Tag: mask off

Entry #5 Future: Mask Off

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Phew, that last entry was a bit of a mess, wasn’t it? Barely mentioned the (excellent) song and just flew off into TMI land. It won’t be the last time that happens, I’ll often have something to get off my chest that I feel can’t wait until December, but I always feel that there has to be some overarching ‘point’ to each entry and this series is literally the only outlet I have for that. At least until I get around to starting ‘Sing of the Thrill’ [TITLE TO BE CONFIRMED], my long promised/threatened King of the Hill episode by episode retrospective that’s currently the second most eagerly anticipated literary operation behind George RRRRRR Martin’s ‘No, No, No, This is What Was Supposed to Happen!’. To make up for Entry #4, this time around I’m actually just going to talk about one of the greatest songs ever for a thousand words or so, all tangents and flights of fancy will be kept to an absolute minimum, and if anything I’ll be undersharing, yeah? We cool? We cool.

This post contains a lot of information cribbed from Simon Reynolds’s fantastic Pitchfork article from last year. I might call him a ‘contributor’, but the fact is that he’s very likely to sue me for royalties once the money starts rolling in.

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8 Kids See Ghosts: Kids See Ghosts

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

Guys, it’s absolutely fine to have a full album revolve around one song. Already on this list, we’ve had fantastic albums by Laurie Anderson and Kronos Collective (which basically centres around the strings kicking in on Nothing Left But Their Names) and Son Lux (so obviously centred around ensuring All Directions‘ impact is maximised) carefully and artfully centre their records around ensuring one particular genius song hits the listener just there.

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This isn’t a slight on the albums. Just because a record centres its impact around one particular song it doesn’t mean the rest of the record isn’t utter genius. It doesn’t even have to necessarily be the best song on the record. ‘OK Computer’ is obviously designed to build up the euphoria when that guitar solo hits in Lucky, much like Best Record Of 2009™ ‘Tarot Sport‘ is constructed so that you lose your shit when Olympians kicks in almost exactly at the record’s middle, while Hotel California is obviously centred around Hotel California because it’s the first track and only song off the album that I or anyone else actually knows*, and ‘Bad Intentions’ by Dappy just wouldn’t be one of the most reverred albums of the 21st century were it not for the musical break in Yin Yang where Dappy recites the stages in the five step Razgar test and wryly questions what Roland Barthes would have said such constrictions on Appendix FM in the immigration law.

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