Category Archives: Songs from 2001

Album: Saturdays, 2001

Justification: My ex-wife never knew this, but this was her song.

It was what was going through my head when I proposed to her, it was the song I’d hum under my breath when we went to sleep, and I slipped a reference to “all the suns and shooting stars could never shine as bright as us” into my beautifully sincere, incredibly hilarious and largely extemporised wedding speech a couple of years later. And given that her default expression could be described as “pensive” or “thoughtful” (or, towards the end, “broadly indifferent”), it did seem like a supernova was born each time she smiled – assuming that you, like myself and evidently songwriter David Challinor, had a tendency to describe things in terms of stellar metaphors.

And that’s understandable. We all think our emotions are of universe-spanning importance, and it makes perfect sense to feel that there is a great cosmic unity from the gravitational dance of vast swirling galaxies through to the similarly-intricate love between two people in perfect synch. We all long for significance, and I know for my part there’s no feeling more precious than being at the centre of someone’s universe.

And every line works: she and I had our own split and reconciliation in the year before I heard this song by the Sydney-based band, giving weight to the brilliant “got some itchy feeling, so we should start from scratch again”. Throw in the big shoegazey chords, the Beach Boys style falsetto and that out-of-nowhere coda, and this song becomes a perfect musical distillation of what made our relationship so right and perfect.

Unfortunately, as it happens, I was woefully mistaken. Our marriage was to crumble a few  years down the track, and I was to subsequently have  relationships with other extraordinary women and discover that there were songs that perfectly captured my feelings about them as well; and those songs turned out to have similarly little impact on whether we dissolved into a soft-focus future together, stellar metaphors or not.

And to an extent, when I hear this I remember a much younger version of myself, very much in love and with some very, very hard lessons to come. But mainly it reminds me of the supernovae born each time she smiled.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2011: Tori Amos was briefly owning the mainstream with ‘Cornflake Girl’.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

507. Iggy & the Stooges: Search & Destroy (13 Aug)

508. The Jazz Butcher: She’s on Drugs (15 Aug)

509. Boards of Canada: ROYGBIV (22 Aug)

510. Juliana Hatfield: Everybody Loves Me But You (27 Aug)

511. Kate Bush: Cloudbusting (4 Sep)

Album: Long Distance, 2001

Justification: Every so often there’ll be a song that I absolutely obsessively adore that I completely fail to include in Songs You Should Rediscover for a bafflingly long time, but this is easily the one I love most and have forgotten longest.

I’ve had several Fountains of Wayne songs in here and every time I included them I was reminded of Adam Schlesinger’s other band, not to mention that this is one of the most consistently played songs on my various things that play songs for over a decade now – and yet it’s the 473rd song I’ve decided to do a thing about, which confuses and disappoints me. In my defence, I’m not all that bright sometimes.

Dominique Durand = not difficult to look at.

So: Ivy haven’t done anything in a number of years, but technically they still exist and consist of the aforementioned Adam Schlesinger, singer/bassist with FoW, guitarist Andy Chase and singer Dominique Durand. The band appears to have started primarily as a way for Chase to pursue a stunning French chick (and it worked: Chase and Durand are married), but the band are pretty consistently superb, even creating one of the least useless covers album of all time with the following year’s Guestroom.

That said, I would struggle to tell you the name of a single other Ivy song because this is head and shoulders above everything else they ever did, as well as most other things made by humans. That brass! That childrens-rhyme-like melody! That little skipping drum fill going into the second chorus! That completely unapologetic lyric telling it like it is without the slightest bit of sugar-coating, culminating with one the most depressing conclusions in popular music (“Nothing’s ever going to make you happy / You don’t mind, you’re getting used to it that way”)! Amazing, every second of it.

Great video too, which I’d never seen before. What a wonderfully simple idea. And, wisely, it involves lots of close ups of Durand. Why this wasn’t a worldwide number one still baffles me.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2010 or 2011: Nothing. Jesus. Pathetic. Alright, let’s have a look at the surprisingly amazing 2001 archive.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

468. 10,000 Maniacs: Candy Everybody Wants (7 May)

469. Starky: Hey Bang Bang (14 May)

470. Hefner: When the Angels Play their Drum Machines (16 May)

471. Sparklehorse: Happy Man (17 May)

472. Timbuk 3: The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades (21 May)

Album: Dead Media, 2001

Justification: Normally I refuse to include songs that don’t have a video, but rules are made to be broken. Or at least I can’t think of any other song right now, so this will have to do.

I prefer the version on this EP, not least because it has a hot space lady with a big gun: that's basically every boy's fantasy, right?

I wonder how many people I don’t know read this blog? I’m guessing it’s mainly people who are familiar with me one way or another – friend, friend-of-friend, smartarse on Twitter etc – so the readership is probably currently people who know my relationship has ended, had they not been able to surmise from the last few songs on this list (especially, oooh, this rather-giving-the-game-away one). And this song so beautifully (to my mind, at least) sums up the feeling of two people with the best of intentions trying so very, very hard to resuscitate something that should have been left to quietly die.

It appeared on Hefner’s final album Dead Media but I don’t remember loving it nearly as much as the version on the following year’s The Hefner Brain EP, upon which it got a subtle remix. It’s the flipside to the Postal Service’s ‘Such Great Heights’, which used a rush of chilly electronics to evoke distance and longing while this has warm analogue squelches and an exhausted tempo that suggests feet being placed one in front of the other by sheer force of will, as though the sequencer itself really can’t be arsed. The EP version isn’t dramatically different, mind: the biggest change is an electronic orgasm in the middle of the song which builds up with slow-burbling keys, crests, and then blinks and sighs back into the chorus.

Much as I adore this, it’s not my favourite song by the band – that honour goes to the jubilant ‘The Day That Thatcher Dies’, which is a) a sentiment that I can wholeheartedly share, and b) contains the awesome line “she wrapped an ankle chain ’round my left-wing heart”. In a similar sentiment, if someone could write ‘The Day That John Howard Succumbs to Pancreatic Cancer (Party Zone)’, I’d be very grateful.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2011: Speaking of electronics, it’s Alphaville and ‘Big In Japan’.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

465. Weezer: Undone – The Sweater Song (30 Apr)

466. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: Heart in your Heartbreak (1 May)

 467. Paul Simon: The Boy in the Bubble (2 May)

468. 10,000 Maniacs: Candy Everybody Wants (7 May)

469. Starky: Hey Bang Bang (14 May)

Album: single, 2001; Neveroddoreven, 2003

Justification: You know what they say: if you can remember the early 00s, it’s because it was relatively recent and you’re not suffering from some sort of degenerative neurological impairment. But what people don’t often remember about those heady times was how chilled they were. Much of the 90s had been spent perfecting the chillout mix, and so by the time two Sheffield producers got it into their head to remix the Gunter Kallmann Choir’s version of The Wallace Collection’s ‘Daydream’, adding layers of spookiness into a sandwich of kitch, the entire planet was comprehensively out-chilled. ‘Daydream in Blue’ immediately became a staple of any compilation with the word “chill” in the title, which is why you’re confused by hearing it without it being preceded by something by Groove Armada and followed by Kinobe’s ‘Slip Into Something More Comfortable’.

ARGH!

I was very fond of I Monster because they added certain tension and terror to what was, on the face of it, a lot of loops from kitchy sixties easy listening records. ‘Who is She?’ is a particularly good example, if you don’t find the vocoder breakdowns of this song to be quite unexpected enough.

They’re still active, although they’ve only put out three albums since 1997 (and their last one was in 2009). They did, however, do a pretty bang up job producing last year’s actually-pretty-good Human League album Credo, though.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2010 and 2011: Honestly, what the fuck was I doing? No April 3 listings at all – was I going through a bit of a crisis period both years? Who knows, but let’s just dick about in the 2001 archive then. It’s a bit of a small one, so you can get through it quickly.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

447. New York Dolls: Personality Crisis (22 Mar)

448. The Cult: She Sells Sanctuary (26 Mar)

449. Divinyls: Boys in Town (28 Mar)

450: Pulp: Do You Remember the First Time? (30 Mar)

451: The Trash Can Sinatras: Obscurity Knocks (2 April)

Album: White Blood Cells, 2001

Justification: I didn’t warm to the White Stripes at first and I still blame them for making too many bands go “Oh, so we don’t need a bass” (EVERY band needs a bass – or, as Ned’s Atomic Dustbin demonstrated, two). Still, this is and was a hell of a song, and not even a terrible, terrible cover by Joss Stone could ruin it.

In 2002 the Career Girls, the band in which I was, played Big Day Out and were on the same stage as the White Stripes. Meg was wandering around in the backstage open-air yard area in the tiniest hotpants you can imagine.

It’s a fond memory, that one.

That was also the year that some fucker stole Jeremy’s cymbals, but let’s just think about Meg’s pants some more.

It’s another Michel Gondry effort, and I gotta say: I’d pretty much dismissed the song until I saw the video, which I still think is one of the best clips ever made.

THIS TIME IN 2010: Echo & the Bunnymen were getting expansive with ‘The Killing Moon’.

Album: Oh, Inverted World, 2001

Justification: This is a weird one because my opinion of the Shins has depreciated significantly over the years yet, gun to my head, I’d still call myself a fan. It’d be easier to justify having fondness for the Portland-via-Albuquerque troupe if they’d made a video for ‘Mine’s Not A High Horse’ or ‘Caring is Creepy’, of course, but one thing that James Mercer and Co. have been consistently good at is picking the wrong songs as singles, second only to making terrible videos for them.

This song was ruined for most right-thinking people when it was used to soundtrack the most painfully quirky-earnest scene of the earnest quirkfest Garden State, where Natalie Portman’s insufferable character tells Zach Braff’s insufferable character that it will change his life. I assume that she meant it would be life-changing in the sense that any sane viewer would pledge to burn their Shins albums and get straight jobs in offices as soon as possible, though I’m not prepared to watch it again with director commentary in order to be sure.

Anyway: the Shins were mightily important in my life for a time. In fact, their three albums neatly follow the trajectory of my relationship with my ex-wife. In 2001 we both fell in love with Oh, Inverted World!, a cool and independent album that perfectly soundtracked our cool and independent life, living in a sweet terrace in the fashionably unhip west end of Adelaide’s CBD. In 2003 we married and the band released Chute’s Too Narrow, an upbeat and celebratory album that seemed to indicate a future of endless possibility (and as it happens, when the band were touring this album we had a lock-in with them at Fowlers Live, getting fucked up on spirits and chatting away like old friends – Lara and Mercer had a long conversation about the Silent Hill games, as I recall, while keyboardist Marty Crandall was funny as hell and drummer Jesse Sandoval clocked the Galaga machine on a single coin).

By the time 2006′s Wincing the Night Away turned up, however, things were heading inexorably downward but no-one was game to admit it. Moments of levity like ‘Australia’ failed to shore up the clearly diminishing returns, while Lara and I blithely pretended that we were just adjusting to new circumstances and weren’t in fact whistling over the death rattle of the relationship that had taken up our entire adult lives. I remember the gig we saw on that album’s tour being a strangely bloodless affair, which matched the passionless married couple watching them from the Enmore Theatre’s balcony. Although they did do a decent cover of Pink Floyd‘s ‘Breathe’, as I recall.

Then Marty allegedly beat up his then-girlfriend, model Elyse Sewell. Mercer subsequently sacked him and Sandoval to make a new album which has yet to appear, and which I imagine I’ll vaguely hope is good but not be in any hurry to connect with.

I still play the Shins occasionally – or, more accurately, sometimes iTunes decides to surprise me – and as the song fails to move me like it once did it always makes me wonder whether I’m just poisoning something that was legitimately beautiful with harsh later knowledge, or whether it really was never as good as I declared it to be. Sometimes I think about the music too.

THIS TIME IN 2010: Bis were yet to outlive their welcome with ‘Starbright Boy’.

Album: Musicforthemmorningafter, 2001

Justification: Well, following in the footsteps of our Blondie-related celebration of punctuation…

Had this come out a decade earlier, Pete Yorn could have been the poster boy of sensitive grunge (and thereby invented emo). In the early 90s major labels had suddenly worked out how to make stars of the sort of artists that had previously been distinctly underground concerns – Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Flaming Lips – but by 2001 they were too busy ignoring the internet and wondering why their sales in the computer-savvy 14-30 demographic had suddenly vanished.

Still, in the eyes of the Biz, Yorn was the slamdunk future of American music. He was handsome, talented (both as a musician and a producer), had a certain indefinable world-weariness about him that seemed tailor-made for making the Ladieez swoon, and the full backing of Columbia records. These days he’s releasing Frank Black-produced discs on Vagrant, which is far, far more cool but a pretty serious comedown from Star In The Making.

In 2001 Sony Australia couldn’t give journalists enough copies of Musicforthemorningafter, and while most of the album inspired a bit of a shrug, I feel deeply in love with two songs: ‘Black’ (which is to this day one of my most played songs, according to iTunes and Lastfm) and this, one of the several singles from the disc. I think it’s the arrangement more than anything else: Yorn’s drumming over the top of an overprogrammed drum machine still makes me grin creepily. His subsequent records have been a bit unexciting (though I’ve not heard the last two, including the aforementioned Black-produced disc), which I should probably amend.

THIS TIME IN 2010: Blur were beginning to invent Britpop with ‘For Tomorrow’.

Album: It’s a Wonderful Life, 2001

Justification: Did Capitol have any idea what they were signing when they gave Mark Linkous money to make records? Yes, he’s one of the planet’s greatest ever songwriters; yes, any label should be able to base an entire roster around him – assuming that they were, say, Sub Pop or Matador or 4AD or Saddle Creek or any of a hundred other quality indie labels with a distinct aesthetic – but Capitol? Bet he had lots of quality conversations with labelmates like Garth Brooks and Less Than Jake.

Anyway: It’s a Wonderful Life was the third Sparklehorse album and is a freakin’ masterpiece. This single was one of the attempts by the label to get some sort of a hit, possibly because of the guest vocals from Polly Harvey (who also sings on the creepy, magnificent ‘King of Nails’). It failed, obviously, because this music is far too personal a statement to reverberate with a wide, universal audience. It’s also, like pretty much everything else he wrote, amazing. And not as great as his hands down masterpiece ‘Happy Man’, the “Memphis Version” of which was a) one of my ex-wife’s least favourite songs, and b) about the only thing I could listen to when my marriage ended.

Linkous never made a bad record, but it wasn’t enough: he committed suicide last year. Dammit.

Album: Five Star Laundry, 2001

Justification: I loathed Motor Ace during their lifetime – loathed their Triple J ubiquitousness, loathed how successful they were compared with what I considered to be more interesting bands like the Fauves, and loathed how every time I turned on the TV ‘Chairman of the Board’ or ‘Death Defy’ or ‘Criminal Past’ seemed to be playing in the background of some insipid twentysomething Australian drama. And yet every time this track was played in the dB Magazine office – which happened often since my colleague Kate was a mad fan at the time – I fell deeper in love despite myself. It’s those harmonies in the chorus that do it – that, and the neat hook of “We’re having fun/not having fun”.

Now they the band are little more than a footnote to early 00s Australian rock, I feel much better inclined toward them. Which makes me a bit of a goddamn snob, really.