SOUNDTRACK: GRAHAM COXON-The End Of The F***ing World (Original Songs and Score) (2018).
When I saw Graham Coxon live, he played a bunch of songs from this soundtrack.
I assumed that the soundtrack would be one song and a bunch of moody instrumentals, so I never really looked into it. But recently I read that it was really good.
And it is.
There’s 16 songs on the record. Most are full songs and the few instrumental pieces are just as interesting.
“Walking All Day” is the catchy song that he played live that did interest me in the soundtrack. It’s a bouncy folk song with a buzzy acoustic guitar solo. He sings in a quiet whispery voice which sounds different from his usual singing voice. The lyrics are sweet, if not odd:
Walking all day with my mouth on fire
trying to get talking to you.
“Angry Me” has a punky strum on acoustic guitar. It sounds like a bratty Blur song from the album that “Song 2” came from. [He played this].
“Flashback” is 16 seconds of heavy metal noise with saxophones and pummeling drums. It’s very disconcerting between these two songs, and I feel like it should come later for better sequencing. But it is only 16 seconds.
“In My Room” is a quiet acoustic song. It starts with just the guitar. Then the bass and drums come in as Coxon slowly sings about those outside of his room:
Outside the window they’re singing
Inside the doorway there’s me
Endlessly thinking and working
“Bus Stop” is five minutes long. There’s a two-minute super catchy instrumental section which is followed by a bouncy verse with rather shoegaze feel.
Then there’s a few really short songs all around two minutes. “The Beach” starts with a rumbling slide guitar solo and adds picked guitar notes. It’s got a very Western feeling. “Saturday Night” is a quiet mournful ballad of acoustic guitar and piano. He played this live (without the piano).
“On the Prowl” is a garage rock song with a very fifties feel.
“It’s All Blue” is another delicate folk song that Graham played live. It features his more innocent vocal lines.
“The Snare” is a heavily reverbed noir kind of song with that familiar detective bass line and echoing guitar (very David Lynch). The last minute or so totally rocks out with a distortion filled solo.
“Lucifer’s Behind Me” is a fast song with bongos and more vibrato guitar lines. It’s kind of upbeat despite the feeling of pursuit in the lyrics.
“Field” is a lovely instrumental. A 90 second acoustic guitar piece that is rather relaxing. A nice contrast to “She Left the Light On– a stark and sinister acoustic song with a lead whistle! The middle is catchy. He played this one live.
“Roaming Star” is a 2 minute gentle acoustic piece with soft vocals About half way through there’s some very old-fashioned sounding horns. He played this one.
“Sleuth” is a two minute instrumental. It has a chugging electric guitar with some looping guitar solo work over the top.
“There’s Something in the Way that You Cry” is a slow mournful ballad that he played live. It’s a pretty sad ending to a soundtrack album that holds together really well and isn’t only instrumental pieces.
I now wish I had heard them before the show so I could have really appreciated them live.
[UPDATE: I watched the show in May 2020 and the soundtrack works really well. The show is very very dark, as you might guess from the title].
[READ: June 20, 2019] “Superstring Theory for Dummies”
Zev Borow is associated with Dave Eggers. He worked on their magazine Might and also on McSweeney’s ( I don’t think they work together anymore, but they might). Since then, has written for just about every publication out there. He also wrote episodes of and became a prominent story editor in the show Chuck.
This is the first piece of his I’ve read in the New Yorker and, as with so many Shouts & Murmurs, it’s mildly funny.
The bit starts with a quote from the Times in which the author tried to describe superstring theory which looks beyond the three dimensions of space. Imagine that you are in the book Flatland. You can move forward and back, left and right but not up or down.
So Borow expands on that.
Imagine you are a barnacle on an old boat. Then imagine that you are on a speedboat and you are its tanned Filipino captain with great abs. This is like superstring theory except with boats and you having great abs.
Next, pretend that you are Russell Crow in Gladiator–dress the part, get a sword slay a tiger: “Very, very superstring theory.”
There’s a few more examples, but my favorite was the last one. Find a pencil and a five year old. Tell the five year old you’ll bet them five dollars that you can make a pencil bend just by waving it in the air.
Demonstrate.
Take your money and before walking away explain that
the reason you can make a pencil bend in the air, and are now five dollars richer is because of a little something called superstring theory something that he or she night not understand but you do.
So many Shouts & Murmurs are based on the author riffing on something they find funny in a newspaper. It’s a weird conceit.
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