March 01, 2005
ONLY HAPPY WHEN IT RAINS
:::cue the crickets chirping:::
Shirley Manson... Butch Vig...
:::more crickets chirping:::
Okay, so they're lost a bit of relevance the last few years amid the boy bands, the avalanche of hip hop and the Death of Pop. And, yes, they officially jumped the shark when they wrote a tune for a James Bond movie (a very good song, I might add). But then they went away. And now they're back.
Unlike the heavily layered, monumentally sampled and synthed sound on their previous albums, "Bleed Like Me" takes a different turn.
The album's first single, "Why Do You Love Me," officially hit the airwaves Tuesday, with a Sophie Muller-directed video to follow shortly behind."It's a very melodic ... Phil Spector girl-group sped-up-fast kind of song," bassist/guitarist Steve Marker said. "It's one of my favorite cuts on the record. It's gonna be a challenge to play live, especially for our drummer. It's very fast."
"It also has one of the most metal riffs we've ever done," added guitarist/bassist Duke Erikson.
On the track, singer Shirley Manson questions her appeal to a lover and then questions his motivations and eventually his loyalty. "I'm not as pretty as those girls in magazines," she sings in the first verse.
"It's a weird, weird song that kind of deals with three different things in my life going on at one time," Manson explained. "I can't actually articulate it very easily without sounding like a turd. ... I always feel like I have this duty to explain the lyrics, and I always feel like such a turd doing it, so I just decided on this record I'm not gonna do it."
Ahhh, the sweet fragrance of indifference.
Yeah, I remember the mid-90s.
Anyway, if you care, there's a solid fan site to be found here. Posted by Jeff at March 1, 2005 06:28 AM
Saw them live once somewhere in Oregon around '97 at the peak of my indifference for their indifference (yes, a woman was involved). They'd always struck me as a mediocre Curve knockoff, but since nobody's heard of Curve it didn't (and doesn't) matter. Anyway, most of the show was predictably ho-hum until they did a stunningly good these-go-to-11 version of Big Star's "Thirteen" and won my lasting admiration. I never got around to buying any of their records, but in retrospect they had a handful of pretty damn fine singles.
Posted by: Rommie at March 1, 2005 09:49 AMOh c'mon... They're not THAT bad!
Posted by: Mike at March 1, 2005 11:34 AMLove em'
Posted by: Cupie at March 2, 2005 12:55 AM