One of the most eagerly-anticipated albums of my life, I spent about 6 months in 2013 tracking this release from the first teaser trailed to the day the postman brought my CD. It's one of my favourite AFI albums and the darkest one in their discography. The print of the cover that I got with the album is still framed and on display in my bedroom. I will never forgive AFI for not touring the UK in support of Burials.
1. The Sinking Night 💙
A short introductory piece which sets the bleak tone for what's to come. It's dark and heavy and has a classic 80s goth feel which continues throughout the album. The lyric 'the gold in my palm was mistaken for sand' feels like a link back to their previous release, Crash Love, which had a gold cover and wasn't received as well as their previous two hit albums; specifically, it reminds me of this Kerrang! photoshoot where their hands are painted gold.
2. I Hope You Suffer 💙
The first song that was released from this album. It contrasts soft-spoken verses backed up with piano and synthesised beats, with a harsh guitar-led shouted chorus. The chorus, which repeats 'I hope you suffer' is a very direct statement from AFI, compared to the more veiled and hard-to-decipher lyrics of their past work. It's clear from this song that the album is going to be devoid of light.
3. A Deep Slow Panic 💙
Something about this song feels 80s-influenced but I can't put my finger on what it is. It's another bleak song with no hope allowed but this one has a catchy chorus. I don't know what happened to Davey Havok when he was writing this album but it must have been really bad for him to release 13 songs like this.
4. No Resurrection 💙
There's a great bass part driving this song. I don't have much else to say about it as an individual song; it's one of the less-memorable ones, but I will say that I didn't really get what people mean when they say 'this is an album I can listen to from start to finish' until thinking about Burials - this is one of those albums for me that works best when I sit down and play it all the way through rather than on shuffle.
5. 17 Crimes 🎀
This is the one moment of brightness on the record, and it's one of my favourite AFI songs. It's a perfect dark pop song with a persistent beat that drags you along and a captivating vocal. There's a "better enjoy the moment while it lasts because everything after this will be miserable" feel to 17 Crimes which is appreciated here. At the end everything drops out except the drums and vocals and the song is over all too soon.
6. The Conductor 💜
And the skies cloud back over to leave us in darkness again. I think this is my favourite intro on the album with the programmed drums and industrial sounds. The 'warm receiver' lyric is a nice link to Depeche Mode (see their song Sacred) which kindly guided me to notice the DM influence to this song - it reflects the heavier DM songs like Barrel Of A Gun and A Pain That I'm Used To. Listening now, I've talked myself into seeing this as a highlight of the album even though until now I've thought of it as being on a par with the others.
7. Heart Stops 🎀 This is, I think, the saddest song AFI have ever recorded, even though it has a big catchy chorus. I don't know what effect is used on the vocals but it sounds like nothing they've put out before it; it's stripped back and that makes it stand out on the album. Again it's an 80s pop song but instead of neon brightness it's been soaked in black paint. In the second verse he places a curse on the person who has wronged him: "may your cruelty find you, may the scars you left in me dig in to you twice as deep" which is simple but scathing. The only thing I don't like about the song is the guitar sound just before the end - it's got that bad-80s metal squeal to it, but I can excuse it here because the rest of the song is so good.
8. Rewind 💙 Rewind is another song that I don't have a lot to say about. I can't really make out the lyrics, especially in the chorus, which is a classic AFI thing - there are a lot of misheard AFI lyrics floating about the internet - but it's unusual on Burials as Davey enunciates well elsewhere. In that respect, the vocal part of this song reminds me of his performance on their first mainstream album, Sing The Sorrow.
9. The Embrace 💙 Another song where he is placing a curse. This is my least favourite song on the album. It's not 'worse' than anything else on here, I just don't like the line "walk into traffic" because it reminds me of that horrible Brand New lyric ("have another drink and drive yourself home, I hope there's ice on all the roads") from every girl's MySpace when I was 14. It's the most electronic song on the album up to this point, the closest to crossing over to the Blaqk Audio side of their musical output. For some reason I can never remember the title.
10. Wild 💜 This is the most electronic song on the album, with its dance beat and great electronic sounds (not quite The Disco Sound Effect but not far off) that sound unlike anything they've done before on an AFI album OR a Blaqk Audio one. Yet it's still a break-up song; chorus: "True love won't be remembered, my regret will last forever". It doesn't sound like New Order but it has that same 'sad disco' vibe that I mentioned when writing about them previously. It's a stand-out on the album for me because of the beat and the synth parts.
11. Greater Than 84 💙 The most obvious 80s influence comes in this song when Davey sings the line "the future's here, it's 1985". The vocal delivery has a bit of voice-cracking sadness in the verses and strength in the chorus. It reminds me a bit of the Hollywood drama of earlier AFI songs like Kiss And Control with references to the night sky but even though he's calling to a girl to be his queen tonight, it still carries the 'love is hopeless' theme of the rest of the album. The references to watching meteor showers and the era also feel literary - there's the obvious 1984 allusion but something about it also makes me think of Gen X hero Douglas Coupland and his book Girlfriend In A Coma.
12. Anxious 💜 Following Greater Than 84 this intro sounds slow, like it's trying to catch up to the previous but struggling. However, this is one of those songs that sounds great when you're playing music on shuffle and that striking vocal intro hits you. The chorus is a triumph and the verse vocal reminds me of one of the great 80s goth singers but I can't work out who - it could be Danzig or The Cult. Davey is welcoming death in this song which is uncomfortable but I like the song a lot anyway. The phrase 'this is a joke' creeps in to the final chorus and I wonder whether it's a comment on the situation he's in or the lyric itself.
13. The Face Beneath The Waves 💙 As far as closing songs go, this is a perfect choice for Burials. The choice of chords and sounds make it the darkest on a dark album. The lyrics give us a clearer story about the break-up which led to Davey writing the bleak lyrics which make up the content of the previous 12 songs. The chorus places a final curse on his ex: "I will return again, I am part of you". Is it creepy? Yes, and normally when I hear a lyric like this I wish the man would take the hint and leave the girl alone. However on this album the words and music fit each other so well and create such a great work that I give this a pass. At least he doesn't call her a whore like (insert emo frontman of your choice here). The final doomy industrial notes which sound more like a ship coming in than a musical note takes us back to the intro of The Sinking Night - a full circle just like the eclipse on the cover.
Burials is one of my favourite albums, and as I said earlier, one that I prefer to sit and listen to from beginning to end. It's one of the bleakest albums I've ever heard so I wouldn't suggest it's perfect for all occasions but if you want to sit in the dark and sulk for a bit, this is the one.
I went into this one with minimal spoilers, just a couple of the song names, so my memory of this disc was that it was Britpop-adjacent. I am very passionate about Good Britpop. A lot of it is shit.
1. The Smiths - This Charming Man 💜
This is the first Smiths song I ever heard, as part of 'The Best Album In The World... Ever!' (which is where I first heard a few of the songs on this mix). It's flawless. All 4 members of the band deliver an exciting part to complete this song and Johnny Marr's guitar part is an obvious high point but I'd like to point out how great the bassline is! It's a perfect pretentious pop song and the only reason it doesn't get elevated to Favourite Songs Ever status is because of its ubiquity.
2. New Order - Blue Monday 1988 🎀
Blue Monday is more than just a song; it's a whole emotional state of being. Just hearing the intro to Blue Monday gives me the biggest rush. I love the original 1983 version and I love this 1988 remix equally. The persistent beat, the layers of sounds, the apathetic flat vocal - again, this is a flawless song. Gillian Gilbert is one of the most underrated musicians of her time and she deserves so much more credit for all of the amazing electronic sounds that made New Order so important. I cannot state enough how highly I rate Blue Monday.
3. Pulp - Do You Remember The First Time? 💜
Jarvis Cocker's low voice reverberates through my floor, my bones, my soul. He's a top class lyricist, so clever and witty. Pulp songs are such wonderful little vignettes of every day drama, and this song casts him in a familiar role of 'the mistress'(what's the male version of 'the other woman'? Is there a phrase or is this some sexism?). I think the line "Jesus, it must be great to be straight" is brilliant but I don't understand it in the context of this song - I always assumed Jarvis was pleading the girl not to finish with him and be faithful to her boyfriend. The rest of the band are also great here but it's the vocal that stands out as the highlight.
4. Neutral Milk Hotel - Two Headed Boy 🔵
And now the Americans enter to break up my Britpop party. Jeff Mangum cannot sing in key, which works well here - he switches from calm to yelling which works well for him. I have no idea what the lyrics are about; I originally got to know this song via a Dresden Dolls cover so I wonder whether there's any line to be drawn between this and their Coin-Operated Boy? Anyway, this is a simple acoustic guitar folk song.
5. New Order - True Faith '94 💜
Dance music, but make it melancholy. Pulling that off is difficult but New Order excel at it. This is a song you can dance to in the club or mope to in the corner and I rate that as a concept. I love the sound of the chorus and the "I feel so extraordinary" opening line. It's a second New Order song in a short time but I am happy with that decision when the songs are this good.
6. Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Californication 🔵
I'm not totally certain but it's possible that this is my favourite song of theirs, as a person who knows their big hits but isn't really a fan who would delve any deeper. The vocal line is good; the song is chill but he delivers some of the lines in a fast-paced style. There are a lot of words in it and I'm not entirely sure what the song is about - something to do with Californian culture seeping out into the world? - but I can pick out lines like "space may be the final frontier but it's made in a Hollywood basement" which I quite like (I believe the Moon Landing happened though, for what it's worth). It's a bit too long with a guitar solo which I don't need, as I feel I'm always saying.
7. The Cranberries - Zombie 🔵
This has the grungiest noisy guitar and terrible sounding drums - Zombie has the makings of a great goth record if it had been produced properly. I think I like Dolores' voice but I do kind of hate that yelping that she does. The abrupt ending with the instruments dropping out is a cool way to round off the song.
8. Neutral Milk Hotel - Oh Comely 🟡
Oh Comely is a very long, repetitive thing and I've listened to it numerous times over the years but the words haven't sunk in or even stuck in my memory. People talk about this album as a revolutionary, deep conceptual story but so far I've listened to 2 songs from it and neither of them are clear to me. Once you make it to 5 minutes of droning there's a bit that's more interesting but then there's a trumpet and they stretch this thing out for 8 minutes and I'm so bored.
9. Blur - Girls & Boys 🟣
I have a real love-hate relationship with Blur; they have some great songs and their drummer is a Labour councillor now but on the other hand they're class tourists, Damon treated Justine Frischmann horribly and their bass player is a Tory who makes cheese now. However, Girls & Boys is undeniably an absolute banger of a record, maybe their best one. It's really catchy and good fun with a genius chorus and excellent use of electronics. Damon's Mockney accent is unbearable but I suppose at least I get some pleasure in taking the piss out of it. This is the start of Blur and Britpop being all about "lads lads lads" though and I really hate that whole culture.
10. Pixies - Where Is My Mind? 🔵
The riff that opens this song is classic. The recording sounds so amateur in the way the sounds are positioned but that doesn't disguise how well put together the song is, all the parts work well. It's a good song but its inclusion in Fight Club makes it harder to love. In fact, Fight Club, the Smiths and Neutral Milk Hotel form parts of another Bad Culture which is just as gross as what Blur are peddling - the horrible 'not like other guys' intelligent hipster man who hates women just as much as the lad but in a less straight-forward way.
11. The Boo Radleys - Wake Up Boo! 🔵
The acapella intro for this song is unnecessary and I assume there's a single edit that omits it, but that's not what I have here. Wake Up Boo! has really strong 90s breakfast TV vibes to me - I can't pinpoint it exactly but I bet the chorus was absolutely hammered on morning shows and ads for a few years after it was a hit. It sounds really cheerful - the quintessential sunny happy morning song, even though I'm sure there are some darker lyrics in there. I don't rate anything else they recorded but they hit on a winner with this.
12. Garbage - Stupid Girl 🔵
I don't know what it is about the intro to this song but it feels like a sci-fi movie, like I'm in some kind of ship or plane that's swooping down into a futuristic city, weaving between skyscrapers - a sort of 90s Batman/Blade Runner kind of scene. Shirley Manson is super cool and I love the industrial rock sounds in this. There seemed to be a lot of music around at this time with restrained or bored-sounding women talking about sex and violence over electronics but usually they have really posh accents so it's cool to have a Scottish woman inhabiting this space.
13. Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945 🟢
The third and final of their songs to appear, and the only one where there's a full band involved. The distortion on the guitars is turned up so high that the sound is failing and that sounds great with the yelled vocal. This is definitely better than Oh Comely - it's still relentlessly steady in its pace but it's exciting rather than dragging on. It closes with a flourish of brass though, which I don't really need.
14. EMF - Unbelievable 🟢
I don't have very positive feelings about 'baggy' as a genre overall but this is a good song. The members of EMF should be living in total luxury from the royalties they must get from this song being in ads all the time - kudos to them for coming up with that hook and licensing it out. My body's reaction to this song is to dance like Bez from the Happy Mondays, for better or worse.
15. McAlmont & Butler - Yes 🟣
When I first heard this on the aforementioned "Best Album..." I was very confused by its place - it didn't sound like Britpop and for a long time I had assumed that the singer was a woman, when in fact the performer is Mr David McAlmont. Yes is a really great 'fuck you' song and I love to sing along with it even though I'm very much Team Anderson and not Team Butler when it comes to Suede. There's so much going on here with the vocals, the strings and the piano that the guitar part is barely noticeable, which was probably a conscious decision on Bernard Butler's part but still interesting. Unfortunately nothing else on the McAlmont & Butler albums comes close to being as good as this song - it's definitely a one-off for them. The version on this mix fades out before the album version's ending which has all the musicians applauding, which is great because I can't stand that (see also: Whatever by Oasis). I once heard Yes played in the venue before Suede came on stage which I thought was a weird choice.
16. James - Sit Down 🔵
Another of the very much overplayed indie disco Absolute Radio hits. Like Wake Up Boo!, it's really cheery and lovely and positive. The song is well-done, but I understand why bands like Suede were formed as a reaction to the dullness of indie around this time. Still, it's a nice song and my mum sings along with it when it's on the radio so that sounds like a success to me.
17. Blondie - Atomic 🔵
Huge spy thriller vibes from that opening riff. Atomic is new-wave but at the same time it's disco. It's largely instrumental which often fails to hold my attention but this song is like going on a journey and I always enjoy the trip.
18. Babybird - You're Gorgeous 🟢
We end with another 90s cliché chorus that I strongly associate with TV background music from that era. I don't think I heard anything other than the chorus until I was a grown-up so I was surprised by how kinky and dark the verses are in comparison to the chorus and cutesy keyboard part. I don't think it's the love song that I assumed it would be.
It's really strange thinking about songs like Wake Up Boo! and You're Gorgeous, and also Spaceman by Babylon Zoo which I'll cover someday - they exist in a time before I was properly aware of pop music, but those hooks must have been so ubiquitous on CBBC and adverts when I was little that they feel like theme tunes or jingles or Christmas carols to me rather than just pop songs. This disc had a couple of themes running through it - those Britpop-adjacent one hit wonders and classics, but also fake-deep hipster bro music. Thankfully, despite being used in a million adverts, Blue Monday transcends any such narrow associations.
#110 is my monthly mix CD from December 2013. Without looking at the tracklisting, I remember nothing about this month so maybe this will take me back there.
1. Mindless Self Indulgence - Fuck Machine 🟢
December 2013 was the last time I saw Mindless Self Indulgence! It's all coming back to me now - I'm sure they appear a few times on this disc. I saw them at the Liquid Rooms in Edinburgh on the first of the month and it was the first time I finally got to meet the entire band - I remember Lyn-Z giving me a big hug when I thanked her for her autograph. The album they were touring is the first one I didn't buy so I'd downloaded the new songs that were on their setlist and I tried to listen to them on the bus into town but there was a woman singing on that bus so obviously I listened to her instead. Anyway, Fuck Machine is a standard MSI song - it's rude, tongue-in-cheek fun. It's like classic MSI but the sound is bigger to reflect the advances in technology since their early days. The breakdown doesn't do it for me and the song runs out of steam really fast. The good bit is really good though.
2. April March - Chick Habit 🔵 This song makes me want to form a girl-gang of old school 50s biker girls and go after fuckboys giving them a taste of their own medicine. I think this song appears in a Tarantino movie but not one that I've seen so I can't really comment on that. It's based on the French yé-yé classic Laisser Tomber Les Filles but April has amped up the bass and written some feminist lyrics for cheating men. Her delivery is really snotty and it makes the song camp and fun.
3. Davey Havok - Misconceptions of Hell (from Tim Timebomb's Rock'n'Roll Theater) 🟣
I wrote about Davey Havok a lot in my last entry, but here he's doing something completely different - playing the Devil selling the positives of Hell to a man in purgatory. Davey doesn't get the chance to display his musical theatre camp side often enough. He's so versatile as a performer and this side of him is underrated. Misconceptions of Hell is one episode of a YouTube musical so it's part of a larger work but as a stand-alone song it still works and makes me so happy every time I hear it. The lyrics are full of clever references to 'misconceptions of hell', with the River Styx as a fun place to take a cruise, the heat coming from the beautiful girls, the seven deadly sins as parties and God cast as a 'party-pooper'. And the audio doesn't even capture the pink suit and pencil moustache vision of Davey as Dante...
4. Deee-Lite - Groove Is In The Heart 🟣
Here's another song that brings me immense joy. It's impossible not to dance when Groove Is In The Heart comes on. The song is one of my mum's favourites from nights out before I came along and it's exactly the sort of thing I'd want to hear in a club (if we ever get to go to clubs again). It's one of those songs, like Tom Tom Club's Genius Of Love, where the words keep flowing along but when you stop to think about them they don't seem to mean anything. It's somehow both retro and modern, timeless but still exhilarating and Lady Miss Kier and the video swirling around her is a psychedelic 60s dream.
5. Billie Holiday - My Man 🟣
After the fun of the last few songs, this is a huuuge comedown. It's one of the saddest songs I can think of, about a woman who's fallen for bad man - an unreliable cheater who doesn't share the all-consuming love that she does. Miss Holiday delivers lines like "He isn't true, he beats me too, what can I do?" with such melancholy, it's devastating. I've heard a few versions of this song but her conviction makes this my favourite. Flawless.
6. Mindless Self Indulgence - Witness 🟢 What a jarring transition, thanks a lot 2013 Rachel. It's more Big MSI - more swearing, more self-centred conceit. The electronic madness is great but the standout of this song is the lyric bravado of "suck on my dick, I'm perfect, I am the best, fuck everybody else, God likes me".
7. No Doubt - Hey Baby 🔵
This one reminds me of my childhood when this song was all over music TV. I love the dancehall mood of this which I think was quite popular at the time, thinking back to the Smash Hits review I did with Beenie Man featured, but I don't think I was really able to pick out the genre influences of pop songs at that time. I can't separate it from the black and white and red visuals of No Doubt in this era - Gwen Stefani looked so cool.
8. Tim Curry - I'm Going Home 🔵
I love The Rocky Horror Picture Show, especially the soundtrack which I listened to a lot in my late teens. Given that it's a product of the mid-70s it's obviously full of glam rock influence but I've never noticed until now quite how Bowie-esque I'm Going Home is. The song is Dr Frank-N-Furter's big closing number, like a Judy Garland finale before Dorothy clicks her heels and leaves Oz. It's a lovely song, and another that is forever linked to an image - that of Tim Curry's eyes covered in blue glitter makeup, smudged and faded from frolicking in the pool in the previous number.
9. Arctic Monkeys - 505 🟣
Another of the saddest songs. 505 is a huge indie music cliché but it deserves all of the acclaim and referencing and memes that it has generated because it is such an incredible song. I think Alex Turner is one of the 21st century's greatest lyricists, no matter how many times I see "I'd probably still adore you with your hands around my neck, or I did last time I checked" on a social media post. And that big crescendo for the last verse! All of the sounds in this song are perfect, it's another one that I can't fault.
10. Kate Nash - Under-Estimate The Girl 🟢
I remember this being revolutionary when it first came out. People on social media thought Kate Nash had snapped and lost her mind when she decided to give up on commercial indie-pop songs and embrace her inner riot grrrl. I love the primal yelling and prominent bass part that made a lot of people run for cover and question her sanity. The matching intro and outro, that bookend her rage are my favourite parts. She put out better punk songs after this but as a statement of intent it gets the job done. Society clearly did under-estimate this girl.
11. Mindless Self Indulgence - It Gets Worse 🟢
The "it gets better" campaign was in full swing at this point and it was hard to go online or look at the rock music press without seeing young people and musicians talking about suicide prevention and how 'it gets better', a statement that started to feel meaningless. This song is an antidote to that culture and regardless of how worthy the cause for optimism was, it's refreshing to have this out there too. MSI don't go in for patronising self-help statements, instead they write choruses that say "it doesn't get better unless you're pretty, it doesn't get better unless you've got money" and set them to a killer bass drop. They are the great agitators of the rock scene.
12. Be Your Own Pet - Becky 🔵
Another song by a snotty, sassy girl and her band. Becky is about the end of a friendship, hiding the grief of that experience behind a tough exterior. It's written from that early-teens mindset and full of pettiness over friendship bracelets and yearbook quotes and slumber parties, escalating from a fight to straight-up murder: "if only what you wrote in my yearbook was true, then I wouldn't be stuck in fuckin' cell block two". I love the attitude and the humour of the male band mates singing a back-up chorus of "we don't like Becky anymore". So juvenile but so relatable.
13. Kate Bush - Moving 🔵
The queen! In the first song from her first album, Kate Bush sounds ethereal, like she's floated in from a more magical place to grace us with her presence. Moving is soothing but sounds very of its time, and there's something about her band that sounds a bit school orchestra - cheap and amateur, rather than the actual band she'd performed with for years previously. The song is apparently an ode to her dance teacher who deserves acclaim for helping Kate to develop such a singular style.
14. Billie Holiday - Summertime 🟣
Another Billie Holiday standard. It's hard to pick a favourite version of a song that has been performed so many times but this might be it for me. I'm so used to hearing Sad Billie that it's nice to hear her singing something less overtly miserable. She really was a one-off talent.
15. No Doubt - Hella Good 🔵
It's disco! This is what I mean by not really understanding the subtleties of genre in 2002; as a kid, it wasn't obvious what they were doing. It makes liberal use of that disco sound (you know, the one in Ring My Bell and countless others) which is very pleasing. Hella Good is like Moroder working with Blondie and it sounds like it could have been made any time between 1978 and 2020. I feel like I've described songs and artists as 'cool' a lot in this post but there isn't a better word for this, it is so cool and definitely makes me want to shimmy.
16. The Red Paintings - Mad World 🟢
This is here because The Red Paintings were the support band for Mindless Self Indulgence. This is a cover of the sad-boy early-00s version of Mad World, which I hate, but I quite like this version. I remember this band's being fascinating as performance art; I'm sure they had interesting costumes and props around them and I think they painted a guy's body during the course of the set? This song is less compelling than their show was but they do a good job of the cover, with really beautiful strings and guitar parts. It drops points for covering the cover and not the Tears For Fears version though.
17. Mindless Self Indulgence - You're No Fun Anymore Mark Trezona 🟢
I didn't vibe with this song as much as the other MSI ones at the time, but listening back to them now I think it's on a par with the ones I've already written about. I like the Eurodancey 'doo doo doo' bit in this song. None of the songs from this album are as good as the stuff on my favourite MSI album but they're not bad. I had no idea who Mark Trezona was until I looked it up right now - apparently he's a fan who donated $5k to the Kickstarter campaign for this album in exchange for a song being named after him. Pretty cool legacy, I think.
18. The Smiths - I Want The One I Can't Have 🔵
Oh, shut up, Morrissey. The star of this song is Mike Joyce on drums, and obviously Johnny Marr is the greatest of all guitarists and does some cool stuff here too. It's an average-quality Smiths song. "If you ever need self-validation, just meet me in the alley by the railway station" is a bold lyric from Morrissey, king of the incels.
19. Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - Crimson And Clover 🟢
This song is a classic and here we have a cool cover of it. Joan sings the song softly, in contrast to her usual rebel yell. The guitar riff comes in heavier than in the original and the Blackhearts style suits the song well. I love that this song takes place at 2 different speeds which keeps things interesting, and the repetition at the end is like drifting into a dream.
20. letlive. - Banshee (Ghost Fame) 🟢
I love the 'band practicing the room next door' feel of this intro before the song starts properly. letlive. were a great band with clear roots in bands like Refused, Faith No More and Glassjaw as well as some jazz influence. This song has an unusual structure which makes it hard to follow - it's exciting but challenging to listen to and it's a relief when they find their way back to the chorus. This has huge 'first song on the album' energy and while it's not my favourite song of theirs, I will always be thrilled by frontman Jason Aalon Butler.
21. Françoise Hardy - A quoi ça sert? 🟢
Something French! This is pretty and sounds very late 60s singer-songwriter, like she was going for a French Marianne or Joni. The arpeggiated piano opens up like a beautiful sunny country day. I don't know what this song is about but I find it relaxing. The choir almost gives it a vintage Disney vibe.
22. Black Veil Brides ft Zakk Wylde - Unholy 🔴
This song has ruined a long streak of good records. I don't need this. It's very 80s sounding and it has that electric guitar sound that reminds me of dialling a phone, which I hate. I don't need Andy Biersack's low voice, especially not when he starts screaming. The guitar solo sounds like it was recorded underwater. I know that we're supposed to revere people like Zakk Wylde as guitar heroes and I remember that narrative from Kerrang! growing up, but I cannot stand these big guitar solos and I really don't need the Metallica-rip-off post-solo middle eight. This song can go fuck itself, bigtime.
23. Mindless Self Indulgence - Ass Backwards 🟠
The posh English schoolteacher voice that opens this song and is threaded right through is very annoying to me. This isn't as good as the other MSI songs, there's no dynamic to it. The "I go about things the wrong way baby" line is an interpolation of another song and I could not work out what so I had to Google it and I was shocked to realise it's lifted from HOW SOON IS NOW!?
This was a good month for me musically, overall. If we disregard those last two songs, December 2013 was above average, as it turns out.
This week's mix CD is a bit of a weird one because I'm not sure exactly when I made it. #193 should make it the most recent mix CD I've made but it wasn't on the spindle when I was numbering them and I found it in another disc box recently. The tracklisting suggests late 2013 to me, maybe songs that didn't make it onto the monthly review mix I used to do for a few years when I downloaded a lot. It's heavy on AFI and side-project Blaqk Audio and those were the bands I was listening to the most in the wake of the release of AFI's Burials album at around that time.
1. Blaqk Audio - Bite Your Tongue 🟢
This is the first of a number of Blaqk Audio b-sides on this CD and is as good as anything on the first couple of albums. I'm not sure when this song came out - Google suggests it might have been a b-side on their 2nd album Bright Black Heaven - but it's a decent BA song. I particularly like the pre-chorus: "Oh my paper rose, strike a borrowed pose and they'll never know your frail truth". This is a BA song that sounds like it could have made it onto an AFI album if it had some guitars on it. It's not exceptional but it's a good enough average BA song with a cool abrupt ending. I'm not sure about the pew-pew-laser sounds though.
2. Brigitte Bardot - Moi Je Joue 🔵
How charming! This is total perfume ad music but it's so lovely and bright and evocative. It's a sunny beach on the Riviera with Brigitte and it never fails to make me smile. I don't speak enough French to understand what it's about or sing along but I like it all the same. It's much too short, though.
3. AFI - This Time Imperfect 💜
From the beach to the darkness but just as evocative. We are knee-deep in my 2013 'second honeymoon' AFI phase here but This Time Imperfect is actually one of my favourite songs from my 2006-2007 AFI phase. On this mix it's been torn from the other pieces which make up a full suite at the end of the 2003 album Sing The Sorrow and I'm not sure why it's track 3 on here when it is so clearly a closing number. I love the 2nd chorus where the everything becomes more intense, I love Davey Havok's vocals on this song and especially the classic Davey "oh!" before the final choruses. It's sad and beautiful and I get a big hit of nostalgia from it. However, despite the outro being super atmospheric and nice to bask in at the end of an album, it feels way too long in this context.
4. Falling In Reverse - Caught Like A Fly 🟡
Now to a phase I regret! This song is basically a diss track with Ronnie Radke airing his feelings about his former bandmates in Escape The Fate (particularly bassist Max Green) moving on with their careers while he was in prison. I usually love everything with this cabaret-style rhythm but this song is not good. The Escape The Fate saga was like watching a soap opera and I always felt like these personal grievances should have been dealt with privately rather than by putting lines like "your grandfather would roll in his grave" on your comeback album. From this distance, and probably at the time, I got the feeling that Ronnie and Escape The Fate were using the drama of their story to sell records and keep the publicity machine rolling, and I wonder how genuine it really was. Ronnie Radke, of course, doesn't seem like a very nice person in general, and even if this song was good - and it's not, it's just sad - I wouldn't rate it any higher than this because I would be happy to never hear it again.
5. Blaqk Audio - The Ligature 🔵
This feels more like an intermission piece than a song - I could imagine hearing it while the band nip off stage for a quick break. It might be a Jade Puget experiment with vocal effects but it's still great. A little melancholy but somehow soothing, and one of my favourite Blaqk Audio non-album tracks.
6. Jason Mraz - I'm Yours 🟢
This song was everywhere for a while but it has almost entirely disappeared now. Weirdly the only time I remember hearing it in recent years is when it was played in a nightclub I was in a couple of years ago and it felt like a very odd choice for that atmosphere. It's twee, one hit wonder singer-songwriter pop but that doesn't mean it's not a nice love song. I must have listened to this a lot when it was ubiquitous as I still know all of the words. Unlike a lot of the music on this disc it's positive and laid back and I just 😊😊😊
7. AFI - Totalimmortal 🔵
This song makes me miss live concerts so much even though I wasn't going to shows like the ones I imagine when I hear this song. I feel like I deserve to be thrown around and climbing on people in a sweaty club while AFI play in 2000, but alas. It's a great, dark hardcore punk song and the gang vocal chorus is a delight. I've known this song for over a decade and read the lyrics only yesterday but after the first line I have no idea what they are.
8. Paramore - Native Tongue 🟢
Another b-side but this time by Paramore. This song is kind of like a bridge between their albums Brand New Eyes and the self-titled Paramore. I haven't listened to this as much as the other b-side from this era, Escape Route, but the chorus is catchy. The album it was dropped from ended up being so much better than this though. This might just be an average Paramore song but Hayley Williams is a brilliant singer and lyricist and I adore her.
9. Touché Amoré - DNA 🟢
Touché Amoré is another band that makes me yearn for packed hardcore shows and I wish I'd gone to see them at this time. This is heavy and urgent and I love that they pack as many notes as possible into every bar - guitar, bass and drums are all operating as fast as they can until they drop out, which is thrilling.
10. Blaqk Audio - If Only 🟢
Another Blaqk Audio intermission track. The lyric that repeats in this one: "If only you knew, would you save me?" forms the outro of one of the songs on the first album so I wonder whether this is an alternative outro that they were playing with and chose not to use. It's a nice little piece of music but I don't think I could call it a song.
11. Phoenix - 1901 🟢
This indie tune is instantly recognisable from a million soundtracks but I don't think I can confidently name it - when writing a draft of this blog I put '???' next to the title as I was kind of guessing it was this. 1901 sounds like Vampire Weekend crossed with every landfill indie band the UK produced after Alex Turner made it look easy and it's an average song with a pretty keyboard part. I guess if it was really good I would know for sure what it is, but on this mix it feels like a bit of filler since I genuinely wouldn't have recognised it without that hook.
12. AFI - 337 🟢
I thought this was Blaqk Audio again but it's actually an AFI instrumental that preceded the debut of Blaqk Audio as a side-project. It's all atmosphere and I think it was made to be a bit of background music on their website or something. It's fine but again, not really a song as such.
13. Street Drum Corps ft Bert McCracken - Happy Xmas (War Is Over) 🟢
I love Bert McCracken's cliché emo boy voice and he sings this well. I'm not sure about the "war. is over." robotic intro and outro and I find the acapella middle bit odd - I know it's a cover but it sounds like they sort of ran out of song and needed to fill the space. I don't know anything else about Street Drum Corps but I assume they're a band and not an actual drum corps as I've been imagining for the last 10 years. There are at least some strong drums in it. It's a nice cover if you're an emo but I don't really need this in my life now. I'll eventually get round to talking about the John and Yoko original which I think is an underrated Christmas hit.
14. Blaqk Audio - The Switch 🟢
This has a really good Davey Havok vocal and great Blaqk Audio erotic lyrics - it would fit in well on their first album, Cexcells, in fact I wonder why it didn't make it onto the album. It's got super heavy bass and soaring synth sounds and it really takes me back to 2013-14.
15. Pat Boone - Moody River 🔵
The mp3 I used for this mix has been ripped from vinyl as you can hear the needle drop and the crackle of the record, which I love. This song is so sad and mournful with the back-up singers; I love a 'splatter platter'. The sweet tinkle of the piano is jarring against the rest of the song, just like this song itself sticks out on this mix. I'm sure Pat Boone is really unhip but I can't help but like this song.
16. Panic! At The Disco - Nicotine 🟡
I couldn't identify this song from the intro alone as I'd fallen away from P!ATD by the time this came out. I didn't realise Brendon had gone for EDM beats as early as this but I'm not especially fond of it. I don't like to be one of those people but I don't really get on with modern P!ATD or Fall Out Boy - the old stuff was better. It's catchy but it's not clever, and P!ATD's lyrics used to be full of clever wordplay and references. It's very pop, but not in a good way.
17. Elvis vs JXL - A Little Less Conversation 🟢
This song was everywhere in 2002. It's fun and upbeat and I think this would have been around the time I became aware of Elvis as a cultural phenomenon... well, this and Lilo & Stitch. It's a cool take on the song but Elvis is timeless and doesn't really need this. I don't know how to categorise the song - it's dance music but at the same time it's not? It's kind of like dance music for older people, dance for people who don't like dance music, I guess.
18. Mark Ronson ft Lily Allen - Oh My God 🔵
Lily Allen does a really good job of this Kaiser Chiefs song, giving an attitude-filled, more spoken than sung performance. I can remember the video for this song was really cool with a cartoon Lily performing the song in a club. I also remember that I wasn't allowed to like this album because it was all covers and therefore wasn't a creative work. I think we can all agree now though that Mark Ronson is an impressive producer and the way he took indie songs and made them jazzy and cool is a real talent.
19. Tegan & Sara - Now I'm All Messed Up 🟢
Twins Tegan & Sara really know how to put a song together and harmonise - they sound so good together. It's a sad break up song disguised as a big pop ballad and they deserve all of the acclaim that they get. When they add 'please stay' to the last 'go if you want, I can't stop you' chorus it breaks my heart.
20. Motionless In White - Ghost In The Mirror 🟡
This is a standard metalcore emo song. I don't remember listening to this at all when I was into MIW but it's a very predictable exercise in genre. It's from the EP that preceded their first album Creatures and I was never able to get into any of their pre-Creatures work. It does absolutely nothing for me now. Also it took me three choruses to realise he's saying "tell me dear" and not "tell me dad", which is what happens when you listen to Metal Mickey by Suede a lot.
21. Tonight Alive - Lonely Girl 🟢
I've unfortunately burned a terrible quality (probably YouTube) rip of Lonely Girl to this disc. Jenna MacDougall has a great voice but this is a fairly average pop punk song, not that there's anything wrong with that. The song reminds me of rain so it's possible that the video features them performing in a storm but I can't remember anymore.
22. AFI - Breathing Towers To Heaven 🔵
This song starts with a really cool intro and I didn't recognise it as AFI until Davey started singing. He sounds amazing, as if he's singing in an empty room with sparse drums and bass backing him up. The excellent 'disappear with me here' chorus is familiar to me but I've never spent a lot of time with Breathing Towers To Heaven and I'm not sure why because it's really good! A pleasant discovery from this disc.
23. Vampire Weekend - Hannah Hunt 🟡
A final mystery song. I figured it out as Vampire Weekend upon hearing the distinctive voice of Ezra Koenig but it took him singing the song title to click in my brain. It's indie filler material again - I would download this stuff when I came across it online and then never listen to it. It's okay but I feel like I waited for 2:40 before the song actually started and I'd already made my mind up that I wasn't interested by then. He has a nice voice and Vampire Weekend have a really interesting and pretty sonic palette but this song isn't really anything.
