It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: Razorlight
When I started writing about some of the best albums I’ve heard from my lifetime, I wanted people to remember them again and listen or want to hear them for the first time. Since this one will be of the last from this era of the series, I was admittedly a little more self indulgent with this choice. That’s not to say it isn’t a great album, however Razorlight were more of a UK phenomenon. One college evening I was watching a show called London Live on YouTube when their self-titled second studio album from 2006 found me.
The album produced five singles in the UK, and never got much traction here in the states. UK number one, “America” struck me distinctly as I was deep in development as an Anglophile, for several reasons. It begins with a gentle clean guitar intro as Johnny Borrell begins to lament on the constant zeitgeist of the United States in his European consciousness, “There’s nothing on the TV, nothing on the radio that means that much to me. There’s nothing on the TV, nothing on the radio that I can believe in. All my life. Watching America.”
I could join Johnny and do another paragraph lamenting along with him about the America of the 2000s, but it’s the song that comes right after it that made me buy the album. “Before I Fall to Pieces” is a nearly perfect pop rock song from the era featuring an infectious guitar rhythm, and one of my favorite opening verses in song, “Oh, one more drink and then I’ll go, but there’s one more thing I’ve got to know. Does he take you places that I don’t? And what happened to the story that we wrote?” I know this is a song about a guy losing a girl and being pretty broken up about it, but the happy sounding major chords that form the song will only let you smile. It was love for a while.
I guess I was lucky that there were all these great guitar focused indie rock records around exactly when that’s what I was looking for. As I was learning guitar, there was a flurry of great stuff to play. Album opener, “In the Morning” is a flashbulb back in time for me to that point of college explorations, inspirations and possibilities. I spent a lot of nights going around the world musically without ever leaving my room. “Remember when you were young, you’d lose yourself? In the morning you know we won’t remember a thing. In the morning you know it’s gonna be alright.”
Razorlight received mixed reviews upon release, and it isn’t a best seller, but an honest feeling set to guitar. It suggests, “Who Needs Love” before four tracks later admitting, “I Can’t Stop This Feeling I’ve Got.” There is a transparency level that makes it feel real, a raw feeling from the songs that delve into of love and loss, and jangly guitars to join the party. Give these ten songs a chance, it clocks in at little more than a half hour and when, “Before I Fall to Pieces” comes on, it will hit you right in the feels.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: Silent Alarm
I took a chance on Bloc Party after hearing only, “Helicopter” on the soundtrack to one of the FIFA soccer games, the song was strong. I read a couple of positive reviews of the album and on to the music club website I was part of. I may seem like a mark for having that much faith, buying an album from a song that was clearly marketed to me through my favorite sport. Maybe I’m a mark because the Anglophile in me couldn’t resist the delightful accent of lead singer Kele Okereke’s voice. Sometimes albums fall out of the sky and you just happen to be there to catch the vibrations. Mark my words, in 2005 and now, this is a great album.
I fell in love with this album my last year of high school, and the singles from it dotted just about every playlist I made as a college freshman. I didn’t know how formational it was to me until I started falling asleep to it, all that guitar. The aforementioned single “Helicopter” would also go on to appear on one of the Guitar Hero games, it was truly a time to be alive. Its frantic, high energy guitar focused greatness could not be contained, “Stop being, so American, there’s a time and there’s a place.” Clocking in at over 170 beats per minute, it’s like these guitars are racing to a finish line.
“Turning away from the light, becoming adult, turning into myself, I wanted to bite not to destroy, to feel her underneath, turning into the light.” “Banquet” hooks me right away every time with the mix starting out with one guitar in each ear, playing back and forth at each other. A little bit about growing up, a little bit too much guitar, and it always feels a little short, leaving you waiting for the next time it comes on your playlist. They struck a nerve with the way this one feels, and then accentuated it with an angry guitar outro to bring the chaos to a natural conclusion.
There’s an angelic quality to the guitar arpeggio and atmosphere created on the album track, “So Here We Are.” While it is light on lyrics, it creates this space where you can just lay back and enjoy it until it crescendos with the repeated, “I can see again.” As if to pull a 180 on that thought, on, “The Pioneers” we get a nervous and tense lyrical onslaught followed by a despondent chorus, “We promised the world we’d tame it, what were we hoping for?”
If you’ve been keeping up with this weekly series, you know the bias toward guitar focused albums is not something I’ve hidden. This is one that may have slipped through the cracks despite nearly universal critical acclaim and selling over a million copies. The record takes you on a six string journey for nearly an hour, and it’s a ride you will want to take again. I hope you continue turning into the light, whatever that means for you.
It’s a Wonderful Life of Albums: Oracular Spectacular
Everyone should have a psychedelic rock album from their youth, and in 2007 we got ours. Oracular Spectacular was the studio album debut for soon to be indie giants MGMT, and nothing sounds more like my sophomore year of college than this record. Formed by Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden at Wesleyan University in 2002 as freshman, MGMT would explode into the mainstream with a blend of psychedelia, electronica and indie rock that was as catchy as it was brilliant.
The trip starts with the single, “Time to Pretend” a wonderful synthesizer filled ode to dying young and all the fun you can have. There is a point in everyone’s partying youth that this ethos seems plausible, if only momentarily. The hook during the chorus is instantly recognizable, and the lyrics were canon among college students at the time. As they agree to live fast and die young, the future seems absurd, “Yeah it’s overwhelming, but what else can we do? Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?”
Further on the journey we run into a song about a special lady with the magic touch in, “Electric Feel.” The grooving bass drives a stomping beat that makes you want to move, as slowly as you like of course. This one will hook you with its’ ear worm quality and its hard not to bounce with the chorus, “I said, ‘Ooh girl, shock me like an electric eel, babygirl, turn me on with your electric feel.’” Infectious doesn’t even begin to describe this song at a house party, and this album should come with glow sticks.
The highest charting single on the album, “Kids” which peaked at number nine on the billboard alternative list is one of the best songs of my college years. The synth-heavy track oozes with pop sensibility, the melodic lead synth line that permeates is contagious and it’s really fantastic on large speakers. I have never understood what this song was about, and I have never cared, it’s pop perfection. I have to mention the acoustic cover of the song by The Kooks in 2008 is also worth looking up, in the realm of indie-sublime.
This record came out during the perfect time for me to hear it, and I am nostalgic about it. It’s not rosy retrospection however and I am not overapraising it. It appears on Rolling Stone’s, “Top 500 Albums of All Time” 2012 list at #494, as well as on every roommate’s iPod from the late oughts. It’s a very easy listen with some drinks and friends or your favorite psychedelic sweetener, and it’s catchy choruses just may expand your mind as well.
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