Jim Connelly

Certain Songs #2605: Talking Heads – “Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town”

May 1, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Talking Heads: 77
Year: 1977

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There were probably two bands that widened my musical horizons the most in my late teens/early 20s. One, of course, was The Clash, whose embrace of every single style of the sun — sometimes all at once! — alternately freaked me out and intrigued me at the same time. The other, and this was far more subtle, was Talking Heads.

Why was Talking Heads more subtle? Because The Clash drew me in with the greatest hard rock — which was my comfort zone — I’d ever heard in my life, and then abandoned it, daring me to join them. Talking Heads were as weird as shit from the start; they were never in my comfort zone so I had to come to them from the very start, meaning as they quite literally expanded their music, it was easier for me to expand along with them, because I’d already done just to grok them in the first place.

Certain Songs #2604: Syreeta – “Your Kiss is Sweet”

April 30, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Stevie Wonder Presents: Syreeta
Year: 1974

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Remember way back when I was writing about Stevie Wonder, and I bemoaned the fact that he’s barely released any of the material he recorded during his imperial phase?

Well, here’s kind of a Great Lost Stevie Wonder album from smack dab in the middle of all of that. Syreeta Wright had been working with Stevie Wonder since 1968, including co-writing credit on the ever-awesome “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours),” and after they married in 1970, she co-wrote much of his 1970 album, Where I’m Coming From, including “If You Really Love Me.”

Certain Songs #2603: Swervedriver – “English Subtitles”

April 29, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: I Wasn’t Born to Lose You
Year: 2015

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And so after the inevitable Swervedriver reunion tours to support their late 2000s reissues, came the not-quite-as-inevitable reunion album, 2015’s I Wasn’t Born to Lose You. As you know, reunion albums can be quite dodgy — insert standard Pixies joke here — but I Wasn’t Born to Lose You stuck with Swervedriver’s core strengths: the lovely, noisy guitar interplay between Adam Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge and Franklin’s dreamy vocals.

Certain Songs #2602: Swervedriver – “The Birds”

April 28, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Ejector Seat Reservation
Year: 1995

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I spent over a decade thinking that Swervedriver’s first two albums — 1991’s Raise and 1993’s Mezcal Head, for those of you keeping score at home — were the only things they’d ever released. This is because of a historic spate of record company shittiness: in 1995, they delivered their third album, Ejector Seat Reservation, to their U.S. label, A&M, and their U.K. label, Creation, and got epically screwed by both labels.

Certain Songs #2601: Swervedriver – “Planes Over The Skyline”

April 27, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Mezcal Head (Bonus Track)
Year: 1993

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While I bought — from Ragin’ Records, of course — and enjoyed both 1991’s Raise and 1993’s Mezcal Head, I didn’t really fall in love with Swervedriver for another dozen years or so, a story I’ll discus in more detail tomorrow. Let’s just say that 1991-1993 was an incredibly intense time for music for me, and more great shit was released in that period than I could fully process.

Not to mention that Swervedriver released quite a few singles and EPs in the period with bonus tracks that never made those albums, none of which I discovered at the time.

Certain Songs #2600: Swervedriver – “Duel”

April 26, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Mezcal Head
Year: 1993

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One of the precursors of Certain Songs was a feature I wrote in this here blog called “Musical Moments to Die For,” where I would describe a part of a song that utterly killed me, with an actual audio embed of the song that I’d created in Audacity. I also did full audio versions of them as inserts in the long-gone Medialoper Bebop podcast, which I guess you can still find on Apple Music.

Anyways, the very first installation of Musical Moments to Die For, 25 Musical Moments to Die For (the second had 24, the third had 23, etc. I made it down to 15 Musical Moments to Die For before I stopped) featured this song, Swervedriver’s “Duel.”

Certain Songs #2599: Swervedriver – “Rave Down”

April 25, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Raise
Year: 1991

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When we get to The Yardbirds, we’ll have a deeper discussion of what it means to “rave up,” which I’m assuming is the concept upon which Adam Franklin is turning on its head on the other greatest song from Swervedriver’s Raise album, the monumental “Rave Down.”

Opening with a shitton of massive guitars from Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge over drummer Graham Bonnar’s bouncy drum part, “Rave Down” veers into psychedelic territory even before it eventually opens with the chorus.

Certain Songs #2598: Swervedriver – “Son of Mustang Ford”

April 24, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Raise
Year: 1991

. . .

Swervedriver were associated enough with the whole shoegaze movement that their debut album Raise landed at #15 on Pitchfork’s 2016 list of the 50 Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time, and you can definitely hear why.

That said, there is a bit more dust, grit and momentum on Raise than there was on the records of most of their contemporaries, as many of the songs barreled forward with the power and noise of, say, Daydream Nation.

Certain Songs #2597: The Sweet – “Action”

April 22, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Give Us a Wink
Year: 1975

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While it came out in 1975 in the U.K., “Action” wasn’t released as a single here in the U.S. until early 1976, because we were months behind on the Sweet singles at that point. Actually, most of them didn’t even come out here — and “Action” probably wouldn’t have done had it not been for the back-to-back successes of “The Ballroom Blitz” and “Fox on the Run.”

Certain Songs #2596: The Sweet – “Fox on the Run”

April 21, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Desolation Boulevard (U.S.)
Year: 1975

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Alright, so lets start with this: “Fox on the Run” isn’t just my favorite Sweet song, it’s been one of my favorite songs by anybody quite literally from the moment 13-year-old Jim heard it on KYNO-AM in late 1975. I know all of the objections: the superfluous synth squiggles, the simplistic song structure, the stoopid & slightly sexist lyrics. And I just don’t give a fuck; I love this song beyond all reason, and because of most of that stuff, as well.