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In which our mild-mannered hero listens to three songs wildly out of character for him, and digs two of 'em: eighty words apiece, in alphabetical order by artist...
Metallica, "Enter Sandman" Now that Metallica have become lugubrious balladeers full-time, it's hard to remember what a revelation their "black album" was: everybody knew the band had punch, but it was here that they made their first steps towards embracing a pop aesthetic—i.e., honest-to-Satan melodies and something approaching a groove. That classic bent-note riff, those bone-shaking tom-toms, the wonderfully silly spoken-word middle-eight with the little girl's voice—just the thing for the car stereo, on a summer night, with the windows open.
Rage Against the Machine, "The Ghost of Tom Joad" The words to a whispery Springsteen heartbreaker are stripped of melody and nuance; grafted onto that four note riff, minute variations on which Rage built its entire career on playing; and delivered with such manic relentlessness that song and listener are both bludgeoned into submission. On paper, it doesn't work at all—but in practice, this track shows that RATM could be an astonishingly powerful and emotive band, when building a song around actual lyrics, and not DeLaRocha's empty sloganeering.
Smashing Pumpkins, "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" The opening snarl, the voice in the void, yielding to that creepy, insistent bassline and drums you can feel in your chest: from there it's all coiled springs, gritted teeth, pins-and-needles waiting for the inevitable explosion—and the chorus delivers in spades, with its wall-of-guitars freakout and gloriously dumb tagline: and then the classic pop structure of buildups and breakdowns, cool chime breaking again into white-hot frenzy and back. Formulaic? Maybe, but who cares when the formula is this cathartic?
Detect away, Miss Marple... |
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