Tag Archives: 2014

Song Analysis #46: Glass Animals – Hazey

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Title: ‘Hazey’
Where to find it: ‘Zaba’ (2014, Wolftone / Harvest Records)
Performed by: Glass Animals
Words by: Dave Bayley

I first met 1/2 of Glass Animals last spring, interviewing singer/songwriter Dave Bayley and drummer Joe Seaward on the Saturday of Liverpool Sound City 2014. I won’t bore you with all the details leading up to the afternoon, but as I often say about the music business, things don’t turn out exactly how you expect them to.

Until one of my writers at TGTF pointed out that Dave had been in medical school before leaving for music, I’d never have known he and I had similar collegiate backgrounds. As you can probably imagine, it’s not at all common in this business to have majored in any sort of science before heading into it. The most common response when I tell musicians or music people that I have a degree in biology: a look of utter confusion, and possibly a chuckle of the ridiculousness of it all. It just doesn’t happen, does it? Come to think of it, at last count, I only know of one musician who went the other way when it comes to the medical profession, quitting music to go back to school for a medical degree to becoming a practising physician. Hello Doug Fink, wherever you are!

Anyway, so Dave (and the guys) and I have been friends ever since, oddly linked by this highly unusual connection. I’ve had conversations with other songwriter friends and nobody really likes to talk about their own music, with Matt Cocksedge of Delphic saying to me in an interview in Boston in 2010, “magicians should never reveal their secrets, should they?” In particular, I’ve never asked Dave what any of the Glass Animals songs mean, especially after this interview with The Line of Best Fit in which he says “I never go into what songs actually mean, in serious detail, to me, because it’s quite a personal thing.” I’ve had my suspicions – of course I did, running a site like Music in Notes! – but I’ve never laid any of them out. Until now. Two tracks on the debut album – ‘Pools’ and ‘Hazey’ – seem pretty obvious to me, so I’ll be giving my thoughts on the second one today.

In what can only be described as a revealing turn of events, Dave spells out generally what their last single ‘Hazey’, from their Wolftone debut album ‘Zaba’, means in the press sheet for the release. I imagine someone in their inner circle suggested he provide the meaning of the song in an attempt to help explain the seemingly unrelated music video. It stars The Solitary Crew, a London-based dance collective who use a dance practise called bone breaking to make their street dancing style “more fluid.” Very rarely does an artist come out and explain what his/her song means, so take this golden opportunity and read on:

“Every day these dancers put themselves through torturous stretches and contortion exercises using ropes and towels to make themselves more flexible and their movements more fluid. They isolate themselves and focus on slowly building their craft, with a long term goal of being able to add another dance-move to their catalogue, and a longer term goal of stitching those moves together into something cool and beautiful. It all requires a huge amount of dedication and discipline.

To me, ‘Hazey’ is about a parental character who has abandoned those values and eventually becomes wracked by regret. That character speaks in the choruses in the falsetto voice. The verses are spoken by that character’s child in full voice. This boy has matured quickly to pick up the pieces dropped by his parent. It was his attitude that I thought was summed up by the bone breakers.”

While these words helped me refine my original thoughts on what the song was about, to be honest, they also brought up even more questions. It’s kind of like ‘Hazey’ is in this weird no man’s land in my mind where half of it agrees better with my interpretation, with the other half fitting better with his. Further, no-one’s paying me to come up with music videos but given the emotional content of the song and the way it’s affected me, I would have done something less abstract for the promo for a more powerful effect. I suppose though that the abstractness of the video agrees with the evasiveness interviewer Huw Oliver detected in his TLOBF interview. Since I have the advantage of having Dave’s explanation of the song in the context of the video, I’ll refer back to his words in my analysis.

I’d also like to note that ‘Hazey’ was the last track to be added on to ‘Zaba’ at the eleventh hour, with Dave’s pet rabbit supposedly contributing synth notes to it. I have to wonder if their second album is going to sound more like ‘Hazey’ and less like the other new (read: other than ‘Cocoa Hooves’) tracks on the album, as the more I listen to ‘Zaba’, the more it feels out of place. Except for the bird calls at the start and a monkey hooting in the second verse, ‘Hazey’ is noticeably devoid of animal noises that are more liberally peppered throughout. It also bears some rhythmic resemblance to Dave’s uber cool remix of fellow Harvest Records labelmate and massive American star Banks’ ‘Drowning’. I think we’ve all thought about where Glass Animals might go next for that difficult second album and if I had to guess, I’d say in this direction.

First, the words:

Verse 1
your baby’s fallen
you know I’m talking now
you know I’m dancing
you know I’m racing round

no no you’re so juiced
you said you’d kick the booze
you know I’ll get bruised
you know I’m just a boy

Chorus
come back baby don’t you cry
don’t you drain those big blue eyes
I’ve been crawling
come back baby don’t you cry
just you say the reason why
I can calm you

Verse 2
you say I’m bawling
I say I’m begging while
you take my photo
I fake my breaking smile
I’m fuckin loco
I can’t get through to you
you turn your nose you
spark up and I can go

Chorus
come back baby don’t you cry
don’t you drain those big blue eyes
I’ve been crawling
come back baby don’t you cry
just you say the reason why
I can calm you

Now, the analysis:

As someone who trained for a time as a singer, I don’t really understand falsetto: why is it ever needed, and why would anyone want to subject their vocal chords to the abuse? (Let me explain: I have an alto singing range, so trying to sing in a register higher than is normal and what my vocal cords allow me to do normally is abhorrent.) I find it even weirder when men do it (talk about being really unnatural), but looking at the kind of popularity Prince and Wild Beasts enjoy, who am I to judge? However, as described in the quoted section above, the falsetto in ‘Hazey’ is used to indicate an older father / paternal figure, so there are two roles represented in the song.

I should probably first give you what I thought this song was about and how it plays like a video inside my head. The mentions of being “so juiced,” someone trying to “kick the booze,” followed by encouragement to “spark up” (marijuana use) later on in the song said to me this was a song about addiction. The explanation made more sense, I thought, given that during Bayley’s medical training he spent some time working with psychiatric patients, as well as the fact that their song ‘Black Mambo’ was originally titled ‘Crystal Meth’ (well, until their label had a cow about it), as it had been inspired by the Breaking Bad tv series.

For simplicity’s sake in my explanation, I’m going to assume the voice of the song is of a woman, as that’s what I assumed was the point of Bayley using the falsetto in the first place, to show different emotions in the same person. (You see where I started to get confused?) What also seemed obvious to me after repeated listenings – the beats on this track are massive – was that it was about this woman in a relationship with an addict and how frustrated and disappointed she was with her user boyfriend who has failed to kick the habit.

In the first half of verse 1, she’s explaining how the situation has caused her to metaphorically fall and crumble – “your baby’s fallen” is said to him – though she tries to keep going – “you know I’m dancing” and “you know I’m racing round” – trying to pick herself up every time and persevere despite the difficulties. She realises her vain attempt in trying to talk to him, “you know I’m talking now,” knowing she’s not being heard.

The second half of verse 1 gives more support to the addiction part of this relationship. “no no you’re so juiced” – she recognises he’s hopped up and high on something. “you said you’d kick the booze” shows her frustration: he promised her he’d get off the alcohol, but judging from his current state, he hasn’t changed. “you know I’ll get bruised” – she’s emphasising that him using hurts her. The line “you know I’m just a boy” confused me, as it didn’t fit in with the rest of my theory that it was all from the perspective of the addict’s partner; I assumed it was a one-off line the addict said to his girlfriend, like the scorpion’s weak response to the sad ending of The Scorpion and the Frog, a kind of “don’t blame me, this is just the way I am.”

If you take Bayley’s explanation that the non-falsetto parts are from the perspective of a child, the song becomes even more upsetting. The first half of verse 1 shows a kid, who through no fault of his own, has fallen down. I think this was meant to show the early years of childhood, when you’re first learning that transition from crawling to walking. Most children with responsible parents are picked up and guided. This kid has fallen and there seems to be no real sign that the parent ever helped him get back up on his feet. “you know I’m talking now” takes on literal meaning, as if the child has to tell his own parent, rather testily I might add, that he’s grown up because he can speak and with no help from him. “you know I’m dancing / you know I’m racing round” suggest the child is still young. As for the second half of verse 1, you worry the kid is being physically abused: “you know I’ll get bruised / you know I’m just a boy.” Physical abuse is not uncommon when parents are high or drunk, can’t tell what’s right and wrong, and act out while they’re under the influence.

Let’s go on to the chorus. If you take it as being sung by the addict’s girlfriend, it’s really sad. In the movie of this song that plays in my head, she’s cradling him in her arms and telling him not to leave, not to cry, that she’s going to make it all okay. I think that must be the hardest realisation for a partner of a user to face up to: she will have to be the bigger one, the stronger one, because it’s always darkest before dawn. She has to be the stronger one to get her addict boyfriend through all of the rough patches. If she doesn’t, she will lose him.

However, if you look at the chorus sung by the father, it’s being sung in one of those dim moments of realisation of what he’s done to his child. He sees the tears in his son’s big blue eyes and is remorseful. There is some desperation to “come back baby don’t you cry,” for he knows his own son shuns him for what he’s done, for his weakness as an addict. I am, however, bothered by the words “just you say the reason why / I can calm you,” because these lines work better if they’re being said from the addict’s girlfriend’s point of view rather than from the abusive, addict father. The father knows why the son is upset and crying. Maybe his paternal instinct has kicked in? Also, if you want to bring in the point from verse 1 about the child going from crawling to walking, perhaps “I’ve been crawling” is the father’s admittance that now he understands how it feels to be weak and he regrets not being there when his own son was young.

It’s in verse 2 that I could sort of see this father/son relationship. What do all parents do when their kids are young? Take photographs of them. Lots of them. Here is this kid, so upset about his father’s addiction problem, crying, and his father’s trying to take a photo of him? Oh geez. I suppose he’s trying for some normalcy. If you read verse 2 as being such by the addict’s girlfriend, maybe the addict is a photographer or has a photography hobby, and part of his attempt to keep their romantic relationship intact is to be normal and take photos of his lady love. (Again, I’m talking about that film I have up in my head…) Who is taking the photos doesn’t matter. What’s more important is that the subject – either the son or the girlfriend – is upset, crying his/her eyes out, trying to pretend all is fine: “I fake my breaking smile.” Except all is not fine. He/she can’t take it anymore – “I’m fucking loco / I can’t get through to you” – and he/she is waiting, sadly, for the addict to light up and get out of his/her face. He/she knows that when the addict is fully consumed by the object of addiction, whether it be drugs or alcohol, he/she can plot an escape.

I’ve ended the lyric analysis on the sad image of escape, because this is what I gathered from Bayley’s explanation that he wanted the bone breaking of these dancers to represent the “attitude” of the child, “This boy has matured quickly to pick up the pieces dropped by his parent.” Although what the dancers are doing to their bodies is a means to an end, what they’re doing is painful. What I already had in my head of what ‘Hazey’ meant before we were given the explanation was heartbreaking enough, when used in the context of a romantic relationship between a man and a woman being ripped apart because of addiction. Thinking about it from the perspective of an addict father and his son, with the addition of physical trauma and the child’s need to escape from him, makes the story all that more powerful. And to be able to put so much in so few words is pretty impressive too.

Lastly, the song in promo form, starring the aforementioned Solitary Crew. If you want to risk more confusion with interpreting the song with a sped up version of the song as they perform it live (this time at Glastonbury 2014), you can watch that live version here. While I enjoy seeing the band live and the live version of ‘Hazey’ is a fun one to witness in person, I still prefer the album version.

Song Analysis #42: SOHN – Artifice

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Title: ‘Artifice’
Where to find it: ‘Tremors’ (2014, 4AD)
Performed by: SOHN
Words by: Christopher Taylor

I just saw SOHN perform in Washington over the weekend, and I thought he was brilliant. Of course his megahit ‘Artifice’ was perfection.

Sometimes the simplest songs are best. As such, this analysis is going to be shorter than most.

First, the words:

Verse 1
Is it over?
Did it end while I was gone?
‘Cause my shoulders
They couldn’t hold that weight for long
And it all just feels the same

Chorus
Somebody better let me know my name
Before I give myself away
Somebody better show me how I feel
Cause I know I’m not at the wheel

Verse 2
Is it over?
Did the last thread come undone?
‘Cause I told ya
I didn’t wanna hurt no one
But the faces are all the same

Chorus (3x)
Somebody better let me know my name
Before I give myself away
Somebody better show me how I feel
Cause I know I’m not at the wheel

Somebody better let me know my name
Before I give myself away
Somebody better show me how I feel
Cause I know I’m not at the wheel

Somebody better let me know my name
Before I give myself away
Somebody better show me how I feel
Cause I know I’m not at the wheel

Now, the analysis:

As defined by Webster’s Dictionary, the word artifice means clever or artful skill, an ingenious device or expedient, an artful stratagem, or false or insincere behaviour. I’d go with the latter for the purpose of this song analysis: it’s a simple song, but it says so much in few words about a relationship whose “last thread [has] come undone.” In verse 1, the song indicates the protagonist was gone for some time, suggesting he has a job where travel is common and often. The relationship must have also been fraught with weighty issues (“’cause my shoulders / they couldn’t hold that weight for long“) and upon his return from being away, he’s questioning if the relationship is done.

Before he can ruminate too much though, the chorus starts in. “Somebody better let me know my name / before I give myself away” bears the suggestion that he’s not sure who he is. This is really interesting: was he away trying to find himself, so the “he” that he is upon his return someone he doesn’t recognise? Or is the woman he’s talking to painting a picture of him that he does not agree with? Certainly, the couple is at odds here. “Somebody better show me how I feel / ’cause I know I’m not at the wheel” is curious as well. Does he not know how he feels because he’s confused? He’s been socked in the stomach when he returns, only to find the relationship he’s put so much into is over? At the end of verse 1, he insists, “and it all just feels the same,” as if the revelation has come out of nowhere.

The important bit to the chorus is “’cause I know I’m not at the wheel“: he knows he’s not in control of the situation. And as much as we would like to exert 100% of the control in any given situation, it’s never 100% for us to decide on what happens. There are other players. In a relationship, it takes two to tango, and not being in control and the other person have some of that control, both things make him uncomfortable. But he’s admitted it! Admitting your feelings, much like alcoholics at an AA support group, is half the battle.

Verse 2 changes things up a bit. There is still confusion, and the questioning, “did the last thread come undone?” But the difference between verses 1 and 2 comes next: “’cause I told ya / I didn’t wanna hurt no one.” Hmm. Sounds like someone is admitting some kind of transgression, if he didn’t *want* to hurt anyone. Use your own imagination as to what this might be, as all sorts of things, major or minor, can cause couples to split. He’s actually putting at least part of the blame on himself.

Now the chorus makes much more sense! “Somebody better let me know my name / before I give myself away” may mean he’s confused to who he is on a general level, but in light of verse 2, it also could mean he’s confused about the person he has become after doing something to cause this rift in the relationship. The level of control examined in “somebody better show me how I feel / ’cause I know I’m not at the wheel” seems also to suggest there were external factors causing him to act, the most obvious to me being using drugs and alcohol and how they affect how you act in your daily life and make you feel out of control.

But there are plenty of things not chemically altering that can cause you to act differently. Living in Washington, we see on a regular basis how access to money, power, and yes men can corrupt even people with the best morals and the best intentions. What makes me optimistic for a happy ever after for this protagonist is he’s opened his mouth and voiced the feelings he has inside, instead of keeping mum and it all bottled up. Talking about things, even if they’re uncomfortable, maybe be as painful as ripping a Band-Aid off a wound, but in a lot of cases, the transparency leads to better understanding and a lot less hurt feelings. Note also that he asks, “is it over?”, not stating “it’s over.” There’s still a chance for reconciliation.

Lastly, the song, performed for a 4AD session. Suitably dark and dramatic like the live experience and much better than the actual promo video.

Song Analysis #41: Keira Knightley – A Step You Can’t Take Back

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Title: ‘A Step You Can’t Take Back’
Where to find it: ‘Begin Again’ film soundtrack (2014, ALXNDR)
Performed by: Keira Knightley
Words by: not sure, but the song is credited to John Carney, Gregg Alexander (known more famously as the frontman of the ’90s band The New Radicals), and Danielle Brisebois

I’d meant to see Begin Again and then it was out of the cinema before I knew it. A couple months later, I went out for brunch and a new friend said to avoid it, because there were too much swearing in it for a nice young lady like me. Okay.

On the way back from my last trip to the UK, I couldn’t sleep, so I flicked through the in-flight entertainment choices on the tv in the seat in front of me. Hmm. Begin Again. Shall I watch this? For reasons only certain people would understand, there are so many eerie coincidences in this film that it seems written for me and I was supposed to see this film while leaving the country, where I seem to have left behind someone forever. I won’t ruin the film for you (the interpretation probably will, so here’s your alert, SPOILERS!), but if you’ve seen the trailer, or even if you’ve contemplated for a moment the actual title of it, you know what the film is about. It’s just unusual it is set in the world that myself and many of my friends and acquaintances like to call home: the music business.

In the story the song was written under emotional duress, so it makes sense that it’s pretty touching when you’re presented with it the first time in the film. It undergoes an evolution through the film, as does Keira Knightley’s character Gretta. What seemed to be a quite hopeless situation for her character at the beginning ends up at the end with her getting closure that what happened was for the best, which is most often all we can ask about situations that are out of our control.

Sometimes we think things are meant to be. And when our hearts are hurting and broken, in the moment we can’t see what we come to accept later: maybe it wasn’t.

First, the words:

Verse 1
So you find yourself at this subway
With your world in a bag by your side
And all at once it seemed like a good way
You realize it’s the end of the line
For what it’s worth

Chorus
Here comes the train upon the track
And there goes the pain, it cuts to black
Are you ready for the last act?
To take a step you can’t take back?

Verse 2
Taken all the punches you could take
Took ’em all right on the chest
Now the camel’s back is breaking
Again, again
For what it’s worth

Chorus
Here comes the train upon the track
And there goes the pain, it cuts to black
Are you ready for the last act?
To take a step you can’t take back?

Bridge
Did she love you?
Did she take you down?
Was she on her knees when she kissed your crown?
Tell me what you found

Modified chorus
Here comes the rain, so hold your hat
And don’t pray to God, ’cause He won’t talk back
Are you ready for the last act?
To take a step you can’t take back, back, back?
You can’t take back, back, back.

Outro
So you find yourself at this subway
With your world in a bag by your side

Now, the analysis:

The song has two related but pretty different interpretations. “Train”, “pain” and “rain” are used as rhyming points – rather effectively, I might add – to link what is happening throughout the story. The train is also used successfully, like the image of a road in many other times in popular song, to indicate the great journey of life. But here is where the rail line splits: is it about suicide, or is it about the end of a relationship?

If you take it on the suicide / ending your life track, the more obvious path, the clues are pretty clear cut. The protagonist has reached the lowest point of her life and wants to end it. She’s holding all her worldly possessions “with your world in a bag by your side”, a pathetic state. If she were to jump in front of a moving New York City subway train, death would be instantaneous, “and there goes the pain, it cuts to black.” People who are feeling suicidal seem to have this fanciful yet incorrect notion that if they kill themselves, the pain is gone. Not really. They are gone from this plane but the pain then gets transferred to those who they left behind. You can argue the rain imagery is either tears or an sign of rebirth (similar to baptism and having the old sins being washed away in favour of the new).

However, if you analyse it in the context of the film, it’s not about suicide at all. It’s about the end of a relationship or even more strongly, about a woman challenging her man about him taking a step that will change their lives forever. In the film, Adam Levine’s character David was in a relationship with Keira Knightley’s Gretta that seemed fine on the surface when the two of them relocated to New York City while his career was just beginning. Until he basically sold his soul to the devil and had an affair with one of his producers. The “she” in the bridge can stand for either this woman he had an affair with or the tempting side of the music industry itself:

Did she love you?
Did she take you down?
Was she on her knees when she kissed your crown?
Tell me what you found

Both crimes committed by David are cardinal sins in Gretta’s book: they are singer/songwriters that have bonded over their commitment to being true to their art and the former goes against artistic integrity, and the latter of course results in her heart shattering when she learns she’s been cheated on. In a song. (I’ve had songs written for and written about me before, but I’ve yet to have learned about the transgressions of someone close to me written up in one. I can’t even imagine.) In Gretta’s case, it’s the ultimate betrayal, the ultimate knife through the heart.

As the film progresses, Gretta, now David-less, slowly finds her feet again, actually flourishing in the absence of him. It’s interesting we hear this song early on the film, because she had written when she was suffering the lowest of the lows, and as a result, when she plays it, egged onstage by her best friend Steve, played by James Corden, she seems sullen, almost not all there. It is left up to Mark Ruffalo’s character’s Dan, who hears promise and truth in Gretta’s words and singing, to take notice and give Gretta the confidence boost and just plain human kindness she didn’t even really know she needed.

However, as we get further along in the plot, the song comes to take on a new meaning. The song was written for and directed towards David and that significance is still preserved. But how it has changed is really interesting. He returns to New York City as a huge star and tries to make amends with her, realising that even with all the fame he’s gotten by selling out, he still misses her and wants her back. He invites her to a high-profile show at the Gramercy, where she is hopeful that he is the man she fell in love with, but she realises as he commercially butchers the song she wrote as a Christmas present for him years ago, ‘Lost Stars’, that she no longer needs him.

“Are you ready for the last act? / To take a step you can’t take back?,” which formerly was sung by Gretta dripping with vitriol, can now be sung – and heard – more sweetly. And honestly. But still as a challenge. David took the step you can’t take back, professionally and personally. The last act was where their relationship ended. While Gretta gets her sweet revenge in the end – she writes, records, and releases an album he’s truly impressed by her efforts, and it becomes a overnight success, though I can tell you, please do not be fooled, that kind of success is rarely that easy – what comes across loud and clear is very true: what’s done is done. And you can never go back to the way things were.

Lastly, the song in two forms: one, as Knightley performed it in the film, bare and spare (turn up the volume), and in its full form on the soundtrack, with all its backing.