Random Play All: Mezzanine Floor

(photo by cmcentral)

So, am going to see TV On The Radio tomorrow. Pretty nice. I like the venue (Koko, aka Camden Palace), I like the band (obviously), it's all good. I don't know who's supporting them: on the band's US tour it was hype-magnets Grizzly Bear who I confess to having completely ignored up to now.

I'm not going to make any exception here, don't worry, despite the fact that I started writing this post without really knowing what I was going to talk about. Much akin to my everyday life where I often embark on ambitious and lengthy sentences without any clear conclusion in mind. It's fun to speculate and plan things better than others, in your mind, as there's no chance of having to deal with the conclusions. Therefore I'm automatically a better referee than any in the Premiership, I'm definitely a better editor than anyone at the NME, etc., etc., blah blah blah.

So what am I going to talk about today? How about a Random Play All? Sweet!

Today's random track is Mezzanine Floor by Delirious? Yes, that's with an intentional question mark, Therapy? style, and no, I couldn't tell you why. Delirious? are a Christian band from Brighton whose album I bought to try and impress a girl in sixth-form. Needless to say she broke my heart and chose another fella, probably after seeing that I'd stooped low enough trying to ingratiate myself to literally scrape my record-buying knuckles along the ground. The music itself, while it doesn't suck, isn't really to my tastes these days: seeing as the album was new in my upper sixth, it's a pre-millenial stadium-soft-rock kind of thing, lots of U2 kind of choruses, some fancy mild electronics, some lighter-waving acoustic anthems.

Actually, some of them are quite good. Having put the album on my mp3 player in a fit of nostalgia earlier this year, I will quite happily listen to It's OK - relatively speaking, the big single - even now. The band approached commercial success outside of the Christian market with this record, although I believe they've since gone on to even more: big in the States, apparently. I remember seeing the song on MTV in the canteen, so they can't have been too minimal, and it's become one of those from that era which make me think of this girl everytime I hear it. She clearly did a number on me, as one of the others is Robbie Williams...

I don't have many songs which remind me of girls, fortunately, my life isn't that Hornby-esque, and again fortunately today's actual song isn't one (not nearly so much as It's OK). It's a fairly upbeat but still kind of downbeat track (I can't really explain why that makes sense), and is one of the more religious on the album: "I'll get to heaven through the sinners' door." It's worth a listen if you like that big ballad American rock sort of thing, Dave Matthews, U2 and the like (yes, I know U2 are Irish, pedant, you know exactly what I mean). It has an interesting stop-start bit at the beginning (on which note: I was flicking through t'interweb for inspiration, and I heard it described, like so much music, as having a "stop-start dynamic." Scuse my ignorance, aren't dynamics volume-related rather than timing? Loud-silent dynamic would make sense...). It actually does have a stop-start section at the start of this track. The huge strings and Martin Smith's soaring near-falsetto come in later and make it a fairly typical-of-the-album song. I recommend downloading It's OK if you're only going to listen to one.

The Music
Delirious? - Mezzanine Floor
Delirious? - It's OK

The 'fo
Artist: Delirious?
Website: delirious.co.uk
Recommended: Mezzamorphis
Label: Furious?
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: U2 - All That You Can't Leave Behind
Tags: Random Play All; Delirious?; U2