niallon – Toca’s Miracle

Toca’s Miracle

So the plan was to catch up on all the articles I skipped over as I desperately tried to stay weekly with these publishings. Thing is that as I looked back I realised I’d missed more than I thought and, well, it’s taken me so long to get back to this blog that I figure it’s best to just start at the beginning of this year and move on from there! The beginning of this year…something that easily feels like it was decades ago at this stage. But we’ll get to pandemic talk and such later on in this series, now let’s talk acoustic EDM instead.

niallon – Mad World

Like many around my age or younger, Gary Jules’ cover was my first introduction to this song. It wasn’t actually via Donnie Darko originally however, rather through a true crime documentary titled The Real Blair Witch which unfortunately doesn’t seem to be available online anywhere. It was an extremely unsettling documentary centered around an allegedly staged kidnapping in Flint, Michigan by some over zealous fans of The Blair Witch Project. It was chilling, with this song playing out over the closing scenes, and from that moment it was ingrained in my mind as a haunting and sinister song. Suffice to say I was fairly surprised then to discover that the original is a synth heavy number with less obvious sinister undertones, but were they ever there to begin with?

niallon – Wish You Were Here

Time after time, the songs I put the least effort in to have a tendency to become some of the most popular on the YouTube page. Now that’s not to say that I didn’t put a lot of effort into this cover, but it was kind’ve a spur of the moment outtake at the end of a session yet it has received some great responses, so thank you all for that first and foremost!

niallon – Purple Rain

I really love requests. It’s not just because I struggle massively to think of songs to cover, but if someone has asked me to perform a song I tend to double down my prep and interpretation to make the request worthwhile.

niallon – You May Be Right

This track really brought to a head how much I love the requests concept. Not only was this a song that was totally unknown to us all (well definitely myself and Peter, it seems Vicki is quite a Billy Joel fan), but it was requested way back before we had even upgraded to a three piece outfit. Not only that but even the duo videos were a rarity, scattered between weeks of solo vids. Initially I wondered if a solo reimagining was in line for this track, then it moved on to myself and Peter considering a multi track pre-record, before it finally landed here with a full band performance.

niallon – Merry Xmas Everybody

Man it’s been one hell of a year. Things got extremely quiet on the niallon front earlier this year, with Peter away we had one solitary upload carrying us through most of the first 4 months of the year (and even that video was filmed late 2016!) We got back on course in June though with Mr Brightside and really that video served as a bit of a watershed video for our channel. We were actually primarily looking to get a cover of This Is What It Feels Like done in that session and Mr Brightside was an off the cuff attempt that wound up being the main video from the day. The reason this became such a landmark video for us was because until that point we had been very business like with the niallon channel at times, everything was laid out in a neat plan because that way then we couldn’t screw it up. We were being smart and prepared, but as a result we were missing out on the great music that can be created through spontaneity.

niallon – National Anthem

Yes I forgot to do a write up on ‘Zombie’ (and ‘The Funeral’ come to think of it) and yes we’re back to solo videos this week. I can be consistent in my inconsistency though, haven’t you heard?

niallon – Have You Ever Seen The Rain?

I was first introduced to this song via Rod Stewart’s cover. Suffice to say I was surprised to find out that it was originally written and recorded by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Up until that point I solely knew them for Bad Moon Rising which in turn I solely knew as the song from An American Werewolf In London. I can confirm I’ve now educated myself far more thoroughly with CCR’s back catalogue though and this song has remained one of my favourites of theirs.

niallon – 30 Times Around The Sun

Nine years ago I was tasked with writing a song about the gruelling task that is turning 21. I joke, but we did actually think it was going to be all change back then. Turns out we were jumping the gun a little, as most 21 year olds do, but I still stand by the song and it’s relevance to how you feel at the time. Said friends about whom the song was written/inspired by recently turned 30 and we joked about writing 30 Times Around The Sun. I didn’t see it working to be honest and writing a sequel to a song isn’t something I’d ever successfully done (though there are plenty of “spiritual successor” songs in our repertoire).

niallon – Not In Love

Another request, another song totally new to us. Even though I’ve seen Crystal Castles live and would consider myself somewhat of a fan of The Cure, this song had never managed to cross my radar! Once again though the magic of the requests pays off and we now have another track in our repertoire I could easily see getting played again down the line. Approaching the arrangement on this one was interesting, somewhat similar to Far Away in many ways. On the one hand there was a straightforward acoustic “hash it out” type approach on offer but as we dug a bit deeper we found something more substantial. We actually didn’t discover until well after the fact that this was a cover itself, originally released by Platinum Blonde and listening to the original we probably fall more in line with that but that’s to be expected I guess, once we decided to strip away the more electronic elements from it.