Fluxblog 516: believe in yourself, the rest is up to me and you

New posts about old classics by TLC, Tricky, and The Verve

Feb 28, 2025

Clear Blue And Unconditional Skies

TLC “Waterfalls”

I am confident that if you put on TLC’s “Waterfalls” and focused all of your attention on LeMarquis Jefferson’s bass line, you will fall in love. But what would you fall in love with?

Maybe you’d fall in love with the character of the bass part and anthropomorphize it a bit: a suave, slick, highly expressive and unpredictable character at the center of the song, seemingly flirting with all the more rigidly defined parts surrounding it. I imagine the bass line as this charismatic and curious figure in conversation with everything else in the song – the beat, those horns, that ultra-juicy wah guitar, the TLC girls themselves. Listen to how the bass seems to slink up to some parts, or back away to give others some space, like when Left Eye starts to rap. This bass line is a funky gentleman.

Maybe you’d fall for Jefferson himself, and whatever it is about his mind, body, and soul that manifested this performance in the studio. His bass line was reportedly improvised in the studio, so we’re truly listening to someone stepping into an already brilliant pop composition and infusing it with his personality. Who is this guy? How did he come to be so articulate with this instrument? What is he trying to communicate here? He seems to be operating on pure instinct here and it’s beautiful.

Maybe you’ll tap into the vibe of the bass part and fall in love with someone in your real life, emboldened by its loose grace, assured sensuality, and playful spirit. It could unlock your body, brighten your soul, and make the whole world feel more alive to you. It could make you feel a vibrant sort of love that draws others to you.

Could be all three.

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Tricky & Martina Topley-Bird “Feed Me”

“Feed Me” has an odd sense of gravity to it. There’s a solid bass groove at the center, but the looped chimes sample seems as though it’s always drifting out of frame. It’s like being gently pulled in two different directions, with no sense of which of the two opposing forces is better. There’s a lot of implied distance between the musical elements here, so you feel this vast empty middle space where the vocals sit.

The music establishes a theme that’s further developed in the lyrics, of feeling unable to reconcile contradictions and ultimately embracing the incongruities. Creation and destruction, chaos and order, belonging and estrangement, love and hate, clarity and confusion – life is mostly lived somewhere along the spectrum between these binaries. “Feed Me” exists in some constantly shifting space between these poles, and that weird non-place feels like home.

Tricky and Martina Topley-Bird both seem serene in this song, as though they’ve unburdened themselves of the conflicts that informed all the preceding tracks on Maxinquaye. The primary tension through the record is the question of who’s the seducer and who’s the seduced, but here they come across like equals in a state of equilibrium. Martina recorded her lead vocal when she was still a teenager but she sounds remarkably lucid and sanguine while Tricky hangs in the back, mostly whisper-rapping but fully singing towards the end. She sounds weary but hopeful, wise yet uncertain. She sounds like someone who has figured out how to feel whole.

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Things Your Lover Wouldn’t Know

The Verve “Drive You Home”

The Verve defaulted to an extremely high level of drama and romanticism in their songs, but even by that standard the emotion in “Drive You Home” is so potent and undiluted that it can be taxing as a listener. You can’t listen to a song like this casually; you have to go into it understanding that you’re probably going to have your heartstrings ripped right out of you. Even if you tune out the vocals and lyrics, Nick McCabe’s lead guitar is so saturated with feeling that you can’t escape its gravitational pull. He makes you feel every little ache, as well as a heartbreak so sweeping and grandiose that it’s almost majestic. And he does this while making every move sound loose and improvised.

“Drive You Home” is a song from the perspective of the losing corner of a love triangle. Richard Ashcroft is the other man in this scenario, and he’s hopelessly in love with someone he feels he’s made a profound connection with, but he doesn’t seem willing to fully act on it out of respect to her existing relationship. There’s a nobility in his point of view through the song, but also a deep frustration. He’s not angry or bitter, and his jealously only comes through in a few moments. But he is overwhelmed by the enormity of his feelings for her, and the reality that he can’t have what he wants so badly without potentially blowing up the lives of everyone involved. This is a song where it’d be easier if his feelings were unrequited, if it was all just one-sided infatuation. But the agony of this music is in this incredible romance they’re sharing, what sounds like an intense emotional affair. It feels like he’s trying to pour out all this love in the hope that he runs out of it, to get it out of his system before they can move on with their lives. And while the song does seem to taper off at the end, his passion is present until the last note rings out.

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20thcenturyrocks

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T-SHIRT T-SHIRT T-SHIRT

When Vampire Weekend first announced their two shows at Madison Square Garden last year they advertised it as “No Repeats Except ‘A-Punk.’" However, they changed their minds after a "series of prophetic dreams" and opted to repeat a few more songs – 5 from Only God Was Above Us, plus "Harmony Hall" and "This Life." Of course, this was only about a quarter of the show's run time, and a large number of songs were not repeated. The band decided to compensate for this change by sending free "No, No Repeats" t-shirts to anyone who bought tickets for both shows. Mine arrived in the mail earlier this week.