ST18.1 Reviews - Micah Sommersmith

There are some truly excellent songs in this round! A reminder that I am not a judge and do not rank songs or determine who moves on. My reviews are below in submission order.

matt rhog-miller - Retail Therapy

This song has an excellent chorus hook, which had no problem lodging itself in my brain. I’m surprised you didn’t call it “Does It Come in Green?” because for me it’s definitely the song that goes “Does it come in green?”. I really like the minor key feeling with brief forays into the relative major to provide some contrast.

The verses feel less developed, which I think is in large part just a matter of getting used to singing it and figuring out the most natural way to phrase things. There are a few odd emphasis moments (“I’m stopped in MY tracks”; “cycle OF consumeristic dreams”). Some tuning/pitch issues in the vocal also make this not quite as enjoyable a listen as it could be.

On a more philosophical/big picture note, the song doesn’t give me a great sense of why the singer is so attached to the color green. (“Because it’s true” is not usually an effective argument on its own.)

Stacking Theory - This Pale Blue Dot

This tune is lovely but boy is it grim. You've done a fantastic job of using the music to create an atmosphere that supports the lyrics. As for the lyrics, they're well-crafted throughout; I'd say the only awkward construction is "this dot of pale blue", where it's pretty clear the reversal is just for the rhyme. I think there's a more elegant solution to that line.

As I said, it's grim and not always a fun listen, but the craft is undeniable.

Daniel Sitler - Only (Kind of) Blue

A dance as a metaphor for a relationship is a very solid central image, and you execute it well. I like the "seen through" / "seen it through" wordplay as well.

I'm not sure how I feel about the "red" bridge - on the one hand it provides welcome contrast; on the other hand it may complicate the metaphor more than is warranted.

The guitar playing is lovely and subdued, and the vocal melody is not flashy but has some very nice moments - I like the leap up to the high note on the word "hue" in the chorus.

See-Man-Ski - Pulp

This one took a while to grow on me. The spoken verses come off as a bit overly silly – I’m not all that fond of spoken verses to begin with, and here you contrast the gritty, bluesy guitar and production with… breakfast. I get that the pulp in the orange juice can function as a metaphor for an engaging, complex (challenging?) relationship, but the first verse just goes hard on the breakfast, and the second verse doesn’t seem to contribute really anything at all. If the first verse was cut down to about half its length and the second verse was scrapped entirely, maybe in favor of an extended guitar solo or other instrumental section, I think the song would be a lot stronger and come off less like a joke.

The Dutch Widows - Pastel Purple Icing

With its dreamy, droney atmosphere and layers of guitars, this sounds like it wouldn’t be too out of place on James’ 1993 album “Laid”. It’s a cool vibe and I enjoy it, although I don’t think the weird sounds that open and close the song fit very well with the body of the song and I’d suggest cutting them.

Lyrically, I’ve picking up the fancy holiday dinners, some kind of regret or guilt over something, and someone missing – maybe dead, maybe a relationship has ended. The atmosphere and emotional content is communicated well enough that I don’t feel like I need to work too hard at figuring out the details, especially since you basically admit in the song bio that you’re speaking in code.

Chas Rock - Hazel Green

I like this song a lot! The melody is very catchy and I love the jump up on the word “morning”, which is supported by increased energy in the instrumentation. It’s not quite a traditional chorus as it’s part of the verse itself, but it scratches that itch really well. My favorite element of the instrumentation is the ultra-catchy keyboard line after the verses – it’s a delight to hear it come in every time.

I don’t know if Hazel Green is a real person, if this is an adaptation of something else, or if this is entirely an original work of fiction, but I like the lyrics too – who can’t relate to being told to turn off the phone and your brain and just getting some sleep. I just realized that the energy jump on “morning” that I mentioned above actually represents the energy you’ll gain by getting some damn sleep! Very cool.

If I have to offer a critique, I’d say that the frenetic, barely-holding-together percussion is a bit overwhelming, although I suspect that’s exactly the effect you were going for.

Timothy Patrick Hinkle – Slate

Often when a singer wants to inject a last little bit of energy into the last chorus, they’ll go up higher than they’ve sung before. In the last chorus here, you do a neat trick of going down farther on the word “pray”. Your voice sounds great on that low note, and it sounds great in the rest of the song too – spending the whole song in that low register would likely get overly ponderous, especially given the subject matter and tone.

There’s a consistent mood that is conveyed throughout the song, and I think the general theme is of being so overwhelmed by sadness that you hope for the possibility of no emotion at all, rather than even considering the possibility of happiness. The specifics are sometimes unclear though – in the first verse, there’s a blue sky, which is generally associated with positive feelings, although you seem to pull out “blue” and use it for its negative connotation (“I’ve been feeling that way too”). It’s an interesting juxtaposition/contradiction, but I’m not sure it’s intentional. In any case, it feels like I have to do more work than I should have to in order to guess your intention.

There are also some awkward construction issues with the lyrics: Numerous words with unnatural emphasis (“liVING”, “sorROW’S chalk”, “meaSURE”), and numerous verbs placed at the end of sentences (“living will life erase”, “my composure I’ll unlace”).

The melody is quite nice, and as mentioned your voice sounds great. My only real complain with the music is that the drums are too lound, especially the cymbal crashes – and especially for the feeling of the song.

Ominous Ride - Gin Black Daze

I like the atmosphere here, and the riff that occurs between lines of the verse is engaging. The vocal line is great too; you have a knack for making engaging melodies out of very simple elements. Your vocal quality, and however you record and mix your vocals, contributes a lot too.

The lyrics are a bit barebones, but I like the ambiguity of “she” – is she an actual person or a personification of alcohol? You keep the lyrics open enough to allow for interpretation. One section I’m not sure what to do with, though, is “I never saw it get away from me / Filling all those restless hours in sober company” – has being around sober people prevented the singer from seeing the extent of his own problem? That’s… not my understanding of how alcohol abuse generally works. The glass shattering at the end feels incongruous – it seems like a punchline, but the song is not at all set up like a joke. And it’s too loud anyway.

Governing Dynamics - violetlies

“Such ugly truths / and beautiful violet lies” is a great lyrical hook. It’s instantly memorable, and it neatly layers two juxtaposed juxtapositions: truth/lies and ugly/beautiful. It’s an elegant way of summing up a complex, passionate but unhealthy relationship, which I think is what you’re singing about in this song. The rest of the lyrics are a bit of a jumble: one image is replaced by another before I’ve had time to consider what the first might mean, until I give up trying to parse everything.

The alternative, of course, is to stop trying to decode the lyrics and just let them wash over me, but the music isn’t compelling enough to make that approach to listening very satisfying. Over the nearly-five-minute runtime, the energy level never moves a whole lot from its baseline, and the pitch issues in the vocal are distracting. The bridge section with multiple layers of independent vocal lines is cool in practice but it’s a bit of a mess, with both tuning and timing issues keeping the melodies from sounding like they belong together.

Sara Parsons - Secondary

This is a very different song from Jim of Seattle's, but what both of these songs do wonderfully is dig into the many, often contradictory, associations that we have with colors. You do a great job conjuring up specific images, and the idea of two people joining together symbolized by two colors blending into a new color is a great one to build a song off of.

I particularly like the last verse, in which each person's color is linked to something about the other person. It's another elegant way to bring the two characters together.

The music is not quite as sticky as the lyrics to me - it's lovely and enjoyable to listen to but doesn't make a great impression afterwards.

Entertainment Brothers - Purple

This is a fun little ditty, with plenty of silly lines and a few eyebrow-raising ones (I'm not sure what your ice cream sandwich's pronouns have to do with anything…). The transition from the verse to the instrumental section on the word "blues" is extremely satisfying.

The Brewhouse Sessions - #FFC0CB

It’s a testament to the infectious energy of this song that took me numerous listens before I realized that the entire chorus is sung on essentially one note. The verse melodies are almost as simple, but it never feels like a weakness of the song.

The lyrics are fun and frothy, although they could stand some tightening up – some lines have too many syllables (“But down on Main Street you got to show your stuff”) or the rhymes don’t line up with the stress patterns (“MAIN Street / meet”), or you repeat yourself excessively (“All the other colors are just shades of gray … Those cheap shades of gray just aren’t enough” or “And life is real good, it’s good to be me”). I have no problem with a fun silly song about the color pink, but I’d like to see a little more care put into crafting the lyrics.

Cavedwellers - Chartreuse

I dig the sound here – the layers and layers of guitars mesh beautifully with the dreamy vocal. The chorus hook “If I was in your shoes” is fantastic – it’s dead simple but instantly memorable. My only sonic complaint is that I wish there was more crack to the snare drum – it’s pretty dull and doesn’t add much to the texture.

The lyrics are too vague for me. You start with “pale green or pale yellow”, and cite green’s association with jealousy, but where’s the yellow? The obvious association is cowardice, but it doesn’t seem that the narrator sees themself as cowardly at all; they seem to be pretty actively planning a murder. They’re acting, or at least fantasizing about acting, which they seem to see as the same thing.

The motive is revenge, but the original wrong is entirely unknown – there was some kind of slight but we don’t know what. What I’m most confused about is in the chorus and the line “I’d rather you were dead.” Is it the second half of the if statement (“If I was in your shoes… I’d rather you were dead”)? Maybe this means that the narrator thinks what the other person did is so obviously wrong that it they should want themself dead? Or is it the quote of the previous line (“I’d remember what I said: ‘I’d rather you were dead’”)? Is the narrator imagining the other person choking on the poison and remembering the narrator’s words of anger, and putting the pieces together? I shouldn’t have to do this much guesswork.

Jealous Brother - Lemon Tangerine (#FREEBRITNEY)

Musically, this feels in many ways like a straightforward feel-good pop-rock song, but you play some tricks that keep the interest up: placing the guitar solo right after the first chorus, and inserting the bridge (“her dress was yellow and gold…”) inside the second verse. At the same time, the melody and instrumentation are still sunny and extremely catchy.

Of course, it’s all a ruse: this song is a lot like Britney’s yellow-wearing instagram post itself (If the #FreeBritney diehards are to be believed): bright and cheery on the surface, with a darker undertone. My lingering uncertainty is whether this song is an earnest tribute or intended as a parody. The line “We’ll all live in her submarine” is presumably a reference to the Beatles song “Yellow Submarine”, but it’s a bit more flippant/jocular than the rest of the lyrics.

PS For any crossword puzzle fans, I’ve coincidentally constructed a puzzle on this theme as well: https://crosshare.org/crosswords/mGwykFjp90ua8m3aFb91

Brian Gray - Purple Dot / Something Like Home

Drama! The clearly theatrical nature of this song lets you get away with rhymes that would otherwise come off as affected (“Future / root you’re”, “Best in you / destined to”). The only one that feels like it goes too far, even in this context, is “Feel again / tequila when”.

I like the contrast between the two sections: “Purple Dot” begins with the frantic pounding instrumental that sets the tone for the crash landing, and “Something Like Home” builds up a sense of wonder and triumph. I think the main weakness of the song is that “Something Like Home” goes on for too long. The various verses, impressively constructed as they are, don’t feel like they distinguish themselves from each other, or build on each other, enough for all of them to warrant inclusion. Kill your babies!

Good Guy Sôjàbé - Grey

The bass riff that opens the song and continues through the verses is great, catchy and engaging. The rest of the song doesn’t make much of an impression. The vocal lines are too drawn-out. The chorus is overpowered by the repetitive guitar riff and relentless crash cymbals.

The lyrics don’t make much of an impression either – I gather that it’s a song lamenting the end of a relationship, but there’s not much fresh insight and it’s buried under a pile of metaphors that take too long to dig through for too little payoff.

Jocko Homomorphism - Eigengrau

There are lots of really cool sounds here. The instrumental intro sets up the atmosphere perfectly with its stuttery percussion sounds and ethereal synths. The lyrics are great – I’ll always appreciate lyrics that maintain strict metrical schemes while also sounding natural and (for the most part) conversational, and the imagery throughout is a great mix of abstract and concrete.

The vocal delivery hurts the effectiveness of the song, I think – the detached, almost robotic articulation combined with the near-constant pattern of repeating each note before stepping to the next lends a mechanical feel that’s at odds with the organic feel of the lyrics themselves. A more relaxed delivery combined with some reverb/delay or other effects on the voice would go a long way toward nailing the atmosphere that I think you’re going for.

Phlubububub - Indigo

In the moments when this song is a dreamy instrumental with a floaty lead guitar line and spacy hand percussion this is really nice! When you’re singing, I’m pretty not into it.

During the verses, the lyrics don’t have much sense of inherent rhythm or meter to them, and the melody seems mostly aimless, as if you wrote it out in prose, and then improvised a melody over an instrumental you found. Obviously it’s not improvised, because your vocal is double tracked. The effect of the double tracked vocal is pretty cool, except that it results in one of my major pet peeves: in many, many lines ending with an “s” sound (“cds”, “soaps”, “topiaries”, etc) your vocal tracks don’t agree on the timing of the s – so we get two uncoordinated “s” sounds and it sounds really sloppy. This is especially annoying because otherwise the double-tracking is really good – in rhythm and pitch your two vocal tracks are locked into each other and I would have thought it was just one vocal take with EQ, reverb, mixing, or whatever lending the particular effect it has.

The basic concept of the lyrics is fine and the lyrics are strongest in the chorus when you’re describing the painting and its effect on you (“the shimmer of the sun on the edges of clouds”… “the motion of the breeze captured in the leaves”), but even in the chorus you have some clunky expository lyrics (“… holds the key to my enjoyment”). I think the lyrics would be a lot stronger if you took yourself out of the narrative – we don’t need to hear that you are “enthralled by the masterwork I find before me”, or that you would be “proud to call it my own / Display it at home”. Convince us of your experience of the painting by making us have that same experience. The music already is helping us get there.

Menage a Tune - Disco Silver

This song is a lot of fun! The disco instrumentation is really well done – I especially love the synth string lines. And the lyrics are great, with “silver” pulling double duty from one verse to the next, tying the dancer’s youth and old age together. It’s a neat trick and a fun way to depict the character reclaiming her youthful energy.

The vocals don’t quite match the energy level of the lyrics and instrumentation – I wonder if transposing to a higher key would help. The vocal delivery is a bit plodding, and it doesn’t help that sonically the voice doesn’t feel integrated with the instrumentation – I suspect part of the issue is the quality of the vocal microphone and part is mixing.

Third Cat - Green Machine

This is a lovely and very chill song that I suspect, but can’t prove, is about smoking pot. Not that I’m rendering judgment on that choice, but the lyrics are sketchy enough to make me second-guess myself.

It strikes a nice balance between relaxing and engaging. The vocal hook is catchy and the multi-layered vocals are very nicely done. I particularly like the low harmony on the first “take me away on your green machine”. This song does feel rather slight, but it’s definitely an enjoyable listen.

Ross Durand - Ultimate Gray

I enjoyed reading how you derived the instrumental accompaniment from the Pantone number, and then going back and listening with that in mind. I’m a big fan of encoding non-musical information into music and seeing how hard it is to make it sound natural and interesting. You’ve mostly succeeded here: The opening riff is catchy and feels completely natural within the style you’re playing in. The chorus chords sound a bit like they don’t quite match the vocal melody above them, but that’s only if I’m listening particularly closely.

The lyrics are not particularly engaging or exciting, which makes sense given both the subject matter and, as indicated in your song bio, your somewhat arbitrary source of inspiration. They’re certainly serviceable, but clunky in places, especially in the second verse where you rhyme “gray / ends / gray / ends”.

New Fangled Trolleys - Yellow Stickey Notes

The lyrical concept here is great and for the most part the lyrics are solid – clear and direct while also with some novel images and metaphors. (The only part of the lyrics that left me scratching my head was “That dragon’s left me for some other younger version / A paltry wretch never reaching the homestretch”.)

I like the chaos and anger in the vocal, although the vocal line is so clearly cut and pasted from multiple takes that it takes me out of the song, especially when the vocal quality switches abruptly from less abrasive to more so, or vice versa. Considering that the instrumentation is so barebones, I want this to really feel like one guy pouring his heart out while playing guitar live in a single take.

Then there’s the bridge and its “purposeful dissonance”. Saying explicitly that you intended to do something does not make it fun to listen to. If you do insist on keeping this section, I would end on it – either as a fade out while still building in vocal intensity, or growing to a high point and abruptly ending. As it is, the (two!) repetitions of the chorus afterward come as an anticlimax that stretches on for way too long.

My last criticism is that the line “Lines of yellow highlighted pages” with its borrowed chord comes out of nowhere; the rest of the song is harmonically fairly straightforward and having just this one moment (even if it is repeated each chorus) of additional harmonic complexity feels off.

Lichen Throat - Silver Elite

This is a great song concept: most of us feel like we’re in the middle in a lot of ways, because we can see both the people with more and the people with less. An airplane is a great setting for this concept because of how starkly divided the various stratifications are.

I think the execution would be more effective if there were a narrative of some kind to it, rather than just a list of reflections on the singer’s situation. We meet Suzie in the first verse but then she disappears – maybe the singer could try to get to know her, only to find she scorns his mere Silver Elite status. Maybe then there’s someone else in economy class trying to get to know the singer and who in turn receives the same level of scorn.

I’m a fan of multi-syllable slant rhymes, and I might really enjoy “benefits / membership” in a different context, but here it feels awkward: It disrupts what is otherwise a fairly consistent metrical pattern of single-syllable rhymes.

In the chorus “I’m only silver elite, / Lucky if I get an exit row seat.”, the rhythm is particularly unclear: I’m not sure which syllables are supposed to be falling on which beats.

There are still some great turns of phrase throughout this song. The lyrical highlight for me is the bridge: “Limbo’s kind of nice, but it’s still in Hell, / A climate-controlled aluminum shell.”

Temnere - 1493

Is this epic? Yes indeed! Is it fun to listen to? Absolutely! Is it technically impressive and well-done? To be sure! Do I think about it when I’m not listening to it? Not at all!

That may not be entirely fair, as it’s easy to hear this and think, “Ah yes, another excellent anthem from Temnere, nothing more to see.” Maybe we’re spoiled, but some more variety is always welcome.

That said, there are some moments that do stand out: When the vocals come in on the first verse, you’ve stripped away much of the accompaniment and it’s mainly vocals with drums underneath. This is a cool move and I wish it lasted longer: Your voice is great but it’s nearly always on top of a bed of guitars/synths/etc without the chance to carry the energy of the song on its own. I’d definitely encourage you to experiment with more stripped down instrumentation and perhaps more complex vocal arrangements – I think it’s well within your capabilities!

Lyrically, I think you’ve missed a big opportunity: The siege of Constantinople in 1453* was a major historical turning point in its extensive use of cannons – Constantinople was built to withstand a different kind of siege, and it did many times, but this new weapons technology was too much for the city’s fortifications. For me, that’s a lot more interesting than a blood moon, even though I’ll admit that blood moons are pretty metal.

*For any history nit-pickers out there: Wil contacted me after the song was submitted to say that he mixed up the dates in his title and song bio. The title will be amended when I edit the Bandcamp album to reflect the judging results.

Jim of Seattle - Gray

This is a very different song from Sara Parson's, but what both of these songs do wonderfully is dig into the many, often contradictory, associations that we have with colors. You start with the obvious, cliché associations - Blue for sadness, red for anger, green for jealousy - then complicated and confound them with some delightfully unexpected images.

The uptempo, high energy music does seem a bit at odds with feeling "dismal and dark and depressed every day", but I think you made the right choice: it lets you pack a lot of lyrics into a reasonable runtime, and it lets you get away with your enjambed rhymes for silver and orange, which in a more somber or subdued context would seem too clever for their own good - here, it's just the right amount of clever.

galoshy - Blue

Your acoustic guitar fingerpicking is really lovely, and is the highlight of this song for me. Your voice is also quite nice, although there are a few pitch issues especially on the long held-out “Blue” notes. When you jump up higher in your vocal range it seems like you have a lot more control. I like the strummed guitar less than the fingerpicking, and when you move into that section the rhythm of the vocal melody feels a little confused as well. It’s nice to have contrast but that section didn’t feel as well-rehearsed and didn’t quite hang together for me.

I like the lyrics quite a bit. They’re a little abstract and a little vague but with some very nice images, and they fit with the hazy, relaxed atmosphere created by the music.

“BucketHat” Bobby Matheson - Seeing Mauve (Rose​-​Coloured Glasses)

Your melody is undeniably catchy, and the construction of the lyrics is skillful - maintaining a rigorous rhyme scheme while also feeling natural and conversational.

The sticking point for me is the length - you don't earn your five and a half minutes, either in the music or the lyrics. Musically, the energy level stays pretty consistent from section to section, without much sense of build or contrast. Lyrically, each verse and chorus treads essentially the same ground - this person is optimistic, and the singer thinks they're foolish for it. The verse hints at some of the singer's insecurity ("But I don't want to be okay") but otherwise there's no need for all these sections - we need more of a perspective shift, a change of focus, a narrative arc, something. Otherwise, you gotta kill your babies, because this song could be half its length without losing much.

Boffo Yux Dudes - Green With Envy

Musically, this is pretty great - the synth sounds and vocal melody are catchy, the energy builds in a fun way, and the lead vocal is confident and engaging. Lyrically, it feels surprisingly mean-spirited: The singer seems to be saying, essentially, “I admit that I’m only with you because you remind me of her, but I’m also going to shame you for feeling jealous of her.” This is not an uncommon scenario, especially in fiction, but it’s a bit off-putting to hear it from a first-person perspective.

Sober - Kintsugi

This could have just been a lovely, expertly performed, impeccably arranged piece of banjo-driven Americana, and it probably would have been my favorite song of the round. It could have also just been a heartfelt and emotionally resonant song about trying to heal from trauma with a clear and powerful central metaphor, and it probably also would have been my favorite song of the round. The fact that it’s both doesn’t seem fair.

Brother Baker - Cobalt, and Fading

I love the energy of this one, and the varied instrumentation and shifting time signatures make for a fun listen that keeps me on my toes. The lyrics are a bit clunky in places, with some odd emphasis (“Gray, the shapes that OBScure the sky / I try to grab the silver liNING”).

Conceptually, the roles of the different color components aren’t quite clear – blue is sort of good (“clear, bright”) and sort of bad (“empty”). Blue “loses its vibrance” – implying that blue starts out vibrant, but also “I am so much more than blue” – “with silver and gray streaked through” – here blue seems bad and silver and gray both seem good, in that they offer something “more”. But also the silver lining is looked for in the gray, but also the silver fades into gray… It’s a cool idea but it doesn’t really cohere. That said, there’s so much interesting stuff going on in the arrangement and the instrumental and vocal performances that it’s easy to look past the issues with the lyrics.

The Pleasantry - Rosé

The chorus (both Cybronica’s sung vocal and the spoken “Keep ridin that rosé”) is catchy, and the beat is groovy. The rap is not very good. There are some very odd emphasis choices (“MiscalibraTIOOOON”; “We been living in the middle, compromiSING even on the simple”) as well as some places where the rhyme doesn’t line up with the emphasis (“fuss / SCHOOL bus”), and some places where it feels like you’re not sure exactly how the syllables are supposed to line up with the beat (“ranking lower than”). There are also some odd timing issues with the snare drum at times. Overall it feels like a first draft that could do with a lot of polishing.

thanks, brain - Bleed Out Purple

In a Discord post you offered the clue that this song is about the streaming platform Twitch, which helps a bit to interpret the cryptic lyrics. (I gather that essentially it’s about the platform not caring about its creators while also taking a big cut out of their revenue.) I feel like the central idea could have been communicated less opaquely, even for someone unfamiliar with the platform.

Musically, the song feels like it needs more variation, more contrasts. You add and subtract instrumental sounds and effects thoughout, some of which are very cool, but none of which change the overall energy level much.