Alt-J Lyrics Trivia Quiz

Answer: House of the Rising Sun

Experimental would be the word to define alt-J's eight-track "Relaxer" album, and the third track was a lengthy reimagining of the classic song "House of the Rising Sun" in which the band added new verses to the typical chorus, splitting them up with the solemn line in the question.

In order to avoid performing a trite cover, the band recreated Woody Guthrie's original in the recording studio with more than two dozen instrumentalists, most on strings of different sorts. The effect is a different type of haunting.

Answer: Tessellate

One of the earliest tracks released as singles in alt-J's repertoire, "Tessellate" is the type of trip-hop that characterized their "An Awesome Wave" album. Featuring Joe Newman's unique lead vocals, the song's uneven beat was likely one of the first heard by first-time listeners back in mid-2012.

The song was the second single from the disc and released with a music video that zoomed in and out of a modern-day recreation of painter Raphael's "The School of Athens".

Answer: Hunger of the Pine

The first single off the band's second album ("This is All Yours"), "Hunger of the Pine" is typical alt-J because it's against the grain. Although the song features a metronomic beat, strings, horns, and electric guitar lead the listener through a mounting early verse before introducing drums and sampling the line in question from the Miley Cyrus track "4x4" (from her controversial "Bangerz" album).

The music video is a visual representation of tension and pain as those featured flee on foot from arrows being fired through the sky.

Answer: Deadcrush

While "Deadcrush" never seemed to be slated for official release after "Relaxer" was sent out in 2017, it appeared that the fans won out, indicating that the popularity of the track at live shows and in downloads would be the deciding factor. Ultimately, "Deadcrush" received a sci-fi inspired music video featuring three choreographed dancers as Sylvia Plath, Lee Miller, and Anne Boleyn, all indicated in the song as the band members' dead crushes.

The song features a consistent, looped drum beat and backing vocals from Wolf Alice's Ellie Roswell, who also recorded on the track "3WW".

Interestingly, the earliest version of this song was recorded on a cell phone by the band.

Answer: Matilda

A concert staple, "Matilda's" guitar plucking and the pained refrain are amongst the most recognizable from "An Awesome Wave". The second track to be a single from alt-J's earliest releases, "Matilda" was inspired and derived from the 1994 film "Léon: The Professional" (during which a young Natalie Portman played Mathilda). It also happens to be about an actual woman named Matilda, known by the band.

That specific Johnny Flynn line is from his song "The Wrote and the Writ", released in 2008.

Answer: Left Hand Free

This line is the opening lyric to this song, the leading single from "This is All Yours", which was also an uncharacteristic departure from the band's more subdued early works. Unlike most of their tracks, the song has a rock-styled guitar and drum presence and structures itself in a fairly conventional manner.

The band, of course, recognized it to be the least like their works in general, but wrote it quickly to satisfy the record company. It ended up becoming the most successful, propelling the band to reach number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and top two other Billboard charts.

Answer: Breezeblocks

Another track from "An Awesome Wave", this song weaves its way through several unusual instruments with its slinky lyrics. The song proved to be one of the album's best-received, winning awards for the track and subsequent music video and being voted as one of the best of the year in indie-alternative stations in the UK and Australia.

In the U.S., the track went platinum. Many of the lyrics allude to the Maurice Sendak children's book "Where the Wild Things Are".

Answer: Every Other Freckle

In perhaps one of my personal favourite tracks, "Every Other Freckle" amounts to heavy bass fuzz, cryptic lyrics, obtuse instrumentation, and consistent build-up, almost as though the song is meant to be unrestrained. It's a theme that persists throughout the "This is All Yours" album, and it might be because of this that the track became the top charting in the UK (while "Left Hand Free" soared in the U.S.).

This song is simply a mounting amalgamation of alt-J elements; I woulda argue it's the epitome of their harder sound.

Answer: Fitzpleasure

On the note of tracks with bass fuzz, "Fitzpleasure" is probably one of the heaviest songs of "An Awesome Wave", both in lyrical content and in musical tone. While the song was one of the lowest to chart from the band's debut album, "Fitzpleasure" has had a bit of notoriety (and likely rightfully so) for alluding to rape, specifically as mentioned in the novel "Last Exit to Brooklyn", which unflinchingly included similar taboo topics. Miley Cyrus would later go on performing a cover of the track on tour, and it would lead the band to sample her track in "Hunger of the Pine".

Answer: In Cold Blood

Recorded using a Casiotone electronic keyboard that the band bout for a pound online, "In Cold Blood" was the first single from alt-J's third album, "Relaxer", and became one of its more remixed songs on the hip-hop reimagining "Reduxer" (2018). Led in with the recitation of binary numbers and a clear reference to the Truman Capote book of the same name, the song is the melange of indie and experimental elements that listeners have come to expect from alt-J. Unlike a lot of the band's earlier works, the track relies heavily on horns.