh it’s another waste of a day.
I’m listless and I’m so, so bored of what you’ve got to say.”
Tatooine which had on it an arrestingly beautiful song called ‘Hey’ which was the song that had me captivated the first time I heard it.
“Hey, ey”
Do you think they know how much they’re loved? Do you think they know how much we miss them? Do you think if we scattered Tatooine-striped milk cartons across the United Kingdom they might chance upon one, decide to log on to Facebook, do a vanity search, find their fan page and post a message on the wall saying ‘hey, sup, so we found this milk carton…’?
Because if there’s any chance of that happening, I think we should do it.
I hope they’re still around, I hope they’re alive and well, and I hope they know they’re adored.
