rock – Page 14

Bull | Disco Living

Silent Radio UK explains that the York, UK-based band Bull “were formed in 2011 by vocalist and songwriter Tom Beer and guitarist Dan Lucas with a mission to simply make the music they wanted to listen to, inspired by their ’90s heroes such as Pavement, Yo La Tengo and the Pixies.” DIY reviewed “Disco Living,” the band’s 2020 single: One of the band members ” … walked past one mansion which was under construction and it had a facade of the completed house on the front with the extremely bold tag line, Discover Effortless Living. I thought this was really funny so I wrote the song with that as the opening line, kind of about that and how absurd it all was.”

The video is based almost entirely on advertising “air dancers” and human approximations of same. The band is almost completely upstaged by the funkier-than-average air dancers, occasionally joining in via window-within-window footage of them having absolutely no fun at all. “It’s everyone’s favorite slogan / It’s a ‘Food Coffee Food Cocktails Party!’ / Help me forget all my problems / Or I’ll pay someone to solve them.”

The very early whole-step key change kicks in gradually (0:55 – 1:03), leaving the listener a bit disoriented. It feels like the tempo should have also increased, as if someone turned up the playback speed on a vinyl record. But the the tempo remains the same — and the party continues from there.

Eric Clapton | Layla

British guitarist/vocalist Eric Clapton, “with a band of stellar musicians that included the late Duane Allman, went into Florida’s Criteria Studios to record what would become one of the great classic albums of all time, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs,” (American Songwriter). “With its standout track ‘Layla,’ the album became a timeless record that helped determine the direction of 1970s rock guitar, performed by a band called Derek and the Dominos, as Clapton didn’t want to use his name for the marquee value.

‘Layla’ was a song Clapton wrote, with Dominos drummer Jim Gordon, about his forbidden love for the wife of his close friend George Harrison (she eventually became Clapton’s wife) … The album might have done big business had Clapton been up front about being the big name in the group, but instead, it stalled on the charts. When the edited version of ‘Layla’ was released to radio as a single in 1972, it did fairly well, but by this time Allman was dead and the band had broken up.” But in 1992, “propelled by ‘Layla’ and ‘Tears in Heaven,’ Unplugged became Clapton’s biggest selling-album, as well as one of the biggest-selling live albums in history, with a purported 26 million copies sold. ‘Layla’ won a Grammy, more than two decades after it was originally recorded, for Best Rock Song …”

After the iconic intro states the guitar-driven hook, a surprising downward half-step key change hits as verse 1 begins (0:24). We’re thrown off-kilter by a bar of 2/4 among the track’s overall 4/4 meter at 0:22, immediately preceding the modulation. The key reverts up a half-step for the first chorus, and the pattern continues from there. At 3:11, an instrumental section featuring piano drops a full step as it morphs into a more peaceful major key, taking up the second 50% of the track.

The Kinks | The Village Green Preservation Society

“A very reflective and nostalgic song written by lead singer Ray Davies, this is about the innocent times in small English towns, where the village green was the community center,” (Songfacts). “The entire album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968) was based on this theme.”

From Pitchfork‘s review of the album: “The problem facing The Kinks when they released (the album) wasn’t merely the competition– Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland, Led Zeppelin’s debut, and the Rolling Stones’ Beggars’ Banquet offered plenty– but that this subtle, funny, surreal, and at times almost tender record could have been recorded on another planet. During the summer of 1968, stateside fans were hooked on a high-intensity diet that had them jonesing for aggressive, overstated fare like “Street Fighting Man” and “You Shook Me” and “Communication Breakdown.” The disconnect between The Kinks and the rock world’s rapidly narrowing palette could hardly have been more pronounced. Compare the Stones’ bombastic, urban “Sympathy for the Devil” with understated work like “Village Green”, bouncing along like a horse and buggy as Ray Davies paints the landscape: “Out in the country, far from all the soot and noise of the city … Though widely disregarded at the time of its release, The Kinks’ 1968 apex, The Village Green Preservation Society, has had a profound impact on the present state of indie rock.”

A whole-step modulation hits at 1:12.

Red Hot Chili Peppers | Californication

Rather like the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ highest point of popularity around the turn of the millennium, Pitchfork‘s review of the band’s 1999 album Californication was very much of its era:

“In a way, you have to be familiar with California to appreciate (lead singer Anthony) Kiedis’ lyrics. I mean, Los Angeles is shallow, sunny, fun, and tragic … Longevity in rock music is about as rare as hip-hop spellcheckers these days. The idea of albums has given way to the force-feeding of singles. Teens reposter their walls with the face-of-the-moment more frequently than undercover advertisers placard boarded-up fences and buildings in New York. Basically, the Chili Peppers are the closest thing we have to a Led Zepplin today. If you want quality, commercial, Jeep-stereo, headphone, stadium-filling, champion Rock that you can get behind, where else are you going to turn? Not to Eminem, you ain’t.”

The title track is quite a lot more reserved than “Scar Tissue,” “Get on Top,” and “Right on Time.” But there’s room for a ballad on even a rock album (or a tune that amounts to a ballad in RHCP-land) — and “Californication” fits the bill. After a start in A minor, there’s a shift to F# minor or an instrumental bridge at 3:22, then a return to the original key at 4:02.

Good Charlotte | Wondering

“Wondering” is the fourth track on the 2002 album The Young and the Hopeless by the American rock band Good Charlotte. After their first record did not sell as well as they hoped, the group decided to let inspiration guide them for this release. “Nothing about that record was pre-meditated, we were just having fun, and trying to do the best we could to achieve that goal,” lead guitarist Benji Madden said. “We’d gone out into the world and felt both the positive and the negative. And on The Young And The Hopeless we decided to really take a direction and stand up for ourselves, in a way.”

The track shifts from B up a whole step to C# at 3:00

Demi Lovato | The Middle

“The Middle” is the ninth track on American singer Demi Lovato’s debut studio album, Don’t Forget, released in 2008. AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine described the record as “the kind of pop that feels disposable but winds up sticking around longer than its more considered cousins.” The song begins in E minor and shifts up a step to F# minor for the last chorus at 2:17.

Talking Heads | With Our Love

On the Talking Heads’ album More Songs About Buildings and Food, “You can hear (producer Brian) Eno’s ‘studio as instrument’ approach in all sorts of sonic details.” But in comparison to the band’s early days as regular performers at spartan punk-centric clubs like CBGB’s, ” … these increasingly intricate aesthetics never threaten to overthrow the music’s pleasure center: an involuntary compulsion to move your body … Talking Heads were sorting out how to engage simultaneously with the mind and the soul (or at least the hips)—how to be both art-rock and dance music,” (Pitchfork).

Salon called the album “a backwards exorcism of frozen-brittle guitars, smeared textures, and super-ecstatic vocals. The record brought forth an essential darkness and didn’t try to extinguish it. These were songs about emotions that lurk, about the secret part of ourselves that knows people can see right through us on buses, planes, and subways, all sung by a disjointed, ferocious, manic, shivering guy named David Byrne. It was a kind of State of the Union address, examining the nation’s health from a dozen different angles, including the sky.”

Sharing real estate on the 1978 release with “Take Me to the River,” a languorous track which became the band’s first hit, is the up-tempo “With Our Love.” The verse is built around G minor, with prominent Bb minor chords. 0:30 – 0:37 brings an off-kilter section featuring Db minor and Cb minor chords before a return to the original G minor section. At 0:45, the chorus alternates between E minor, G major, and A minor chords. 1:36 starts the cycle again. The tune’s driving forces of groove, lyric, and texture seem to transcend any expectation of traditional rock chord progressions; it doesn’t so much modulate as it fails to ever settle into a specific tonality in the first place. Disjointed, ferocious, and manic, indeed.

Seals and Crofts | We May Never Pass This Way Again

After getting their start in rock and pop bands in the 1950s, Jim Seals and Dash Crofts, “adherents of the Baha’i faith, sought to make a calmer brand of music, mixing folk, bluegrass, country and jazz influences and delivering their lyrics in close harmony,” (New York Times). “‘Jim Seals plays acoustic guitar and fiddle,’ Don Heckman wrote in the NYT in 1970 in a brief review of their second album, Down Home, “and Dash Crofts plays electric mandolin and piano; together they sing coolly intertwined, and quite colorful, vocal harmony.” The duo had an impressive run of top 10 soft rock hits in the 1970s (including “Summer Breeze” and “Hummingbird”), although they never topped the US pop charts outright.

“We May Never Pass This Way Again” (1973) “calls on people to show courage and continue to stand with one another, partly because they may never see each other again. Written by the duo, it’s an example of their strong convictions to the Baha’i faith. They made a pilgrimage to Haifa, Israel, where they studied the teachings of the faith, and often based their lyrics on themes of compassion and devotion.” (Songfacts).

The ambitious track shows the duo’s writing abilities soaring toward their highest point. The track reached top 30 on multiple US, Canadian, and Australian pop charts and #2 on both the Canadian Adult Contemporary and US Easy Listening charts. Alternating between vocal solos, unisons, and harmony, the duo (with lead vocals by Jim Seals) urge the listener to seize the day. It’s hard to imagine now that a densely textured harmonic feast of a tune — centered around the life philosophy of living in the moment, marinating in earnestness, and clocking in north of four minutes — was fodder for top 40 radio. But somehow, this track’s many sections took flight when combined together, somehow creating a feeling of advance nostalgia for … now.

Seals passed away this week at age 79. It would be difficult to find a better tribute to the songwriter and performer than this track.

0:00 intro and verse 1 / A Major
0:33 Pre-chorus 1a / C major
0:50 Pre-chorus 1b / multiple compound chords
0:58 Chorus / B minor
(Second verse and chorus)
2:27 Bridge / F major
3:14 Instrumental chorus / B minor
3:56 Outro / E major (modulation via common tone in melody)

Green Day | Brutal Love

“Brutal Love” is the lead track on the 2012 album ¡Tré!, the third and final installment of a series released by the American rock band Green Day (who today make their MotD debut.) According to Billboard, the track “marries glam-rock, doo-wop and soul music. Part of the melody is lifted from Sam Cooke’s 1962 hit “Bring It On Home To Me,” leading him to be credited as a co-writer.

The song begins in Ab and modulates up to A coming out of the second bridge at 3:45.

Todd Rundgren | Izzat Love?

“In interviews, he has attributed the radical shift in his mid-20s less to his own changing perspective than to other people’s perspective on him—he got tired of being seen as merely another piano-playing, lovesick troubadour,” (Pitchfork). “While he still stands by the folk-pop simplicity of his earliest solo records, Rundgren is quick to note their lack of depth, citing their obvious reference points (thematically, a high-school break-up; musically, the work of Laura Nyro). After achieving commercial success on his 1970 debut with the slick single ‘We Gotta Get You a Woman’ and critical success a year later with his moodier sophomore album, Rundgren sought to expand his range. And he wanted to do it by himself.

Throughout (the 70s), Rundgren was one of the first prominent artist-slash-producers, as competent behind the scenes as he was in front of the microphone, earning him the admiration of a young Prince and, later, Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker. As he discovered his own identity on record, Rundgren was hellbent on learning what happens when those two roles converge. When everything about a record is fully under the artist’s control, he suspected, the product can become something singular.”

Todd (1974) featured the single “A Dream Goes on Forever” and “I Think You Know,” ballads which are at the very heart of Rundgren’s catalog for most fans. However, much of the rest of album is comprised of shorter tracks which form a dense audio collage, including “Izzat Love.” In some ways, the track is right down the fairway when considering Rundgren’s younger years marinating in Philly Soul; with a slower tempo and more relaxed arrangement, the track might have been a hit. But instead, a frenetic feel and relentlessly uptempo rock delivery ruled the day, shifting up a whole step at 1:08. Be forewarned: the loud connective tissue to the next album track, “Heavy Metal Kids” (apparently the sound of analog recording tape being suddenly rewound) is inextricably included at 1:52.