Top 10: Songs about space travel and aliens

Here’s your mission, should you choose to accept it: make a list of the best songs about space travel, aliens and giant monsters from space, without mentioning either that bloody song by Bowie or that effin song by Elton John. Sure thing, Ed.

10 of them? … nah, let’s make it an OCD-defying 11.

The B-52s: Planet Claire (1979)

From their esoteric but brilliant self-titled debut is a song about a mysterious woman who has just arrived on Earth. “Planet Claire has pink air/All the trees are red/No one ever dies there/No one has a head.”

Released as a single in 1979, it failed to sparkle in the commercial world, partly, or even wholly, due to the nearly two-minutes of instrumentation before the lyrics kick in. Radio DJs were never going to be enticed by that. The Foo Fighters have been known to do a heavier live version.

Radiohead: Subterranean Homesick Alien (1997)

Radiohead’s finest album is definitely subjective, but for myself, you can’t go beyond their superb OK Computer, from where ‘Subterranean Homesick Alien’ can be found. The title is a play on Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, one of the great observations of the 1960s counterculture. But there’s no similarities in the slightest between them.

Rather, Thom Yorke sings of isolation and wishes that an alien colony can take him away just so he could be a silent observer instead of an active participant in the game of life.

 Kraftwerk: Spacelab (1978)

A star turn on the Man Machine album, ‘Spacelab’ was performed by Kraftwerk with an astronaut in-orbit live in 2018. The collaboration, with German astronaut Alexander Gerst, who was on the International Space Station, closed out Kraftwerk's set at the Jazz Open Festival in Stuttgart.

With Kraftwerk co-founder Ralf Hütter, Gerst played the robo-emotional melody from the song. The time lag made for a few hiccups, but few in the audience were caring.

The Pixies: Motorway to Roswell (1991)

In 1947 debris from a military ballon crash in New Mexico led to various suggestions and rumours that it was a space craft and aliens on board were taken into a US military facility in Roswell. The accident has spurned countless TV series and movies. Pixies singer Frank Black is fascinated by aliens and space and wondered if the visitor(s) “ended up in army crates?/And photographs in files.” 

The Buchanan Brothers: (When You See) Those Flying Saucers (1947)

This was written shortly after Kenneth Arnold shot to global fame after claiming to have seen nine silver-coloured discs flying in unison near Mount Rainier, Washington state. Arnold even estimated their speed at being 1200 miles an hour.

‘(When You See) Those Flying Saucers’ ponders the objective of those aliens in the sky and finds a novel of way of surviving. “You’d better pray to the Lord when you see those flying saucers/It may be the coming of the Judgement Day/It’s a sign there’s no doubt of the trouble that’s about/So I say my friends you’d better start to pray.”

The Byrds: Mr Spaceman (1966)

Taken from Fifth Dimension, ‘Mr Spaceman’ had surprisingly modest results with this single failing to chart in Britain. Music journalists dubbed it space-rock.

The protagonist wakes up in the middle of the night and sees a UFO in the sky. He then dreams of being taken along with the inhabitants. “Hey, Mr Spaceman/Won't you please take me along/I won't do anything wrong/Hey, Mr Spaceman/Won't you please take me along for a ride.”

Parliament: Mothership Connection (1975)

Here’s an entire album with an outer-space theme, but with black people at the core. The album's concept would form the backbone of Parliament and the sister band Funkadelic’s concert performances during the 1970s, in which a large spaceship prop known as the Mothership would be lowered onto the stage.

As well as the title track, there were songs with titles such as ‘Unfunky UFO’ and ‘Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication’. The cover featured a spaceship and the sounds were very much … out there.

Devo: Space Junk (1978)

From Devo’s 1978 debut album, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We are Devo!, generally regarded as the weirdo post-punk band’s finest hour. Even back in the 1970s the amount of discarded space craft parts was beginning to became a problem ... and in this track, it resulted in tragedy. “Well, she was walking all alone/Down the street, in the alley/Her name was Sally/I never touched her, she never saw it/When she was hit by space junk/When she was smashed by space junk/When she was killed by space junk.”

 Destroy All Monsters soundtrack (1968)

Akira Ifukube can be considered to be Japan’s equivalent to Ennio Morricone, a composer extraordinaire who has scored so many of the country’s greatest films, including several Godzilla ones. Among the best of the series of magnificently bonkers keiju movies is this classic from 1968 which features Gojira up against a series of guest opponents. This soundtrack is regarded as one of his finest and in many ways set new standards for film-scores in monster movie making. 

Pink Floyd: Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun (1968)

Syd Barrett played on guitar on this, which was quite an achievement in its own way as by mid-1967 he had begun acting extremely strangely and would play one chord for an entire gig – or none at all. It is said that it is the only song that the first five members of Pink Floyd played together.

Songwriter Roger Waters borrowed the lyrics from a very old book of Chinese poetry and the title was derived from a 1965 novel by science fiction writer Michael Moorcock.

Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers: Here Come the Martian Martians (1976)

The Modern Lovers are often included on proto-punk albums heralded as one of the many bands that were instrumental in fanning the flames of the punk movement.

Richman’s debut album Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers is light-hearted with child-like backing vocals and a curious version of ‘Amazing Grace’. ‘Here Come the Martian Martians’ is certainly in that vein following two songs entitled ‘Abominable Snowman in the Market’ and ‘Hey There Little Insect’.

Albums of 2016

It's time for the annual blog year-end wrap, and a list of 2016's best albums. Or in the case of the way we roll here at everythingsgonegreen, the "best" as in a list of the ten "most listened to" albums in my house this year. The only prerequisite for inclusion here is that I had to purchase a copy during the year. And, of course, I had to like it more than the other 100 or so new (or reissue) albums I picked up in 2016. Streaming doesn't count, and Spotify is dead to me - for OCD reasons that I may one day expand upon in a separate post.

10. The Leers - Are You Curious?

Yet another of the many great recent things to come out of Auckland's Red Bull Studios with Ben Lawson's name affixed to it, The Leers' debut album was a firm favourite across the first half of the year. Are You Curious? was an absorbing radio-ready blend of indie pop hooks and big slabs of bluesy psychedelia. My review can be found here.

9. Crystal Castles - Amnesty (I)

Evidently no longer the critical darling he was when Alice Glass was fronting his unique form of agit-electro-rave on three previous albums, Ethan Kath returned in 2016 alongside a new vocalist, with a new full-length work, and thankfully, more of the same. My review is here.

8. Radikal Guru - Dub Mentalist

Dub Mentalist arrived right at the end of the year so I didn't manage to get a full review up on the blog. But it was nonetheless impressive enough to get more than its share of pod time, and that's all that really matters in terms of where it ultimately stacks up. This is the third straight Radikal Guru album to make the blog's year-end list, so some context here might be that I’m a committed fan of the Polish dub fiend, and therefore, Dub Mentalist, by default, was always guaranteed more ear time. But it still had boxes to tick and expectations to meet, which it did with some aplomb, and Radikal Guru’s signature mix of the deep, the digital, and the rootsy, ensures Dub Mentalist rates just as highly as the other two albums. The tunes given the most room and space to breathe, sans vocalists, take on lives of their own, and those are my favourites here. But that doesn’t mean contributions by guest conspirators like Jay Spaker, Echo Ranks, Solo Banton, and Earl 16, don’t also have their place. This guy keeps on rolling out a wholly unique brand of extra-terrestrial dub at fairly regular intervals, but his genre of choice and area of expertise is so niche, nobody seems to notice.

7. Pacific Heights - The Stillness

Shapeshifter-come-electro-head-bobber Devin Abrams came up with something personal, intimate, and quite raw (in parts) with The Stillness, yet it was also polished, accessible, and everything a successful breakout solo album should be. During a year when local work blasted all preconceived limitations out of view, The Stillness could quite easily have placed much higher on this list. My review is here.

6. The Radio Dept - Running Out of Love

On the surface Running Out of Love appeals as a dose of saccharine Swedish indie pop. Scratch a little beneath that, however, and you’ll find something much darker buried deep within its slightly rotten core. My review is here.

5. Adrian Sherwood/Various - At The Controls Vol.2 1985-1990

This is another one of those pesky compilation albums that has no place on a list such as this (see unwritten blog rule 425, clause 1b). Well it would be, if it wasn’t an On-U Sound compilation, and a collection of prime On-U era archive material, mixed by label guru and occasional world leading mixologist Adrian Sherwood. In defiance of the rule, At The Controls v2, also topped one of the annual lists over at the obviously very learned website, The Quietus. Admittedly it was a list for rogue releases, oddities, and collections that don’t really fit in anywhere else. A little bit like Sherwood himself. My review is here.

4. Underworld - Barbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future

Aside from the Radikal Guru album, Underworld’s awkwardly-titled BBWFASF (phew) was the only other entry in the ten that I failed to write a full review for during the year. But just like Radikal Guru, Underworld’s place on this list was practically assured as soon as the album arrived in my inbox. As an Underworld fan, I was always bound to give more time to BBWFASF than some others. I even thought their otherwise indifferently-received Barking album of 2010 was one of the best of its year. The thing that makes new Underworld material so hard to resist is the sense that they’re always a few steps ahead of the game, always state-of-the-art, despite massive changes in the rules over the course of the 25-odd years they’ve been doing their thing. And all - for the vast majority of those years - within that most fickle of flighty genres, dance music. In truth, it probably doesn’t hit the giddy or euphoric heights of their first couple of albums, and there’s no ‘Born Slippy’ or an epic ‘Rez’ to be found here, but the music of Underworld has evolved to occupy a different space these days, and there’s still a lot to love on BBWFASF.

3. Pitch Black - Filtered Senses

See all of the above. Add in a local context. Ahead of the rest, state-of-the-art, across 20 years. Etc. For me, one of the best Friday mornings of 2016 was the one when I skyped Paddy Free in New York, and he spoke of Pitch Black’s accomplishments and getting to do what he loves every day like it was the most natural thing in the world. Reviewed here for the blog and for NZ Musician magazine. 

2. David Bowie - Blackstar

Only David Bowie could pull this off. What better way to go out than to do so just two days after releasing an album that positively oozed all things life and death? Without giving us so much as a hint in advance. I’m still a little spooked by it. A massive loss, but he left us with an incredible legacy. My review is here.

1. Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool

I told anyone that would listen just how good this was. Every listen felt like it was turned up an extra notch. As Radiohead continue to astound and build on an already expansive discography, A Moon Shaped Pool is merely the latest flawless instalment. In reality, daylight was second. My review is here.

Five Honourable Mentions:

The Average Rap Band album, El Sol, very nearly pipped The Leers for a place in the final ten, falling just short in the end. It probably just needs to simmer through another summer.

I thought the Suede album, Night Thoughts, had a lot going for it, in a very insular and retro kind of way, but it also felt a little bit out of step with everything else going on in 2016. I remain a Suede devotee and completist.

The also no-longer-particularly-relevant Primal Scream released something close to an actual synthpop album in the form of Chaosmosis, which had a few cracker tunes on it. But the feeling I got listening to it, given the Scream’s cutting edge past, is that cliché commercial pop, in this instance, might just be the last bastion of the ultimate Nineties scoundrel. Bobby Gillespie has a lot to answer for, and that vocal is now more irritating than ever.

I know Warpaint’s Heads Up got a lot of love elsewhere, with good reason, and I did enjoy it, I just didn’t find myself wanting to go back for fourths, fifths, or a sixth listen. Even though I understand that’s probably exactly what I needed to do.

My guilty pleasure quota was sated by the music of Icelandic blues-rockers Kaleo, and their album A/B, which arrived somewhere out of left field and was an album I wouldn’t *normally* find myself listening to.

Some other end-of-year gongs (“the EGGs”):

EP or short album of the year was Yoko-Zuna’s Luminols, five quite diverse and distinct tunes, with the Tom Scott collab, ‘Orchard St’, going on to become a big pod favourite.

Reissue of the year was Jack White’s Acoustic Recordings 1998-2016, because I’m a big White fan, and cos I like the idea of putting some of this stuff together, where it wouldn’t ordinarily be automatically compatible by default. And because, if for no other reason, the stripped back bluegrass version of The Raconteurs’ ‘Top Yourself’ blows me away every time I hear it. White’s release was pushed closely by two deluxe/expanded releases: the 40^th anniversary issue of The Ramones’ 1976 debut, which became a triple disc featuring demos and live takes, and Pure McCartney, which was another scarcely needed yet still strangely compelling post-Beatles career overview from his nibs. There was also the small matter of Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall getting a deluxe makeover.

Freebie or exceptional name-your-price release of the year: as found on Bandcamp, toss a coin and choose between Adi Shankara’s dark and dense Structures, or the Auckland-based Peach Milk, with her delicious Finally EP.

The everythingsgonegreen gig of the year was Tami Neilson’s San Fran (Wellington) set from way back in March. Thoroughly polished and professional, great company, and a brilliant vibe on the night. 

More generally, 2016 was a year of relentless mourning for pop culture fiends. All of those barely anticipated deaths: from Bowie to Prince to Leonard Cohen to George Michael. And everyone else in between. Farewell to popular artists like Glenn Frey, Sharon Jones, Maurice White, and Pete Burns. To roots and country music stars like Leon Russell and Merle Haggard. To iconic producers like (Sir) George Martin and Prince Buster. To local (NZ) legends such as Ian Watkin, Ray Columbus, and Bunny Walters. To stars of the big and small screens - Gene Wilder, Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher, Alan Rickman, Jean Alexander, and Caroline Aherne. Even beyond the world of music, film, and the arts, transgenerational global figures such as Muhammad Ali and Fidel Castro couldn’t survive the cull. Plus there will be many others of varying importance and influence to you personally (that I simply haven’t covered here). Bottom line: it’s been a rough year …

And while I’m sorely tempted to use the last paragraph of this post to launch into an opinionated rant about global politics - Aleppo, terrorism, the global refugee crisis, Brexit, Trump, and the rise of the xenophobic Right in general - I’ll spare you …

Be gone 2016 ... watch your arse on the way out.

The Festive Dozen 2016: Radiohead - Burn The Witch

As boring and as cliché as it undoubtedly is, I'm going to find it very difficult to go past Radiohead's A Moon Shaped Pool for everythingsgonegreen's (much coveted!) album of the year. (The album isn't boring but I suspect my selection is predictable). That decision still hangs in the balance, and I'll probably end up making a definitive call while consuming a few too many fizzy drinks over the upcoming festive season. But in the meantime there's this, the strings-heavy 'Burn The Witch', one of two advance singles from back in May, a leftover from the Kid A sessions, and a rather deserving Grammy nominee for Best Rock Song of 2016. Enjoy the slightly disturbing Wicker Man-themed clip:

(The Festive Dozen is a fairly randomly selected year-end collection of clips featuring the tunes which featured most prominently on the (generally pop-loving) iPod playlists of everythingsgonegreen at various stages throughout 2016) ...

Album Review: Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool (2016)

I’m a little late getting this review over the line, but feel I need to post it now regardless, before the end of 2016, while the album still has some semblance of currency or relevance, at least …

It's coming up for nearly 20 years since Radiohead released its masterpiece*, OK Computer. Which means that for the best part of two decades the band has been continuously striving to match or better that landmark work. Not to reproduce or replicate the formula, but to expand or develop upon it. The result of that quest for long-form excellence has been a series of albums ranging from the good, to the great, to the quite magical. A Moon Shaped Pool is merely the latest instalment in that remarkable flop-free run.

In some respects, along the way, Radiohead has become post-millennium rock’s equivalent of what Pink Floyd was to Seventies rock – a genuine master of the album art form. During a period when that art form has been slowing dying. Or so we’ve been told.

And of course, just like Floyd, a large degree of innovation is right at the very heart of everything Radiohead does – whether it comes to embracing new production values, breaking down genre prejudices, mixing up release formats, or in the case of A Moon Shaped Pool, releasing the album on the back of zero pre-release publicity or hype. Radiohead just like to do things a little differently.

With a few other projects on the go (solo albums, Atoms for Peace) there was a school of thought that Thom Yorke may be, in a creative sense at least, in danger of spreading himself too thinly. The same might be said for guitarist Jonny Greenwood (film scores and other composition work), or indeed, producer Nigel Godrich (various, also Atoms for Peace), but on the evidence offered here, we need not be concerned with such folly. Radiohead is back, and clearly, all component parts are fully engaged.

In fact, I’ll go further: Radiohead, as a unit, is better than it has been for a long time. Each time I play A Moon Shaped Pool, everything else I've been listening to immediately pales into insignificance. It feels like the album is a cut above everything else out there at the moment. It’s a bit like that mythical "next level" status so loved by those of us who like to deal in hyperbole.

Next level, progressive, moving forward, and yet still able to draw upon many of the best features of the band’s past output. So we get the beautifully crafted symphonic rock (‘The Numbers’), the darker, dense, flashes of paranoia (‘Ful Stop’), and the softer, more melancholic acoustic moments (‘Desert Island Disk’). There’s strings, glitchy electronica, dreamy prog flourishes, and rather more straightforward or orthodox pop elements. And if there’s an album this year with a better one-two knockout opening combo of tracks – ‘Burn The Witch’ and ‘Daydreaming’ – then I certainly haven’t heard it.

A Moon Shaped Pool clocks in at a perfectly manageable 52 minutes (11 tracks), and where I might once have enjoyed the band’s music in much shorter doses, there’s not a single moment on this album where I feel bored or disengaged – it’s utterly captivating from start to finish. Even my long-suffering partner – a Radiohead sceptic, if ever there was one – owned up to (unexpectedly) enjoying this album. There can be no higher praise that that.

* Many will argue The Bends, or Kid A, might be a better fit for this description, but I’d argue more vociferously on behalf of OK Computer, as that album specifically marked the moment when pretty much the whole world – give or take a few naysayers in remote Amazonian blackspots – woke up and took note of the band’s existence.

Album Review: Atoms For Peace – Amok (2013)

Atoms For Peace is the current side project for Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, and the band includes talented friends like Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, and sometime Beck and REM drummer Joey Waronker. Yorke initially formed the group as a nameless live/touring act back around 2009, and the long-time-in-coming debut album, Amok, says Yorke, was “the product of getting together, getting wasted, and listening to Fela Kuti” ...

The first couple of times I listened to Amok, it just sort of washed over me. It felt a little bit inconsequential, like well produced background music, and it barely registered at all. On first impression, the album was little more than a blurry montage of glitchy twitchy sounds, with an ethereal Thom Yorke vocal wailing indecipherably over the top. And while it had a persistent percussive pulse underpinning the whole thing, there just didn’t appear to be all that much substance beneath the exterior sheen.

 

Then I heard it through headphones, and the album instantly took on a different hue.

The intimacy of the headphone experience exposed a work of depth and detail that wasn’t initially even hinted at. Rather than the distant distraction it first appeared to be, Amok revealed itself to be a carefully crafted gem, an album that draws heavily from elements of synthpop, electronica, and afrobeat to create an almost perfect pop hybrid. And all of those minor details lost upon the first couple of listens immediately became features ... highlights even.

That shared love of afrobeat (and rhythm in general) shines brightly on Amok. There’s a strong synth/electronic presence throughout, but mostly the music is propelled by a nagging bass and multiple layers of percussion. The other major player in the band is the Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco, and it is Refosco’s best work that tends to stand out on an album that simply oozes forward momentum.

It all feels very polished (thanks, presumably, to Godrich), and in the end, even Yorke’s occasionally annoying mumble-come-moan becomes a pivotal part of the music. There’s a barely disguised simplicity about it, and perhaps even something a little magical about the way vocal FX are employed on a couple of tracks. Seldom has Thom Yorke’s voice proved more engaging over the full-length course. While some of his fretwork isn’t half bad either.

 

When Yorke released his first “solo” album, The Eraser, back in 2006, it continued an electronica path Radiohead had already long been exploring, and as highly rated as that album was by others at the time, I had huge difficulty separating the work of Thom Yorke, the solo artist, from that of Radiohead, the band. But that’s definitely not the case here. With Atoms For Peace, I’m somehow able to get beyond the Radiohead thing, and for whatever reason, this band feels much less a side project, and something way more rewarding in its own right.

Running time is 44 minutes over the course of nine tracks, the best of which are: opener ‘Before Your Very Eyes’ (clip below), first single 'Default’, ‘Ingenue’, ‘Judge Jury And Executioner’, and ‘Amok’.

 

 

 

Albums of 2011 # 2: Radiohead - The King of Limbs

The main problem with reviewing any new Radiohead release is that it becomes practically impossible to say anything new about Thom Yorke and the band. It’s all been said before. In terms of the album format, for the best part of two decades now Radiohead have led the way with one outstanding album after another. This is a band that pre-dated Brit-pop, one that eventually skirted around the periphery of that “scene” (rather wisely), before going on to record what was supposed to be its finest hour in the form of OK Computer as long ago as 1997. I say “was supposed to be” because many will now argue that both Kid A and In Rainbows – each a game-changer in its own way – surpassed that landmark/benchmark release. Me? ... I’m still not convinced.

Nor am I about to argue that the band’s eighth full-length effort, The King of Limbs, is superior to all that has gone before ... but it does once again rate among the very best of its year; Radiohead are nothing if not ultra consistent. Key to the band’s longevity, and pivotal to its ability to still remain relevant, are all of the subtle changes made to its formula through the years ... starting out as a (predominantly) guitar-based indie rock outfit, before morphing into the new kings of modern day prog-rock, and now more recently they’ve been taking on the kids at their own game by attempting to master all things electronic and glitchy ... which is the version we find on The King of Limbs.

I’m not really a huge fan of the band; on past efforts (OK Computer excepted), for all of the musical wizardry on offer, Yorke’s vocal often becomes a touch tiring and rather depressing for me. Yet on TKOL, Yorke’s voice is the stand-out instrument. It works as a key element embedded within the wider sound, something akin to a moody, atmospheric supplement, and it is actually integral to the enjoyment I get from listening to the album this time around.

And I usually prefer listening to snippets of the band’s wider discography in small doses, which is probably another reason why I like TKOL so much – it’s a short, sharp burst of aural pleasure, and fully digestible in one sitting. At just eight tracks and barely 37 minutes in length, it is a quality-over-quantity, no filler, thriller of an album. Just long enough to rate as a fully formed album release, and sufficiently short enough to retain my interest for the full duration. It hardly matters that Radiohead’s lyrics remain rather abstract (to say the least) – this album is more about creating a mood, about creating a series of soundscapes to take the listener on a short journey. There’s nothing overly ambitious or too demanding here either, just buckle yourself in and enjoy the ride.

Download: the whole damned thing! ... but highlights include: ‘Little By Little’, ‘Lotus Flower’, ‘Feral’, and ‘Codex’.

Here’s a clip of Thom Yorke putting his best freak on …