Album Openers

The opening song of an album is more important than you might think. It's the first thing you hear when you stick it on the stereo and it often decides whether someone will listen to the rest. Essentially it's got to hook the listener and get them to leave the album on. But what makes a good opening track? Here's a list of a few songs that I think work really well as album openers and I'll explain why in each case.

Kill the Rhythm - Gallows

The crushing first song from their debut album Orchestra of Wolves, Kill the Rhythm is fast paced and fierce. The listener is immediately drawn into the catchy song and can't help listening to the rest of the album. It's easily one of the best songs on the album and is my second favourite Gallows song, after London is the Reason from their 2009 album Grey Britain. Recently Frank Turner, who had fronted the band for both their albums, announced that he was leaving the band. He has since been replaced with ex-Alexisonfire singer Wade MacNeil. A third album is in the works and their latest Twitter post says:

"Drums and guitars for the new songs are tracked and sounding huge!"

I'm really looking forward to the new album and to see what the new singer produces. They've released one track with their new singer (available from www.gallows.co.uk) called True Colours, and it's rather good but at only 37 seconds long it's way too short. Whenever they next hit the UK I'll be there, I've seen them twice already (the most recent being Sonisphere 2011, the day after Frank's announcement of his imminent departure) and they were fantastic.

Since We've Been Wrong - The Mars Volta

The Mars Volta are renowned for their individual brand of music full of mesmerising intricacies and complex melodies. One result of this however is that their music isn't all that popular in the mainstream musical community, and I think that this is because people find it hard to connect with it. The good thing about Since We've Been Wrong, the opening song of their latest work Octahedron is that although it has many of the features typical of the band, it has a consistent vocal part that reappears throughout. This repeated chorus has the effect of bridging the gap and as a result I think Octahedron would be a good album to start with for anyone looking to get into The Mars Volta. Another element of the song that I like is a piano trill which has a nice effect.

Aces High - Iron Maiden

If this isn't a classic then nothing is. Having stood the test of time Aces High remains popular today with millions of people. This fast paced, action packed song is the first track from the 1984 album Powerslave which also contains the famous Maiden songs: 2 Minutes to Midnight and Powerslave. Centring on the Battle of Britain and the pilots flying the Supermarine Spitfire planes the song makes you feel like you're in the cockpit as the music twists and turns like a plane in a dogfight. For years the band opened with this song, only changing it recently for their tours where they're playing more songs from recent years. I predict however that it'll return to their performance at its rightful place: the first song on the setlist.

New Born - Muse

Even if you don't know Muse at all you may well have heard this song. The first track of their 2001 album Origin of Symmetry, it has appeared on television advertisements in the UK at least. The riff to this song is fantastic, and Matt Bellamy's vocals are great as usual. Like Aces High it's fast paced, a quality I think helps create a good album opener. The band played the album, Origin of Symmetry all the way through at their shows at Reading and Leeds Festival 2011 and I've heard it was a fantastic gig (sadly I couldn't be there). I prefer this, their second album, and Absolution, their third, to their newer material as it's less produced. I feel their current genre, especially their latest release, The Resistance, has too many effects and that this obscures the music.

One More Time With Feeling - Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly

The opening song from his debut album Get Cape's One More Time With Feeling is a masterpiece. Featuring the picked guitar melody technique that Sam Duckworth (the man behind Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly) is so good. It's a short song like most of the rest on the album, but it's a really lovely piece. The lyrics are thoughtful and make the listener think. This is true throughout the album. Overall the album is my favourite of Get Cape's releases.

Duckworth has also released an album under his real name which came out at the end of August. I quite liked it, it's has many parallels with the work on The Chronicles of a Bohemian Teenager, the album that One More Time With Feeling features on. You can read my review of it here: http://malfunctioning-musical-madness.blogspot.com/2011/09/mannequin-review.html

Enter Sandman - Metallica

This is a really interesting choice of album opener. It works very well, its fast, powerful and extremely catchy. It's debatably the band's best known song. However I think that's a problem. An album opener should be a hook, but having the album's main hit right at the start is risky. It means that the rest of the piece may not live up to the opening track. For me this isn't an issue with this particular album because it isn't my favourite song. My album highlight (and in fact my favourite Metallica song full stop) is the eighth track (out of twelve) on the album: Nothing Else Matters. Enter Sandman has a fantastic riff and a chorus that demands crowds' to sing along with no regard for the condition of their vocal chords. A really good song.

So there you have it, a selection of my favourite album openers. Out of that list I'd say Aces High is the best at introducing the album. In my humble opinion it's the best album opener of all time. A good album opener is important and if a band gets it wrong they can lose a lot of potential fans that won't listen to the rest of the piece. Musicians, take not,

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly (Album): Review

You may remember I wrote an entry about albums that I was looking forward to, well now I have one of them, it came in the post today. The album in question is Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly's self titled album, his third album to date. The first two: Chronicles of a Bohemian Teenager and Searching for the Hows and Whys are very good, although my favourite of the two is his first album, Chronicles of a Bohemian Teenager. Anyway, I've been of fan of his (Sam Duckworth's) music for a few years now, and have seen him live once. So there's the background, onto the album.

The opening track is called Hand Me Downs, and it's perhaps my favourite track of the album. The song is very similar to a lot of the tracks from the first album, predominantly using an acoustic guitar and vocals and little else. This has turned out to be a great formula for Get Cape's tracks, the absence of too many other parts allows the listener to concentrate on the lyrics more.

Collapsing Cities is the second track of the album. It starts with a nice acoustic guitar line, soon to be joined by an electronic section comprising of (as far as I can tell): drums, bass, and trombone. The combination, while it may sound unusual, works well, I particularly like the use of trombones, they were used on tracks from his earlier work and they fit really well in my opinion. Overall it's a good track.

The third song; Nightlife, starts with an electronic feel, and this continues throughout the song. There's a really nice melody comprised from a xylophone and a trumpet which works really well.

All Of This Is Yours is the fourth track, and it features Baaba Maal. It has a cultural feel, especially in the intro. The song contains an interesting electric guitar line that has hints of funk music in my opinion. There's a trumpet line that's utterly brilliant, quite simple, but it works very well. It's quite a varied song, but this seems to be a good thing.

The next track; Queen for a Day has a indie/punk/rock feel to it, and has a faster pace than some of the other songs on the album. The lyrics to this song are nice, and are interspersed with instrumental fills. A good track.

The sixth track is All Falls Down starts with a few great lyrics (not that the rest aren't good, I just liked these in particular): "You, you only reap what you sow. Stick to the things that you know." It's a pretty solid track.

The next track is called Where Will You Stand?. It starts with a symphonic feel, and this continues throughout the song. The electronic elements added in this track fit in well with the calm atmospheric feel that the track has. I think this is a really nice song.


Stitch By Stitch (it took me so many attempts to type that for some reason, I must be tired) is the eighth track of the album. It's pretty good, I don't think it sticks out as one of the best of the album, but it's certainly very good. This track also contains Interlude which is actually very nice.

The ninth track on the album is called The Uprising (not to be confused with the Muse track of the same name), and it's brilliant. It's got a great tempo, and the way all the instruments fit together is fantastic. The way it switches between periods of loud and soft works really well, and the effects added are very well done. Another of my favourites from the album.

The penultimate song is The Plot is very similar to songs from the first album. The guitar line isn't too complicated, but sounds great all the same. The song has some really good lyrics, and the notes the vocals use work really well. This is surely one of the best songs of the album.

The final song from the album is Morning Light. It starts with a great acoustic guitar introduction. In fact the guitar throughout this piece (and all the other songs) is brilliant; Sam Duckworth is a very talented guitarist. It's a nice song to bring the album to a close.

Overall I think it's a great album. The vocals are well done, the guitar is tight, and the effects and electronic additions fit well with the other parts. The lyrics are clever and are delivered well. In terms of how it compares to the other two albums, I'd say that it's better than the second album; Searching For The Hows And Whys, but isn't quite as good as the first album; Chronicles Of A Bohemian Teenager. Still, it's a great piece of work.

I'll be back with a review of the new Skunk Anansie album Wonderlustre when I get hold of it, but I'm not sure when that will be. But I'll continue with other posts where I provide the usual musical nonsense I usually talk about. Thanks for reading, if you've read this whole post I applaud you, but if you've read some of it I applaud you anyway. Feel free to comment as usual, anyone else heard this album? Anyway, that's it for now.

Thanks,

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Albums I'm looking forward to... I

Greetings all. Today I thought that I would say a few words about a couple of albums I'm quite looking forward to. Both happen to be released on the 13th of September, they are Wonderlustre by Skunk Anansie and Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly by Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. Both of these artists have been mentioned before in my various bloggings so I won't ramble with a lot of background like I usually do.

Oh no, but that means I'll have to find something else to ramble about, hmmm. Anyway, I'll deal with them one at a time. Skunk Anansie are a band that I've liked for a long time, their vocals (courtesy of their Frontwoman, Skin) are harsh, clever, and perfectly delivered, and combine cleanly with the parts played by the rest of the band. I had the pleasure of seeing them live at Sonisphere UK 2010 (see previous entry) and they were very good, their stage presence, especially Skin's, was amazing. So due to all of this I'm expecting good things. I've heard one of the songs from the new album (they played it live), and it was very good, although I'd need to listen to it again to elaborate much further. I think that it could be a very good album. It may not turn out to be one of my favourites but I think that it may manage to find a place in my top 5 albums of 2010. At the end of the year I will (attempt to) make a list of my favourite albums of the year, although I fear I may be more indecisive than ever, I'll have to see how it goes I suppose (ugh that rhymes, oh well I'll leave it there). If you're interested in hearing some Skunk Anansie I recommend you check out the album Stoosh, it's my favourite of theirs, although I haven't really explored many of their albums, I have a couple of others somewhere I think. What I'll do is I'll give them a listen before I post a review of the new album and I'll mention them in the critique. That sounds like a good idea. Anyway, onwards.

The second album I'm looking forward to at the moment is Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly's new self titled album. I've been a fan of Get Cape's music for a few years now, and I managed to see him live at a one day festival in a small venue. He was great live, and I have been trying to see him again ever since but none of his gigs are rarely near where I am and I missed the only time I could have gone to see him due to prior arrangements. Anyway, he currently has two albums released, the first being The Chronicles of a Bohemian Teenager and the second being Searching for the Hows and Whys. Both are very good albums in my opinion, with beautiful guitar picking along with clever and very political vocals. Personally I prefer the first album, but the second also has its moments. It's been a little while since the last album was released, it was released in 2008, so it'll be interesting to see how his music has progressed since then.

So that concludes this entry, I'll review both these albums when I manage to get hold of them. I'll try and acquire them either on or around the release date, and I'll post reviews as soon as I've given them a listen. Comments are welcome as usual, why not let me know what albums you're looking forward to this year?

Cheers,

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Notable Artists I

This is the first in a series of posts where I will discuss a favourite artist of mine, or just one that catches my ear at the time. Now the point of this particular series of posts is to talk about artists that I like, but mainly artists that are not all that famous. So while I very much like bands like Iron Maiden and the Foo Fighters, these posts will feature lesser known artists. Anyway, on with the post.

Ok, well the band I'll give a special mention to in this post is Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. Now I have actually mentioned this band before, but I plan elaborate on whatever I said before.
Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. (I shall refer to the name as Get Cape for short) was originally a single musician called Sam Duckworth. His first album consisted of him playing guitar and singing, with other instruments added via a computer. When on tour he plays with other musicians that play the other parts.
His genre is difficult to define in my opinion, I reckon he falls somewhere around the alternative/acoustic mark, but his second album has more of a rock-like feel to it in certain places.
Anyway, his first album is called The Chronicles of a Bohemian Teenager. This is my personal favourite of his two albums. My favourite tracks on the album are War of the Worlds, and Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. Through his songs Get Cape aims to target issues such as social injustice, and corporate giants.
His second album is entitled Searching for the Hows and Whys. Again this is a very good album which features Get Cape's brilliant guitar playing.
In terms of live performance Get Cape is great. So far I have seen him once a couple of years ago, but I plan to go and see him live again this year.

So I hope I've been of some use here, if you haven't heard any of his music I urge you to check it out. That's all from me for now.

Thanks,

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