Tag Archives: 2011

Song Analysis #34: The Wombats – Walking Disasters

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Title: ‘Walking Disasters’
Where to find it: ‘The Wombats Proudly Present This Modern Glitch’ (2011, 14th Floor Records [UK], Bright Antenna [US])
Performed by: The Wombats
Words by: Matthew “Murph” Murphy

Matthew “Murph” Murphy of the Wombats has been through a lot. It’s often said that artists have to suffer for their art. I’d argue that in Murph’s case, we’re lucky enough that he’s willing to share his experiences with us, from self-doubt to letting go and having a good time out with mates, from depression to the euphoria of being in love. In an interview with a magazine produced by CALM that I’m a contributor to, Murph chatted with our editor Rachel Clare about his battle with depression and his decision to give up anti-depressants, which ultimately led to the writing of the single ‘Anti-D’. ‘Anti-D’ seemed way too obvious of a choice for Music in Notes, so I’ve chosen something else.

I found their 2011 album ‘The Wombats Proudly Present: This Modern Glitch’ particularly strong in its songwriting, taking Murph’s often introspective and often dark lyrics and pairing it with the kind of pop melody others only wish they could come up with. It spawned several well-performing singles including ‘Tokyo (Vampires and Wolves)’ and ‘Jump in the Fog’. But for today’s analysis, I’ve chosen a less obvious track from the LP to chew on.

First, the words:

Verse 1
She used to get her kicks from a fall to the floor
But now she’s always wasted
A total looker, but she’s jaded
The kind of shivering wreck that I adore
I can’t offer you a rescue
I can tell you what I’d do

Pre-chorus
I’d tell my mother that I love her dearly
And tell my father that I need him back again
And if these words won’t drop from your lips
I will be your Freudian slip

Chorus
And flowers might wilt when we walk past
And self-help might help when it makes us laugh
Only finding questions in answers
You and I are just walking disasters
You and I are just walking disasters
You and I are just walking disasters

Verse 2
She only finds her love in a downtown score (store?)
Consumption makes her stronger
She’s the sweetest anaconda
The kind of lack of respect that I adore
I can’t offer you a rescue
But when you’ve lost all that you have left to lose

Pre-chorus
I’d tell my mother that I love her dearly
And tell my father that I need him back again
And if these words won’t drop from your lips
I will be your Freudian slip

Bridge
As sharp as a knife and as blunt as a wheel
You be my calm, I’ll be your pneumatic drill
And what we’ll never want, we’ll always need
Right now we need some pop psychology
To keep us upbeat

Pre-chorus
So tell your mother that you love her dearly
And tell your father you won’t lock him out again
And if these words won’t drop from your lips
I will be your Freudian slip

Chorus
And flowers might wilt when we walk past
And self-help might help when it makes us laugh
Only finding questions in answers
You and I are just walking disasters
You and I are just walking disasters
You and I are just walking disasters

Now, the analysis:

‘Walking Disasters’ is about coming of age and coming to a point of your maturity when you’re recognising your own bad habits as well as what you yourself can do in life to make changes for the better. The title is typical Murph self-deprecation, calling himself and his girl / friend “walking disasters”, as if every waking moment they live is in a cartoon world and every action farcical.

In verse 1, every single transcription I’ve seen online makes the first line out to be “She used to get her kicks from a fall to the floor”; I had always assumed it was “She used to get her kicks from the four to the floor”, as if the girl he’s speaking of was a dance music fan who used to go to raves. But maybe that’s just me and my synth-loving tendencies. Admittedly, with the words reading as “fall to the floor”, it’s more poignant, as if he’s watching her like a bystander to a train wreck. He wants to do something while she makes a fool out of herself, but he knows he can’t because he is every bit of a human catastrophe as she is.

He is sympathetic to her: “The kind of shivering wreck that I adore”; I find that particularly nice, as it’s usually us women who are doing the mothering in relationships, not the other way around. No, he’s being brotherly or even fatherly, noting she’s “a total looker” but what a shame “now she’s always wasted”. He’s also mature enough to recognise that even when she is sober and realises the error of her ways and what a mess she really is, it’s not his place to be that grounding influence for her and to take her on as a project. He offers up advice instead.

I’d tell my mother that I love her dearly
And tell my father that I need him back again
And if these words won’t drop from your lips
I will be your Freudian slip

In the pre-chorus, he offers up that surprisingly mature advice to a youngster that maybe you should listen to your parents and tell them that you love them, even if you grew up rebelling against all their rules. In a second and the final version of the pre-chorus, Murph sings, “And tell your father you won’t lock him out again”, which makes it sound like the girl comes from a broken home and her parents are divorced. I’m not entirely sure what “I will be your Freudian slip” means: Freudian slips are accidental slips of the tongue, and since he’s refusing to take her on permanently as a girlfriend (he has admitted he’s every bit of a screw-up as she is, so he can’t handle the responsibility), maybe he means they’re okay as accidental lovers?

And flowers might wilt when we walk past
And self-help might help when it makes us laugh
Only finding questions in answers
You and I are just walking disasters

The chorus strikes me as extremely witty, as does the later bridge. They’re going through life extremely jaded about what is up ahead for them (“flowers might wilt when we walk past”) and self-help is a joke (it “might” only “help when it makes us laugh”). Those are pretty immature, childish ways of thinking. But “only finding questions in answers, you and I are just walking disasters” allows the narrator to come to some conclusion, even if it’s not a perfect one. And I think that’s exactly the point: we are not perfect. As Morrissey sang in ‘The Youngest Was the Most Loved’, “there is no such thing as normal”. Questioning the answers and not just questioning authority (teenage rebellion) indicates personal growth and maturity.

In verse 2, more lyric confusion. Is it “She only finds her love in a downtown score”, as in getting drugs and getting high, or “She only finds her love in a downtown store”, she’s an incurable shopaholic? The next lines, “Consumption makes her stronger / She’s the sweetest anaconda”, seem to suggest the former. Even the use of the word ‘anaconda’ is very telling that another reason he can’t be with her is that she can be a snake at times. Ha!

As sharp as a knife and as blunt as a wheel
You be my calm, I’ll be your pneumatic drill
And what we’ll never want, we’ll always need
Right now we need some pop psychology
To keep us upbeat

The bridge is the other height of Murph’s droll humour here. “As sharp as a knife and as blunt as a wheel / You be my calm, I’ll be your pneumatic drill”: they are complete opposites, and even more confusingly, he’s given her the role of being the calm one while he’s the one wreaking havoc, which is the opposite of what we assumed he was at the start of the song: the voice of reason watching his friend get into trouble yet again on a bad night. “And what we’ll never want, we’ll always need” is a classic refrain from psychologists who bemoan modern society’s desires for things when they’re not needed, but lesser evolved humans can’t control their willpower and can’t tell the difference. “Right now we need some pop psychology / To keep us upbeat” is like saying to go turn on MTV and get all excited watching some stupid top 40 video that means absolutely nothing. He knows that is not the cure-all, even if when we were younger we certainly were encouraged to believe that by our peers and even by society itself.

A simple pop song? Hardly.

Lastly, the song, in stream form, as the song was never released as a single.

Song Analysis #33: The Joy Formidable – I Don’t Want to See You Like This

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Title: ‘I Don’t Want to See You Like This’
Where to find it: ‘I Don’t Want to See You Like This’ 7″ picture disc single (Atlantic, 2010), ‘The Big Roar’ (Atlantic, 2011)
Performed by: The Joy Formidable
Words by: I’m not sure – I’ll have to ask when I see them next!

The Joy Formidable are an incredibly important band to me. After suffering a crippling bout of heartbreak, I saw them play to a small crowd (at most 40 people?) at Black Cat Backstage in November 2010, and it was very strange to me how incredibly cathartic throwing yourself into hard, fast, loud rock music can be when you’re feeling the lowest of the low. We became friends when they returned to DC 4 months later for a sold out show for the main room of the Black Cat and we had a great, really candid chat backstage, and that was when I learned what nice, genuine people they are.

They’re now playing around the world and selling out huge venues, yet it doesn’t matter how big they are. I know they’ll never forget those early days when we wrote about them on TGTF, when they were virtually unknown, and all the unwavering support I’ve given them. They’ve put me on their guest list so many times, including for an industry show at SXSW in March that I was sure would be impossible to get into otherwise. I’ve watched their star steadily rise after so many years of hard work, and I couldn’t be happier for three wonderful people I am blessed to call friends.

When I started Music in Notes, I told myself I’d write about ‘The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade’ at some point. It still stands as my favourite song of theirs and while I’m now several years out from the incident that could have ended my life and the song is so important to me, it’s still too personal to discuss. So that will have to wait for another day. Instead, I’ve chosen something else. I’ve been running a lot lately – I’ve found it helps my joint pain, as well as provide a reasonably low impact way to relieve the pent-up stress from a long day’s work – and it was on one of these recent runs that I was listening to their debut album, 2011’s ‘The Big Roar’, that ‘I Don’t Want to See You Like This’ came on and it struck me that it was the frenetic yet still similarly emotionally charged sister to ‘The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade’.

Please also note that today, the 15th of April 2014, is the 1-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing. One year ago today, while terrible things were going on in one of the few cities in the United States I hold beloved, unbeknownst to me, a new chapter of my life was about to open and change my life. But I recently had to close out that chapter, and it wasn’t easy at all: emotions were high and ties were cut. What Ritzy Bryan sings in ‘I Don’t Want to See You Like This’ is truth: change in inevitable, but the important part is seeing that more often than not, change is good, and it’s the strength you find when you finally come to the decision that is most empowering.

First, the words:

Verse 1
A bridge splits November’s sky
I’m in two halves inside
This is the past right here
I choose to leave it here

The cliffs loom to scrape you thin
The bowl churns to over spill
But I can see us here
Without this fear

Verse 2
I want to find those books
Search your face, torment us
You’re just a shower to someone dry
A shower to the wilted and the dried

‘Cause we all leave courage’s side
But I’ll always be courage’s child
The past I’ll clear
I choose to leave it here

Pre-chorus
You say have your time again
But you can’t and the warning starts now
What’s in the frame?
It makes you sad but you can’t fill the gaps

We’re four rings on a chain
So don’t make them rust
I’ll be your maps, I’ll be your eyes
I’ll give the ending a nudge

Chorus
And I don’t want to see you like this
I don’t want to see you like this
And I don’t want to see you like this
I don’t want to see you like this

Bridge
Alive now in the middle not looking from outside
Wishing that it was a screen fight
Settled with all of a hero’s flair
Put aside, find a new character

Modified chorus
I don’t want to, don’t want to
Don’t want to see you like this
And I don’t want to see you like this
I don’t want to see you like this

Reprise of verse 1
A bridge splits November’s sky
I’m in two halves inside
This is the past right here
I choose to leave it here

Now, the analysis:

What begins and ends the song is really, really important. I can’t stress this enough. Please read the lyrics again:

A bridge splits November’s sky
I’m in two halves inside
This is the past right here
I choose to leave it here

There’s a bridge splitting November’s sky (hmm, that’s interesting, isn’t it? I saw them for the first time in November 2010) but the protagonist is in two halves. Broken. In two. The two broken piece could represent a broken heart, but helpfully, it can also represent looking back at the past vs. looking forward into the future. As Ritzy stands in the past, she’s making the conscious decision to “choose to leave it here.” I can’t be sure if this is regarding two friends or two lovers, but I imagine she’s leaving behind good memories and bad she had with the other person and has to take this step in order to not only stay true to herself, but also to look out for herself as #1 and and take care of herself.

After you get past this first half of verse 1, you get to an incredibly evocative passage:

The cliffs loom to scrape you thin
The bowl churns to over spill
But I can see us here
Without this fear

The cliffs are described as foreboding, physically capable of ruin. Then comes the image of being drowned. Yet, despite all these scenes of despair, she sees the two of them stood together. “Without this fear”, because together, joining forces, they can get through anything.

I’m not sure I have the lyrics right for the next verse. However, what is clear is how, again, they’ve chosen these incredibly evocative words: “You’re just a shower to someone dry / A shower to the wilted and the dried”. I’m torn about what this means. If it’s positive, it can be read as a compliment to someone who provides encouragement. If it’s negative, it can be read entirely differently, as an insult. A rain shower is something that is ephemeral, going as quickly as it’s come, and in this verse, the shower is running over dry and wilted things, things are dead and useless.

I’m leaning towards the latter explanation, because there is no mention that “someone dry” ever came back to life. I read it as a jab at a former lover who came in as a whirlwind into her life and proved to be good in the moment, but she eventually realised that his influence was fleeting and she no longer needed him in her life. She goes on, “’cause we all leave courage’s side / but I’ll always be courage’s child”, courage is something we all want and need but we are not always by courage’s side. Hardly. Being scared and having fear, in all facets of our life, is just the way it goes. But she has the confidence to say that even if she’s not 100% courageous in everything she does and she might not feel particularly courageous in this exact moment, she will find courage again.

What I find very telling about the pre-chorus is that the female protagonist is a very strong person. No matter what feelings she has about being hurt by the other person, she isn’t attacking that person. She isn’t saying goodbye and good riddance. She’s trying to keep the relationship together: “we’re four rings on a chain / so don’t make them rust”. Maybe this song is about maintaining a platonic friendship after a romantic one? Yet there is no sense of desperation or urgency either. She’s on an even keel. She has her emotions under control. She’s even offering to assist. If this really was a romance gone sour, she has the strength to offer herself up as the guiding light in the other’s life: “I’ll be your maps, I’ll be your eyes / I’ll give the ending a nudge”. As much pain as she must have felt at one point, she’s not being vindictive. She’s being an adult. She wants a happy ending. For both of them.

The bridge seems to indicate that she’s aware of the gravity of the situation. “Alive now in the middle not looking from outside / Wishing that it was a screen fight / Settled with all of a hero’s flair”: wouldn’t it be easier if all the most horrible personal conflicts we suffered could neatly be resolved in less than 2 hours like they do in the movies? But the last line of the bridge – “Put aside, find a new character” – tells me she’s ready to move on.

You’re probably confused why I haven’t even discussed the song title yet. I think it’s actually the least important thing about the song, but it’s a testament to the Joy Formidable’s writing talent that even the title and those words have two meanings. Think about it for a moment. The most obvious explanation of the title is that of a woman looking at a friend or lover and being upset in herself that what they once had is no longer there. I think this is what most people see and what they’re probably getting upset over, because we’ve all been hurt by someone else and it hurts like hell when you encounter that person again and you feel all the emotions come bubbling to the surface again. However, squint at the words and consider them again. They just might not be words of pain. It might be a way for the protagonist to say to the other person, “you know what? I don’t like the person I was when I was with you. I need to leave you behind so I can be strong.” How amazing that ‘I Don’t Want to See You Like This’ can read to have a similar message to Keane’s ‘Can’t Stop Now’.

Lastly, the song, in its promo form from autumn 2010.

Song Analysis #23: Cashier No. 9 – Goldstar

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Title: ‘Goldstar’
Where to find it: ‘To the Death of Fun’ (2011, Bella Union)
Performed by: Cashier No. 9
Words by: Danny Todd

I can’t believe it’s December already! But you better believe that at TGTF we’re already preparing for SXSW 2014, which will be my third. I was thinking about the bands I saw the first time around, and one of those were Belfast’s Cashier No. 9. I’d seen them previously on 24 November 2011, 2 days before my birthday, at London XOYO. It also happened to be the same night as Thanksgiving back home, so one of my friends took me for a Subway round the corner from XOYO and I had a turkey salad. ::rimshot::

Funnily enough, when I saw the band in Austin at the Northern Irish night at the Tap Room at Six, Danny Todd recognised me from the London show and I caught up with the band for a post-gig chat, which was nice, because it was my first SXSW and per mostly usual, I was covering the festival alone and it was nice to be around people who I knew. Their debut album on Simon Raymonde’s Bella Union, ‘To the Death of Fun’, was released in 2011 and while there have been some tinklings on Twitter that there might be a new Cashier No. 9 album in 2014, I’m not holding my breath until I have something in my little hands.

I’m famously against overuse of reverb and psychedelia, so you must know that I like Cashier No. 9 to put up with that sound. One reason is ‘Goldstar’, one of the singles from their debut album. It’s funny that until I actually went to go find the lyrics, I interpreted this as an encouraging “psyching you up” kind of song, especially with the line “I look better with my high heels on”, which, admittedly, sounded strange being sung by a man. It’s one of the easier lines to hear through all that reverb. But if you sit down and look at the words, it’s actually about the trials and tribulations of being in a band and then coming to the realisation that he has to come clean about being in love. It’s an entirely unconventional love song and wonderful.

First, the words:

Verse 1
Down on the streets they’re talking
Lock the gates I turn my back on
Don’t know but I seem to pass the time

And my track record is so misleading
I wage my war intent on succeeding
No friend would pay no bills of mine

Chorus
So I worked hard and yeah, got my dough
I take the beatings everywhere I go
Down on the streets they’re talking
I feel their eyeballs gawking
I look better with my high heels on
Tonight I will let everyone know
I’ll walk you through my life row by row

Verse 2
Set the scene, turn up the drama
The little people we’re leaving to karma
Fallen sons came as no surprise and yeah

Some of you the thieves are feeding
I took more people on, like that’s what I needed
The girls, they grew, they multiplied

Chorus (extended)
So I worked hard and yeah, I got my dough
I take the beatings everywhere I go
Down on the streets they’re talking
I feel their eyeballs gawking
I look better with my high heels on

Tonight I will let everyone know
I’ll walk you through my life row by row
Tonight I will let everyone know
I’ll walk you through my life row by row

Verse 3
Can’t lie, if you keep on guessin’ me
Trouble is, I’m not like I used to be
Don’t make me spill my beans tonight

You know I try hard to keep this guard up
Can’t deny that the tension’s been building up
No reason to make my decision, I want you, oh

Outro
I said I want you, oh
I said I want you, oh
I said I want you, oh
I said I want you…

Now, the analysis:

As I said in the introduction, for the longest time I interpreted this as a song of encouragement. The more I thought about “I look better with my high heels on”, the more I became convinced he meant mens’ high heels, i.e., the Cuban heels favoured by the Beatles and later, the Libertines. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with verse 1.

Down on the streets they’re talking (1)
Lock the gates I turn my back on (2)
Don’t know, but I seem to pass the time (3)

And my track record is so misleading (1)
I wage my war, intent on succeeding (2)
No friend would pay no bills of mine (3)

To be honest, I appreciate Todd’s building structure of all three of the verses. The first two lines of either half of the verse discuss the difficulties of life. “Down on the streets they’re talking / Lock the gates I turn my back on”: he’s being talked about and not in a nice way, it’s happening behind his back. As soon as he turns his back, the gates are locked, meaning he can’t get in. I’m wondering if in this context he means he’s been locked out of the industry, and therefore out of fame and success, and that’s why he can’t reach them. Then in the third line, “Don’t know but I seem to pass the time”: he’s accepting of it but life goes on, right? Then in the second half, “And my track record is so misleading / I wage my war, intent on succeeding”: you can’t keep this man down. He’s determined. Even if “No friend would pay no bills of mine”, no-one’s behind him, no-one would put their money on him because they don’t look at him as a good prospect. See where I’m getting this underdog, Rocky-esque vibe?

This feeling continues through the chorus. “So I worked hard and yeah, got my dough / I take the beatings everywhere I go”: he put in the time and made my money the honest way, but he’s still getting beaten down by life. “Down on the streets they’re talking”: another reference to him being talked about behind his back. “I feel their eyeballs gawking / I look better with my high heels on”: he’s being stared at like a curiosity, but he’s walking around town, proud as a peacock. What could be more confidence boosting? Being a woman, I’ve always wondered what it must be like for a man to walk into a room, seeing a woman that he’s attracted to. Society has dictated that a man has to exude the confidence to go after the woman who has caught his eye, or he’s lost his chance. “Tonight I will let everyone know / I’ll walk you through my life row by row”: this is his moment to shine, to tell the woman he likes he’s in love with her, and he’s going to start by making his intentions clear and walk her (the “you”) through his “life row by row”, his innermost feelings.

There isn’t a lot of information on Todd’s previous musical lives, but the words seem to indicate his disillusionment with the business: “Set the scene, turn up the drama / The little people we’re leaving to karma”, the people that put drama in his life and screwed with him, he’s done with that and leaving karma to deal with them, they’re not worth his time or energy. Then, “Some of you, the thieves are feeding / I took more people on, like that’s what I needed”: this reads like the sad story of why Elvis kept working, because the Elvis franchise employed so many people and they counted on him for their livelihoods. He couldn’t quit. Similarly, he started picking up people he thought were friends but in reality, they were hangers-on who, leech-like, stole from him and they weren’t his friends at all. The third line in both halves indicate the worst fallout from sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll: “Fallen sons came as no surprise”, people around him were lost to drink and drugs, and “The girls, they grew, they multiplied”, the number of groupies exponentially grew. It’s important to note that neither line is not sung fondly. How interesting…

Set the scene, turn up the drama (1)
The little people we’re leaving to karma (2)
Fallen sons came as no surprise and yeah (3)

Some of you, the thieves are feeding (1)
I took more people on, like that’s what I needed (2)
The girls, they grew, they multiplied (3)

Then in verse 3, he’s come round. Like for most men, it’s making him very uncomfortable to discuss how to feels about this woman. He’s trying to be above board, “Can’t lie, if you keep on guessin’ me” and “You know I try hard to keep this guard up”, but he’s very anxious about the image of himself he’s projecting, “Trouble is, I’m not like I used to be” and “Can’t deny that the tension’s been building up”. He’s finding reasons why he shouldn’t come out and say it in “Don’t make me spill my beans tonight”. But the linchpin of the song is here: “No reason to make my decision, I want you”. He’s adamant there is no reason he has to make this decision on this night, but he actually comes right out and says, “I want you”.

Can’t lie, if you keep on guessin’ me (1)
Trouble is, I’m not like I used to be (2)
Don’t make me spill my beans tonight (3)

You know I try hard to keep this guard up (1)
Can’t deny that the tension’s been building up (2)
No reason to make my decision, I want you, oh (3)

And the song ends with this feeling, so there is no question. Now I’m wondering if he wrote this song for his wife. If I were her, I’d have appreciated the honesty: the music business can be a pretty grisly place for relationships and for someone to be willing to come out and point out his misgivings with his chosen profession and still come to the conclusion he has to be the bigger person to show him how he really feels about her…just wow. Bring on the next Cashier No. 9 album, please!

Lastly, the song, the song’s promo video, with a suitably gold light glow but strangely (or not?), a male interpretative dancer’s moves are cut in between shots of the band performing.