It's 2025... though as far as these guys are concerned, it might still be 1995...
19. Kim Deal – Nobody Loves You More
A spur-of-the-moment purchase earlier this year based on the
fact that the CD was selling for less than a tenner in its week of release… let
that be a lesson to all pop stars out there: if Kim can do it, you can too!
Anyway, this is Kim Deal’s debut solo album– worthy of note, considering that the artist
formerly known as Mrs. John Murphy has been banging away at this racket for 40
years now (and has released a bunch of solo singles over the years, just never
a long player).
Certain tracks naturally remind us of The Breeders…
…but there’s a real range demonstrated across this record,
including a deeply moving song about the effects of Alzheimer's on Kim's mum…
Are you mine? Are you my baby? I have no mind For nothing, but love Are you mine? How you seen me lately? I have no time I have no time Let me go Where there's no Memory of you Where everything is safe And nothing is true
…and the title track, which may well be the sweetest love
song I’ve heard all year.
18. The Lemonheads – Love Chant
There always has to be a caveat when compiling these end of
year lists that records released in the last month or so probably won’t do as
well as ones that I’ve been enjoying all year. It should come as no surprise to
anyone though that Evan Dando was one of the last people to get off his lazy
arse and offer up a new record this year… particularly as this is the first
original Lemonheads album in almost 20 years (not counting two fine cover
version collections, Varshons I & II).
Much has been written about why the Slacker King has been
absent so long – and from what I’ve heard of his live shows this year, he’s
still not completely on the wagon. His voice is a lot deeper than it used to
be, and he looks less like the Grunge Heartthrob of the 90s… and more like a
street bum who’s wandered into the recording studio in search of some White
Lightning. Despite that, as one of the heroes of my youth, it’s great to have him back.
17. Counting Crows - Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!
And now for the one that should have been disqualified on
the grounds of a) good taste; b) the worst album cover I’ve seen in a long
time; b) the fact that half of it was originally released as an EP in 2021. In
my defence, when I posted a song from it back then, Martin was grudgingly seen
to reply, “That was better than expected.” Which only goes to show that
whatever you post on the internet will one day be dug up to embarrass you in
later years… so be very careful next time you’re planning on telling anyone how
much you’re looking forward to the new Oasis album. (I have no idea whether
there’s a new Oasis album… god, i hope not... but really, how could they resist the opportunity to
cash in further?)
Anyway – Counting Crows. From a similar era to the
Lemonheads, yet somehow unable to achieve the same level of cool. The very fact
then that I place this record one spot above Evan and co. will damn me in the
eyes of many. (And looking like a street bum these days is one step up on looking like an extra in The Sopranos, Adam.)
I could offer the defence that this came out in May, so I’ve had
much longer to relish it, but really… I should probably quit while I’m ahead.
If you’re of the opinion that Counting Crows are beneath you, nothing I can say
will change that. Bring on the brickbats…
I approach Cannonball with some trepidation. It seems far easier to write about songs, and artists, with whom I've had a lifelong connection - like Prince and Billy Bragg - or to select huge chart hits ready for reappraisal, like When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman. than to risk confronting a track that's so beloved by the cognoscenti, but that - until recently - I'd never really appreciated in all its glory. Then again, who said writing about music was supposed to be easy?
Let's backtrack. I was always a huge fan of The Pixies, but I never really paid much attention to Kim Deal's splinter / replacement project. Of course, when I say "always a huge fan", I don't mean that I was into the Pixies back in the late 80s when all the Cool Kids were. No, I probably discovered them just about the time the original line-up was breaking up, but as soon as I did I went out and immersed myself in their back catalogue, and that presumably kept me so busy that I didn't pay much attention to what the individual band members did next. Around that time I was also a big fan of Tanya Donnelly's Belly, but this was after Tanya had left The Breeders, so again, another missed opportunity.
Of course, it was impossible to ignore The Breeders - and Cannonball in particular - altogether in the 90s, and I'm sure they made their way into my record collection via indie compilations like Shine or The Best Album In The World Ever, so if you'd asked me back then, I would have told you, "yeah, good song... Kim Deal from the Pixies, right?"... but that would have been as much as I could have written. Right now, you may be wishing I'd submitted this post back then.
So why the reappraisal after all these years? The simple answer is that I finally started to listen to Cannonball in depth when I got round to adding it to one of Sam's in-car compilation CDs. And the more I listened to it, the more I wondered... what the hell is going on in this song?
Spitting in a wishing well
Blown to hell, crash
I'm the last splash
I know you, little libertine
I know you're a real cuckoo
If you were to ask me what first draws me to a song, my answer would always be the lyrics. I love songs that tell stories...
That would be my answer, anyway: that meaningful words maketh the song.
Clearly though, this isn't always the case. I mean, I haven't a chuffing clue what Michael Stipe's on about half the time, and yet REM are one of my favourite bands.
(I always presume that Country Feedback is about the time that Michael went on Bullseye with Jim Bowen. He didn't win the caravan or the speedboat. That's why he sings, "It's crazy what you could've had" repeatedly towards the end of the song.)
Also, if words were everything, then why the hell do I like this?
I mean, that's just nonsense. And it's not even The Beatles ripping off Edward Lear or Lewis Carroll nonsense. It's just nonsense. Don't try and explain it to me.
All of which brings me back to Cannonball, a song with lyrics that, on the surface at least, are complete balderdash... and yet, that doesn't stop it being an addictive listen.
But wait! Detailed lyrical analysis has been provided by the web of lies, so let me clue you in on what Cannoball is really all about. First off, it transpires that when Kim Deal wrote the song, her sister Kelly was spending a little too much of her free time reading the complete works of the Marquis de Sade. Those crazy alt-rock chicks, right? Here's an extract from an interview with the Phoenix New Times in 1996...
KD: This magazine in Britain keeps faxing me the same question over and over. Let's see what they want . . . (Laughs) Check it out--they want to know what author has been a major influence on my work. Hah!
NT: You don't care for the question?
KD: I've just never connected music with books. Wait, that's not entirely true. "Cannonball" was inspired by the writings of Marquis de Sade.
NT: What? "I'll be the bong in your reggae song" was inspired by Marquis de Sade?
KD: Well, not that line specifically. But the message of the song as a whole was making fun of Sade and his libertarian views that if he was better off than someone, then they were just fodder for him. Playthings. It was saying, "Come on, life's not a contest."
NT: So you're pretty much anti-Sade.
KD: Well, I don't know. Later on I found out he used to suck the snot out of people's noses, and I thought that pretty much ruled.
I think I could pretty much end this post there and call it a win, don't you?
However... that's not the only lyrical interpretation of Cannonball to be found on the interweb. Pop over to Genius, a website I spend far too much time perusing, and you will discover the theory that Cannonball is actually a barbed riposte to Pixies frontman Frank Black, who famously fired Deal, and Pixies drummer David Lovering, via fax in 1993. Speculation has it that Kim was sick of being beholden to Frank's vision, rarely allowed to contribute to the songwriting in the Pixies, creatively stymied until she started a band of her own. Which supposedly explains the repetition of the line "In the shade" and even the aforementioned "bong in this reggae song" bit.
If any of that's true, then I think there's a slight irony in connecting Deal's Marquis de Sade references in the most famous Breeders song with the references to an equally contentious piece of "art", Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou in arguably the most famous Pixies song... but I may be reaching here.
None of this helps explain the allure of Cannonball though... and if I can't put it down to the lyrics, then it must be the music, right?
Except... musically, from a layman's perspective at least, Cannonball is all over the place. It sounds like three or four different songs edited together - and they even left gaps at some of the edit points! Iffypedia informs me that the "demo was originally called 'Grunggae' as it merged 'island riffs and grunge'".
I can hear the grunge - that's when the really loud buzzsaw guitar cuts in out of nowhere, right? But try as I might, I can't hear the reggae influence in Cannonball, nor can I comment on the tempo, chord progression or the "bubbling bass line", "slithering guitar lick" or "slyly humorous vocal melody" delivered "with a seductive shyness". I mean, there's cuckoos and bongs, and they're quite funny, I guess... but that just brings me back to the lyrics. Despite getting a C at GCSE Music and doing Music Theory exams up to Grade 8, I've forgotten more than I ever learned about time signatures and major / minor keys... I'm always envious of bloggers like Swiss Adam for their ability to write about the musicky bits of popular music. As an English teacher, I have some confidence in commenting on lyrics, but sounds are much harder to analyse.
In closing then, I've written well over a thousand words about this song, but not come close to answering the question of why I like it. Maybe that's an answer in itself.
P.S. If you're ever putting together a mixtape and want the perfect track to follow Cannonball, can suggest the following, from Sam's 153rd CD... it works surprisingly well.
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