rhyme Archives - Trip Gunn

Album cover for Massive Attack's "Blue Lines"

This week, I’ve been listening to Massive Attack’s 1991 debut album “Blue Lines” for lessons I can learn as a songwriting musician. “Blue Lines” gets praise for it’s groundbreaking style opening the way for the genre of trip hop for the rest of the decade.I was completely unaware of Massive Attack throughout the 90s. In the early 2000s, I heard a bit of the 1998 album “Mezzanine,” but I honestly can’t say I remember anything about it. I liked the atmosphere of other trip hop artists, especially Portishead. Somehow, a copy of Massive Attack member Tricky’s solo album “Pre-Millennium Tension” found its way into my collection and I enjoyed bits of it.

So, I was looking forward to my week with this album. Overall, this album was disappointing. It’s not that it’s bad, in fact some of it is quite good. I had expectations that it could not live up to. To my ears today, it’s not remarkably interesting or special. I was anticipating something more like the trip hop that followed it, and really it’s hip-hop inspired pop music of the mid-90s. Perhaps what made it innovative was influential to other artists that took it further, making the original sound kind of quaint.

Like much hip-hop, the music of Massive Attack is largely sample-based. Though, as I understand, combining original music with samples was part of the innovation here. But even the SugarHill Gang was doing this back in 1979. The use of samples does not pose a problem for me, but I was disappointed to learn that the bassline from “Safe From Harm” is a sample from Billy Cobham’s “Stratus” which uses the bassline in much the same way. Massive Attack sample, one of the most sampled-artists, Funkadelic for drums.

The opening of the track with atmospheric noise and rolling bassline sounds super-cool. It reminds me of some of DJ Spooky’s (also sample-based) work “Galactic Funk” from 1996. I would assume that’s an example of me hearing the influenced before hearing the influencer. Stylish vocals float over the bassline, sung in a jazz-inflected soulful way by Shara Nelson.

One of my favorite bits of the song are the male smooth-rapped line “I was looking back to see if you were looking back at me to see me looking back at you.” They cut and manipulate this line to enhance the scratched-record feel already present in the lyrics.

The lyrics of this album frequently disappoint. I don’t know if I can condone mispronouncing “contagious” to make it rhyme with “dangerous” though. It reminds me too much of Jez’s song “Outrageous” from comedy show “Peep Show.” Also, this album provides reminders that if the listener can figure it out, maybe you shouldn’t spell it out. Like in the otherwise decent reggaeish track “One Love” when he says “They say don’t lay your eggs in one basket;
If the basket should fall all the eggs’ll be broken.”

The smooth track “Blue Lines” features cool samples from Tom Scott and the L.A. Express. Some clean funky guitar comes from a song by The Blackbyrds. I recognize the Blackbyrds sample from several other hip hop songs around the same time. Again, the vocal are smooth rap delivered in an effortless way that contradicts much of the “spit” or harder-edge rap. Massive Attack often opt for cool over brag:

Somebody da-ditty, nobody
Walking on sunshine, but, still, we’re treading water
The son of many reasons searching for the daughter
Seeking knowledge, not acknowledging the jet-set
Silver papers of the sound within my Budakon headset
The solar system watches in wisdom
The children dance as the moonlight kissed them

The closing track “Hymn of the Big Wheel” features all original music, as far as I can find researching online. It stands also as one of the musically stronger songs. Pulsating synths provide a drone-like effect as heard in Indian or Scottish music. Over this, the vocals sing in a hymn-like melody lyrics that almost achieve what they try to do. Again, there’s some disappointing lyrics. The line “There’s a hole in my soul like a cavity” seems rather redundant, considering “cavity” is a synonym for “hole.” Still, overall the song is a hymn, some of the best lyrics on the album.

As a child’s silent prayer my hope hides in disguise
While satellites and cameras watch from the skies
An acid drop of rain recycled from the sea
It washed away my shadow burnt a hole in me
And all the king’s men cannot put it back again
But the ghetto sun will nurture life
And mend my soul sometime againThe big wheel keeps on turning
On a simple line day by day
The earth spins on its axis
One man struggle while another relaxes

While I enjoyed some of this album, I don’t feel I’ll be returning to it. Also, this isn’t a collection of songs I see having much influence on my own music. Still, glad I finally heard it and devoted a week getting to know it.

This week, I’ve been listening to Bob Dylan’s 1975 album “Blood on the Tracks” to improve my craft as a songwriting musician. Each Bob Dylan album so far has been monstrously impressive from a songwriting perspective. His skill to employ metaphor within narrative songs that utilize rhyme is astounding. For me, this album is right up there with “Blonde on Blonde” and I can’t get enough of it now that I’ve spent a week with it.

Finger-picked blues guitar drives the track “Meet Me in the Morning.” At first, I didn’t care for this song due to its repetitive nature. A twelve bar blues progression (I-I-I-I-IV-IV-I-I-V-V-I-I) provides foundation upon which Dylan sings lyrics that follow the twelve-bar blues blues format of one line repeated twice, then a line in response. Like much of the album, the lyrics deal with a struggling relationship.

The first verse opens with the title “Meet me in the morning, 56 and Wabasha. Honey, we could be in Kansas by the time the snow begins to thaw.” I’m not sure why they are meeting to travel, except perhaps as a change of scenery or escape. The next verse tells how some say it’s darkest before the dawn, but the singer is always dark. But, when the morning rooster crows in the third verse, the singer feels mistreated by his lover. He feels persecuted and trapped, and wonders if the love was a curse. “Look at the sun sinking like a ship. Ain’t that just like my heart, babe, When you kissed my lips?”

I loved this catchy song by the end of the week. I like the layers of multiple guitars. In the right channel , a bright acoustic guitar plays rhythm-lead lines. A fuzzy slide guitar soaked in reverb provides some atmosphere in the background. Another acoustic guitar quietly strums the chords. And yet clean electric guitar joins later to pick some lead lines and also gets in conversation with the fuzz guitar during the outro.

Also, I find it impossible to not sing along to the mellow grooving bassline.

On “Shelter From the Storm,” Dylan sings tenderly of a love lost. The jangly acoustic guitar dances nervously between the bass and vocals. We hear the sound of the pick and/or guitar strap ticking and rattling against the guitar. These additional sounds of guitar-playing unintentionally provide the only percussion. This type of natural imperfections lends a sense of authenticity to the recording. The chord progression throughout is a basic I-V-IV-I, with the melody providing a sense of variation through the verses.

These are some tremendous lyrics. The song is about confusion, loss, frustrations and heartache, but he’s telling it through the sweetness and tenderness. That’s how the song manages to be so powerful. Rather than talking so much about pain and loss, he talk about promises and what was lost. However, it’s the middle verse that puts everything in perspective.

Now there’s a wall between us, something there’s been lost
I took too much for granted, I got my signals crossed
Just to think that it all began on an uneventful morn
Come in, she said, I’ll give you shelter from the storm

Of course, there’s layers of ambiguity here as other themes become part of the picture. Images of Christ come into play, which could embarrassingly make a martyr out of the speaker, but I prefer to avoid that interpretation. It’s too mighty a structure of self-pity, and also would be too self-righteous in contrast to other statements in the song.

The brilliant “Tangled Up in Blue” opens the album and remained my favorite song the full week. I rather feel it’s too great of a song to be the first. The opening chords of A and Asus4 play in my head all day. The verses are in a I-VIIb-I-VIIb-I-VIIb-I twice, followed by V-vi-I-IV twice and ends with VIIb-IV-I for the refrain of “Tangled up in blue.”

The first half of each verse is sung in a restrained back-and-forth melody, with the pitch rising for the second half. The percussion and other instruments likewise pick up in energy. This is balanced by the lower-pitched chords of E and F#m. The the refrain anchors the verse back to the tonic on “blue.” It’s interesting the use of chords for this key. The chords are more likely those of a song in the key of G, while the melody is actually in key of A.

As with the whole album, the layering and interplay of instruments is fantastic. Multiple strummed and picked acoustic guitars provide a full atmosphere of sound. Still they are mixed in a way that manages to keep things feeling stripped down.

The lyrics are the most amazing part of the song. A week definitely provides too little time to fully appreciate all he has going on here. At the very basic level, I appreciate the narrative quality of the song. Songs that tell stories, especially about characters and their relationships, get my interest. I especially appreciate tales of that touched on and lost and over-arching tales that narrow in on details. This is especially made poignant by going back to a place while accentuating the distance.

So now I’m going back again,
I got to get to her somehow.
All the people we used to know
They’re an illusion to me now.
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenter’s wives.
Don’t know how it all got started,
I don’t know what they’re doing with their lives.
But me, I’m still on the road
Heading for another joint
We always did feel the same,
We just saw it from a different point of view,
Tangled up in blue.

Tag: rhyme

Massive Attack’s “Blue Lines”

Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks”