Imagine Dragons – I Bet My Life

“That chorus startled me in the best way”

Tim: Creators of surprisingly listenable rock music Imagine Dragons are back with the lead single from their second album; here it is:

Tom: That’s a great intro.

Tim: And that’s a GREAT track, I think. It’s a far cry from their first releases, almost to the extent that it’s hard to call it rock any more (or at least that’s the case if you read the YouTube comments left by their real fans).

Tom: You forgot to put scare-quotes around “real” and “fans” there.

Tim: I don’t quite know what the noises are in the background – in the opening they sounded like some weird backing vocals, but looking at the artwork, the noises sound later more like crows squawking, which is weird.

Tom: See, I heard someone using one of those high-speed Formula 1 tyre-changing things. Probably shows how our brains work, that.

Tim: The rhythm’s nice – the verses have the same measured sound that I really liked in The Cowboys’ Christmas Ball (with apologies if it’s still too early to link to that), and the choruses have exactly the right level of shoutiness not to be too annoying.

Tom: Agreed: that chorus startled me in the best way. Fantastic.

Tim: All in all, I like it a lot, and while (given the variety of tracks on Night Visions) I wouldn’t draw too many conclusions about it from one track, I’m looking forward to the new album, out in February.

First Aid Kit – Stay Gold

“Pretty good, in the usual First Aid Kit manner.”

Tim: Title track from their third album, seeing them keep up the strong country pop vibe – have a listen if you don’t believe me. Or if you do. In fact, just have a listen.

Tim: I don’t know why, but I’m having trouble coming up with much to write at the moment, about this or any track.

Tom: That’s because, for this track at least, it’s exceptionally dull. The voice is good, but it’s droning; the guitar goes nowhere; it is all — and I’m using the technical term here — “meh”.

Tim: You reckon? Because I think this is definitely worth a feature and the one I’ve been most enamoured by of the multitude I’ve listened to this evening. Except for the Frozen soundtrack. I could probably write for HOURS on that.

Tom: Well, you know why that is? Stay Gold is basically a low-key version of Let It Go.

Tim: What?

Tom: Go on, sing the first line along with this, it’s basically the same. And the lyric “top of the mountain we wanted to stand?” It’s Let It Go.

Tim: Errrmmmmm………

Tom: Okay, that might be a stretch.

Tim: Let’s move on from Frozen. Because this is pretty good as well, in the usual First Aid Kit manner. Emotive vocal, nice country instrumentation and not in an irritating manner. In fact, to be honest, I think I’ll just recommend the album in general – it’s all of this calibre, and definitely worth thirty eight minutes of your time. Give it a go, why don’t you.

Rikke Lie – Paperboat

“It’s rare for me to like something like this, but it’s damn good.”

Tim: We’ve had a couple of rackety tracks recently; let’s calm down. Let’s calm down a lot.

Tom: Gosh, that was weird when she started singing on the track, but didn’t in the video.

Tim: We all know I’m really not much of one at all for a droopy ballad, but this I like. Partly because it’s not too droopy, I suppose – despite talking about wounds that never heal and tears that never dry, there’s that description of ‘us’ as two lost souls, which is almost poetic.

Tom: Yep, it’s rare for me to like something like this too: but it’s damn good. It reminds me of a lot of different songs, and I think you could argue that it’s a bit by-the-numbers — but as we’ve said many times before, there’s no shame in that if those numbers are good enough.

Tim: Let’s look at those lyrics: “we’re just two lost souls, sailing on a paper boat, don’t know where to go, trying to get home”. Written down, they’re somewhat neutral, and can go either way. In the first chorus, for example, with damp piano and lower strings, they’re sung as a bad thing – stuck in a relationship, both wanting out, going nowhere. Come that penultimate chorus, though, back from the middle eight with the strings rising up underneath, it’s turned round and is almost triumphant – we’re there for each other, there’s no-one else, and, as is sung elsewhere “don’t you leave me to drown”. Isn’t that wonderful?

Tom: It’s a full-on lighters-in-the-air moment, that. And let’s talk about that music: it manages to reach a crescendo, and then die back down to a quiet final chorus, despite not actually changing all that much. No big electric guitar coming in, no sudden percussion boom: it’s achieved with subtlety rather than the standard throw-everything-at-it cheap emotional shots.

Tim: It’s a beautiful track, and it’s suddenly struck me a shame that more songs aren’t like this. Although maybe if they were I wouldn’t be quite so struck by this one, so actually, I’ll just take it as it is. Very much, as it is.

Julia Vero – How Does It Feel?

“Tonally, musically, lyrically, it’s brilliant…but I don’t like it.”

Tim: Disturbing images in the choruses of this video, here, but otherwise you’ll be fine.

Tom: I didn’t know what I expected from that warning, but it certainly wasn’t… that.

Tim: I struggle with this track. Personally, I don’t much like it, because it’s aggressive, a bit unpleasant, and not hugely enjoyable for me.

Tom: Huh. It is aggressive, it is a bit unpleasant, but for once those don’t become unpleasant for me. It’s rather good.

Tim: However, tonally, musically, lyrically, it’s brilliant: the lyrics with their “you wanted me gone, I’m gone, just bloody live with it” message fit perfectly with the loud noise and the haunting (almost taunting) chanting in the background. The occasional stops put that in as well, as if to give the slight implication that actually there’s a bit of doubt, but no she really means it.

Tom: Right! The style is right, the music’s good…

Tim: The chorus is big, bold, and almost surprising in, well, almost its audacity of volume and tone. So the song is great. But I don’t like it.

Tom: Speak for yourself, I’m in favour of it. Although possibly not that creepy face.

Ace Wilder – Riot

“It’s a total racket, of course, but then that pretty much goes with the territory.”

Tim: Busy Doin’ Nothing was one of the summer’s biggest hits in Sweden following its near victory in Melodifestivalen; this here is, she presumably hopes, just as successful a follow-up.

Tom: I still keep thinking “Ace Wilder” is a guy, but I think that’s probably because I keep confusing her with Ace Rimmer.

Tim: We’ve had a tricky relationship with Ace here; she was responsible for one of last year’s best tracks and one of its worst.

Tom: No link there?

Tim: No link. This year’s previous left me largely uninterested. This: not half bad, actually. It’s a total racket, of course, but then that pretty much goes with the RIOT territory and I reckon it pretty much hangs together.

Tom: That’s true: and it’s a difficult path that Icona Pop have forged. It’s easy to copy their style; it’s hard to make it sound good. This makes a pretty credible effort.

Tim: The verses are iffy – starting out they’re fine, because there’s nothing really to compare them to, but then the chorus hits, then HORNS*, and when we return for the second verse we’re left wondering where everything went and what on earth “my mind bending gravity is nature’s worst” is meant to mean.

Tom: I mean, we’ve heard worse lyrics, but not for a while.

Tim: Slightly similar with the middle eight, but those bits aside I really rather like this. Higher end of the scale, then, and if I wasn’t entirely exhausted right now I might be persuaded to possibly even kick over a bin or something.

Tom: I can get behind that. By which I mean, I’ll cheer you on as you kick over a bin.

Saturday Flashback: Lis Sørensen – Brænt

“I… wow. I had no idea.”

Tim: Every day, round about five o’clock, Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’ comes on the music system at work, and every day, round about five o’clock, I expect to hear Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn, because of that identical opening guitar strum, and somehow I never learn. Except it’s not Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn, because that’s a cover of an American rock band’s song.

Tom: What. What?! I… wow. I had no idea.

Tim: Except even that’s a bit weird, because there’s also this: probably the only song in existence where a cover version was released before the original.

Tim: Let’s have a timeline, because this could get confusing:
– 1993, the song is written and recorded as a demo by Scott Cutler, Anne Preven, and Phil Thornalley; they didn’t think much of it at the time, but the recording lingered.
– Later in 1993, Lis Sørensen met Thornalley, who played her the song, and thought she might have a crack at it. She translated it (ish – Brænt actually means Burnt, but the gist remains the same), kept it musically largely the same, released it, and became the first artist to make money off it.
– 1995, the band Ednaswap (formed of Cutler, Preven and a few others) finally got a recording deal, and released the song in English, reworked to be a bit rockier. By all standard counts – original authors, singers, lyrics – this became the original, two years on from its foreign language cover.
– 1997, Natalie Imbruglia recorded it, became the only act to have much chart success with it (according to Wikipedia, it’s ‘considered an “All Time Pop Hit”‘, though there’s no mention of by whom), and if you ask most people, basically became the owner of the song.

Tom: Blimey. Thanks for the lesson. I still think Natalie Imbruglia’s version is the best, but then, I suppose I would.

Tim: Well, quite. And there you go. Chronologically, we’ve a cover, then the original, and then a cover that basically became the original. Along the way, there came a vast number of other versions, in a variety of other languages and genres – without exhausting the list, we’ve a Brazilian girlband’s O amor é ilusão, a Slovenian band’s On, an American punk rock version, an Uzbek soloist’s Sogʻindim ishon, and, perhaps inevitably, the Almighty Records take on it. And people say covers are boring…

Tom: You’re forgetting the very best version: David Armand.

Tim: Oh. Oh, that has made my afternoon.

Indian Boi – Bulletproof Heart

“I must point out a poor choice of lyric…”

Tim: Odd name perhaps, given that this Swede is neither Indian nor a Boi, however you’d spell it, but there you go. She’s new this week, with this.

Tom: Aww, this isn’t a cover version, is it? I’m not sure whether I want it to be or not.

Tim: No, no it isn’t – pure pop, and pretty good pop, really, isn’t it? In fact, in terms of the genre, it’s bang on, and I like that.

Tom: Yep, I can’t disagree. Although I must point out a poor choice of lyric: I was expecting “break your heart”, I got “break your fall”, and my brain interpreted that as “break your fart”. Took me a couple of seconds.

Tim: Ah, yes, I can see why that might be a problem. But this is, much like yesterday’s track, nothing incredible and nothing really to write home about —

Tom: And today, at least, I agree with you, because that “really got me, got me” melody grates enough that the rest of the absolutely fantastic chorus is kind of spoiled by it.

Tim: — also much like yesterday’s track, though, it’s an excellent indicator of things to come (including an album due out in the next few months), so it’ll do me for now, and I’ll bear the name in mind for later.

Alex Alexander – She’s A Dynamite

“If McBusted had used this as their debut, I’d have been significantly more enthusiastic”

Tim: Yes, a dynamite. Problem?

Tom: We’ve seen much worse.

Tom: “With a smile that could break off a tree,” for example. I’m fairly sure that’s what he sung.

Tim: Does sound like that, yes. Alex is a Swedish model who wants to have a go at singing, and he’s not done a terrible job of it.

Tom: Well, now it looks like this is one of those rare occasions where I’m much more enthusiastic about a song than you are. What’re you thinking?

Tim: Well, it’s a tad generic, a bit nothing special, and the verse has next to no melody in it. But it’s a decent listen nonetheless, and certainly showing potential for future releases.

Tom: I’d put it a few notches higher than that. In fact, I’d say that if McBusted had used this as their debut single, I’d have been significantly more enthusiastic than I was about Air Guitar. Seriously: as that kind of pop-rock goes, it’s brilliant: yes, sure, it’s just ticking the boxes, but it’s ticking them extremely well.

Tim: Not much more to say, really, except that, much as I don’t want to be the one to play the picky grammar card, I really wouldn’t mind if he’d changed that chorus line to “she is dynamite”.

Tom: And that video’s bloody awful: if you’re going to perform on a big stage and shoot with what looks like a GoPro, at least get an audience in.

Tim: Otherwise, fine.

5 Seconds of Summer – Good Girls

“Can I go with complain instead?”

Tim: “Good girls are bad girls who haven’t been caught” is the lesson we’re meant to take from this.

Tom: Well, that just seems patronising. A bit like their last song.

Tim: Well, have a listen and see if you agree.

Tom: Was that an Amazing Horse reference in that irritatingly-long introduction? I mean, I don’t really care, I skipped past it after that, but even so.

Tim: So, we could look at this as a sort of anti-entablishment anthem, with the very words the head of the dictatorship used right back at him to inspire rebellion. Or, we could jump around and party. Rebel. Party. Whichever suits you.

Tom: Can I go with complain instead?

Tim: If you like.

Tom: About the message, about the godawful interjections in the background, about the middle eight that’s actually just the same chorus but with less instruments? About the video that would have been a bit embarrassing for Busted in their heyday?

Tim: Valid criticisms, I suppose, but I quite like it, at least enough to Shazam it twice in two days when it came on Westfield’s music systems, so I’m happy. And, worth noting, taking them further away from boyband territory, which may help their fans claim some credibility, however meaningless a concept that may be.

Smith & Thell – Hippie Van

Tim: Smith & Thell have been gone a while doing songwriting for other people and stuff, but now they’ve decided to have another go at the front and centre action, albeit with less electronic stuff and more banjos. Hmm.

Tim: I say ‘Hmm’, that’s purely because that’s typically the wrong direction to go in as far as I’m concerned; however, here they’ve done a very good job of the folk pop.

Tom: Oh, it can be done very well — but it requires just as much production and effort as any dance track.

Tim: It’s chirpy and upbeat like it’s meant to be and not overly saccharine, which is nice.

Tom: Right: there’s clearly a bit of 2003 Aviici influence in here, and I suspect that a bit more of that is exactly what it needs. I found myself drifting away during the verses; even that last chorus couldn’t quite bring me back.

Tim: The “oh-oh-oh-etc”s in the chorus are good, as ever, provided something to sing along to without worrying about the whole words thing. For me it goes just a little to far right at the end with the sense of ‘look how tiny I can make these notes seem’, but other than that: all good.