#370-#366

#370. Courtney Barnett - Elevator Operator (#75, 2015)

43rd of 2015

It's been a long time so I don't know what it's like to hear this song for the first time. It's one of those songs where once you know where it's going, it completely warps your perception of it going forward. Trying to put myself back in that first impression, it feels like a shaggy dog story. You don't reach the chorus until more than halfway through, and it comes out of nowhere, turning it into something much darker.

I don't think there are many popular songs that are quite as facetious as this one, just a carefree, upbeat song about someone potentially jumping off a building. It's the sort of thing that makes me wonder if she just got away with this one, having such a dark song just end up in high rotation on the radio. To an extent, it makes for a bigger impression than something like "Stan" by Eminem, because that one at least builds up to its climax, whereas this goes from a carefree day to 'don't jump' in an instant.

There's some unresolved ambiguity to all of this though. The suddenness is what alerted me to the fact. There's nothing leading up to the chorus that suggests 20 year old Oliver Paul is at all pursuing these dark thoughts. He denies it himself (and if we want to cheat, Courtney Barnett said that she wrote this song based on a story from a friend), and there's an alternative interpretation that it's the old woman who's actually about to do it. I think it's a 'fun' way to look at it that flips the script, but it's also nothing you can totally gleam from the text anyway.

All in all though, it's songs like these that reinforce the kind of detail-oriented storytelling that Courtney Barnett is so good at. Every second line is including a gratuitous piece of specific world-building that feels considered. This isn't just a reference dump of a song, but one from a narrator that's deeply fascinated by the details. I could write a line about someone in a hurry dropping food as they go, but within just the first handful of lines, we've already started laughing at a 20 year old who thinks they're old, eats a premium kind of bread, and shaves off the difference by using the 96 tram in Melbourne without paying a fare. There's just an amusing throughline to all of it though, where you've got a story about two very different people from completely different generations, and yet here they are on the same journey and also sharing some superficial similarities (the boy is worried about going bald, the lady uses Botox and is deeply jealous of the boy's skin). It's something I think a lot about because we always get these generational divides due to different upbringings, priorities and life experiences, but deep down, there are these certain qualities, good and bad, that we can't help but continue to inherit down successive generations. Much more worthwhile to focus on these elements, rather than start a war on minor squabbles. You can learn a lot of things from people who are both much older, and much younger than yourself.

#369, Peach PRC - God Is A Freak (#16, 2022)

34th of 2022

It's very easy to be cynical of a song like this. Peach deals in the world of TikTok where the number one priority is finding something memorable that resonates and gets people to hit the Follow button. This is a platform that rewards aggressive marketing, so you'll often find artists having to make multiple videos with their own songs as a soundtrack. If you're lucky, you'll have inspired a viral trend that gets people to continue doing it for you, but even if you're not, you're still ramming it down everyone's throats and creating the illusion of acceptance, like thinking a song is a massive hit just because you kept hearing it on the radio (or maybe it was a TV commercial, but it doesn't matter).

When I think of songs being designed to go viral, songs like "God Is A Freak" are what comes to mind first. This is a song with exactly one joke that we all thought about when we were very young. If God is everywhere, does that mean he's watching me take a shower? If that's the sort of thing he's interested in, why would we want to spend eternity in the afterlife with him? It's something that's so /r/atheism coded, you can just smell that smug energy from someone who thinks they've nailed those preachy religious types (while God is watching). Just the most tedious people to be around.

On those grounds, there's nothing new to be gained from "God Is A Freak" and I should hate all that it embodies. I think I was pretty cynical of it as well, a lazy attempt at being shocking and provocative that has no purpose beyond that. It's not how I landed with it though, I think in part because the humourous slant in the writing scans as too ridiculous to take seriously, and secondly because as a pop song beyond that, it's checking all the boxes. The funniest thing of all, and I don't think it's meant to be a joke, is the way the pre-chorus structures itself like a Zedd song. Just sub out this song's guitar for a ticking clock and you've created "The Middle" or "Stay". I generally liked those songs though, so that template is probably doing the work for me when I find the release of tension in "God Is A Freak" to be so effective. Maybe I'm the one with f**ked up priorities, but I love an unintentional parody that feeds off the best elements of its 'source'. I know in my heart of hearts that Claire Rosinkranz is a genuine musician, but there's no way I would enjoy "don't miss me" as much as I do if it didn't sound like she was a novelty persona created to wage mockery on future Hottest 100 entrant Clairo's song "Amoeba", truly one of the most unexplainable coincidences in music history.

#368. TV on the Radio - Happy Idiot (#49, 2014)

40th of 2014

If you weren't there for the moment, it can be difficult to make sense of it all, you're probably just gonna hear a second-hand account. On the other hand, there's a slightly weirder scenario, the one where you're partially there for it, but you've never felt like you have the full story. That's me when it comes to TV on the Radio. Are they just a critic baiting acclaimed band, or a run of the mill band that happen to have some hits? I've never really been able to figure it out, and they've largely disappeared from the conversation ever since they stopped putting albums out. I just don't know if there are that many TV on the Radio diehards, or rather, if there should be that many.

I enter in the middle of the story. "Wolf Like Me" lands on the Hottest 100 CD for 2006. It's the only thing I know about this band and I don't really enjoy it. Too much aimless shouting, it feels unstructured. It's something I wouldn't really think about but I keep hearing rave feelings about it, and it pops up as an oddity in additional Hottest 100 polls. At some point in the middle, it clicks. I don't recall if Guitar Hero was what did it, just that it's absolutely my favourite song to play in that whole series. The only song that feels like a workout as it tests your ability to never stop strumming both ways.

In any case, it means I entered that hype cycle with at least a little bit of information. I knew "Wolf Like Me", I would assume that the album it came from was considered good, and so that rationalises the hype that was going around for their next album "Dear Science". It mostly washes over me as one of those albums I believe to be highly regarded, just in a conversation I wasn't part of. It's something I accept and don't hold any spite against. I did know a bunch of songs on that album that ranged from pretty good to great ("Halfway Home"). Nowadays it's possibly likely you just know the album because it houses "DLZ", which has gained a lot more recognition ever since it appeared in "Breaking Bad". A good way to set yourself up for the future, but I still don't feel like TV on the Radio have managed to stick the landing in the same way a band like Mazzy Star has thrived off the notoriety of just having that one killer song in their discography, or Interpol from that one album.

And yet, here I am talking about them, absolutely stretching the possibilities. Plenty of artists have had long gaps between appearances in the Hottest 100, one band I'll get to eventually sprouted out a huge career detached from triple j before randomly popping back in there. TV on the Radio never had that experience. They just had their starring moment and the usual diminishing returns afterward. Maybe nowadays after the definitively non-hitmaking rollout of their 2011 album, that'd be the moment they become confined to Double J, and just being a band checked out by diehard fans, and also those occasional music listeners who feel determined to listen to every notable album that ever comes out. Maybe that still is what happened, but on the smaller scale they had "Happy Idiot".

It's just one of those quirky moments that we're usually not privy to. If it were by some other band, or it came out years earlier, I wouldn't have questioned it. But to fly in the face of momentum and decide to have another moment is something that makes me want to scrutinise the song itself more. It'd have to be something pretty darn amazing to justify this. It's not really, but it's fairly serviceable and catchy in a way that they hadn't pulled off in a while. Maybe there's a lingering thought that the use of the word 'idiot' in the title is itself a winning strategy. Maybe there's nothing unusual, and this is just reinforcing the possibility that TV on the Radio are just a pretty good band, with generally pretty good results. We spend so long looking at the extremes in both directions that we forget to acknowledge this important building block.

#367. The Wombats - Cheetah Tongue (#69, 2018)

40th of 2018

Thus we reach the end of what has been the most respectable of runs in this tally. 10 songs by The Wombats, nothing in the top 100, nothing in the bottom 100. I'm not sure if there is any irony to celebrate here, but it's a fun place to be in. I could never get mad at The Wombats, whether for the deluge of the British music scene that they're a likely figurehead, or for the music they actually made. They fit the perfect middle ground of being popular enough that you've heard of them, but not popular enough that you have strong feelings about them. 'Remember The Wombats? lmao', good source of retweets in the right place. I could cite their enduring popularity that stands them well above most of their peers, but there's no pleasing the crowd of vibes.

I don't expect "Cheetah Tongue" is the most exciting place to wrap things up. I've mentioned along the way that there are numerous songs by The Wombats that I have a bit more space in my heart for, but it's been a long time since I've had the privilege of them finding the necessary votes. What we're left with is not a defining song by any stretch of the imagination, just the closest we're gonna get to tapping into that feeling.

If I were to point to one thing in particular that they do very well here to justify it, I'm listening out for those verses. It's fairly minimalist, just some occasional finger snaps, a scattered guitar loop and some faint droning. The bass pops in after a little while but it's barely audible. I'm just addicted to the tension that the guitar provides, just never reaching a resolution until the drums finally come roaring in for the chorus. Everything after that is just a pleasant formality, but I'll always come in to rep for any song with one brief idea that hits the spot.

#366. The Smith Street Band - Passiona (#49, 2017)

37th of 2017

We've all seen the jokes about cheering during movies when they say the title, especially when it's late in the piece or it punctuates a significant moment. A close second to this is when an album does it. It's such an unbelievable power play to use it as the chorus for a song whose title doesn't even appear itself. It has me asking questions, why did they call the song "Passiona"? The only logical explanation is that it's the particular title that won out on the lottery of Australian signifiers that can read as a subtle in-joke. The kinds of references that just haven't really made it internationally as something we're associated with, which are the best kinds. Also I've got a soft spot here because when I was a kid, Passiona was the ambrosia of the Woolies aisle. The occasionally purchased soft drink that hit different to all the other ones. My teeth aren't very fond of it though so I haven't had it in quite some time. I suspect it still does the trick.

There's nothing refreshing about this "Passiona" though, it's all anxiety and estrangement. An English teacher somewhere is furious at Wil Wagner for starting nearly every sentence with the word 'And'. At least he's fighting the good fight for distinguishing literal and metaphorical examples, and it's gotta be one of the hardest lines about self-pity going around. I think the one single line 'It's also not a competition' is one that just leaps out of the page. I didn't get it from the Smithies, but it's a way I look at a lot of aspects in life. You'll do better to focus on meeting people at their weaknesses, rather than try to live in an attempt to be in the desired percentile of the planet in your self-approved measure of success.

It's not all vague platitudes also, not that I'd expect that from this band. The lyric about having panic attacks on German TV is a very real thing that happened. Wil Wagner will say that it's about the overwhelming emotional toll of being a touring band, but I know deep down he's thinking about those ducks, flying together, away from the "Don't F**k With Our Dreams" pool. And whatever happened to Ed Kuepper? The strong silent type. That was an Australian. The whole song goes through so many mood swings; it really does nail the experience of anxiety.