Daily Mael 2000

Angelic choir as you’d expect. Operatic voice too. So so good. There’s a clean and sweary version of this. Both are excellent, but the sweary one has the advantage of having ‘you look so fucking good’ amongst all the heavenly backing. Even the reverb guitar bits are sweet as a nut. Simply divine.

High electronic drama with big silences and thumps at the beginning. Then it buzzes on with just a small respite of bloops and bleeps. I love the choirboy la la las. Very vague subject matter revolving around some kind of experimental observation either in a scientific setting or alien beings/gods looking down on the human race. Stark.

Sumptuous strings and piano affair with rolling drum n bass type nonsense clattering in eventually. Soars at points with a heavenly vocal. Strangely cryptic lyrics involving a breakage, a fall and a loss. Covers a lot of ground that – whatever is broken, we all know that in this modern cynical world everything is ‘designed to flake.’

Fakery, fakery – it’s all fakery. The wonderful world of forgery subtly serenaded. ‘So close and yet the paint’s still wet.’ Nicely crafted wee tune used for the Tsui Hark action movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. Sparks – nothing if not versatile.

The subject matter perfectly fits the arrangement. An awesome homage to Japanese technology which, like Sparks themselves, perfectly weds art and science. The contrast between nature and scientific achievement is beautifully brought out by seeing Mount Fuji ‘not hidden by clouds’ out the window of this slick machine at one with the landscape: ‘How the fabric and the finish and the glass intersect.’

Chilled out affair. Very useful life lessons in how to avoid a kicking delivered in a hauntingly cool melody. The dreaminess of its delivery echoes the warning of not going around oblivious to your surroundings. Very smart. The verse about being cut off by bikers is just fantastically clever in its layered meanings. And incredibly vicious ‘they take their turns. Many turns.’ Stunning song.

A completely different beast from The Calm Before The Storm with similar sense of portent, but with basic Pa pa pa pum type vocal backing and repetition of the same two lines throughout. Very satisfying. Sort of a barber shop quartet given an operatic setting. Bravo.

Uncannily manages to convey a sense of foreboding with a splendid fusion of dance and rock beats and yet another memorable hook line worming its way into your skull. Aside from the tremendous rhyming of ‘fan’ with ‘Chopin,’ there’s an abundance of witty words and killer lines flying about here, including, ‘The muscle cars are driving way too slow.’

Rock riffage aplenty in a heavy homage to the joys of Russian air travel. Love it when the air hostess gets a word in and saying goodbye in the silence just before the riff starts again. Toe tapping classic, along with this marvellous couplet: ‘Blinis on your plate and Eisenstein on screen/Richard Branson must be turning red or green.’

Builds up satisfyingly from basic beginning to a steady seductive flow through a tale of the princess storyteller from The Arabian Nights. In the book, she has to endlessly entertain a king with cliffhanger stories (‘No repeats’!) to avoid being killed. Enchanting stuff and inspired rhyming of ‘colour blindness’ with ‘who’s behind this?’

Rollocking good fun with straight ahead no frills dance beat and insanely catchy hook as Russell hilariously curses his good looks and stature and tries to explain how he is so much more than just a piece of meat: ‘I may be too athletic, too healthy and too tony,’ Ha!

Strong electro dance groove powers this along in a no nonsense attack with crunching keyboard and funky guitar jabs. Solid rocker. No messing with the subject matter either about the ridiculously macho notion about what you need to succeed. ‘Others will desire you. They may not admire you. But they will admit you do transmit balls.’

 

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