ST18.2 Reviews - Also in Blue

SpinTunes 18, Round 2 Reviews - Also In Blue

FULL RANKINGS:

1) Jim of Seattle, “Snorkeling, Snorkeling”

2) New Fangled Trolleys, “Dat Studio Money”

3) Phlubububub, “Threads! A Musical Odyssey in Four Movements: Jimmy and Ruth / Threnody for the Victims of Sheffield / Under a Cold Sky / A New Normal”

4) Chas Rock, “The Show”

5) “BucketHat” Bobby Matheson, “The Flame-Proof Polka”

6) See-Man-Ski, “Sleep”

7) Sober, “Waiting for the Crash”

8) Brother Baker, “The Silver Lining”

9) Third Cat, “Some Truths”

10) Daniel Sitler, “Work In Progress”

11) Governing Dynamics, “Across the Wasteland”

12) Cavedwellers, “Ricochet”

13)  The Dutch Widows, “An Awkward Mend"

14) Temnere, “20w”

15) Jocko Homomorphism, “Theorist’s Dilemma”

16) Stacking Theory, “Escape the Grid”

17) Sara Parsons, “Rewind, Retry”

18) Brian Gray, “End of the World”

19) The Brewhouse Sessions, “A Little Bit of Heaven”

20) Jealous Brother, “Uncle Jerry”

21) Timothy Patrick Hinkle, “A Lost Love and a Roving Eye”

22) Menage a Tune, “No Time to Die”

1) Jim of Seattle, “Snorkeling, Snorkeling”

 Okay… I have to start by saying that I have absolutely no fucking clue what I just listened to, but I loved every minute of it. This is a movie. This is a musical. This is an absurdist treatise on everything that’s great about weird songwriting competitions on the internet. Your instrumentation is amazing. The clarinet solo perfect. The tempo changes at the end are spot on, dramatic and hilarious and bizarre and just right. The lyric is laugh-out-loud ridiculous. But what really blew my mind was the non-musical elements.

You made me believe this bar exists. That out there, somewhere, is a hole-in-the-wall saloon co-owned by Frank Zappa and Dr. Seuss, a beach bar full of weird gruff fisherman types who would burst into this ludicrous song, clapping hands, swinging tankards of cheap beer… The snippets of conversations overheard in the background, the shifting chairs and clinking glasses… The way those background vocals and hand claps swell, like it took the guys in the back a little longer to catch on and join in… This is a world-class nonsense song, with Oscar-worthy sound design. I walked around singing your chorus under my breath for the entire week, and I didn’t even care that it made me look like a crazy person.

I don’t even know. I have no criticisms - this thing is fucking flawless; it defies any attempt to even explain it, forget about analyze or critique it. Thumbs up. Five stars. We all owe you a beer for channeling this glorious monstrosity into existence.

2) New Fangled Trolleys, “Dat Studio Money”

When your tempo shifts up, I find myself smiling like an idiot every time. This lyric is right up my alley - deeply irreverent, clever as hell. A perfectly justified criticism of the music industry, and a really fun listen. (I need a t-shirt that says “So take your coffee and move on to someone who gives a fuck.” I’m only kidding a little.)

The instrumentals are perfect. When you say, “I’ll stick with my acoustic guitar, my washboard and my bass,” I have to say that I think that’s a great idea, if this is the kind of track that comes out of your aesthetic. And vocals to match - you just go for it, and I was definitely on board. I think my favorite thing about this is the specificity of your point of view, and I don’t just mean what you explicitly put in the lyric; there’s this tremendously satisfying vibe of  “this is what I wrote, and this is how I sang it, because this is what I like, and you can either join the party or fuck off,” and that really works for me.

Challenge-wise, you simply nailed it. Those tempo changes made perfect sense as compositional elements; the song needed them, and you executed them in an organic and interesting way.

3) Phlubububub, “Threads! A Musical Odyssey in Four Movements: Jimmy and Ruth / Threnody for the Victims of Sheffield / Under a Cold Sky / A New Normal”

 A Review in Four Parts.

Part the First: Jimmy and Ruth. This is good fun. Getting strong Ramones vibes, which is a good sign for epic apocalyptic songwriting. The harmonica solo was a nice kick in the pants. Bopped pretty hard.

Part the Second: Threnody for the Victims of Sheffield. This was a lot more powerful than I expected to get from a song that started the way this did… And that’s a good thing. Well-executed bit of noise music; captured the desired mood very well. “Penderecki references” were not on my SpinTunes bingo card.

Part the Third: Under a Cold Sky. Well, this took a hard turn. Excellent shift in mood and feel; brutally literal lyric, good vocal delivery.

Part the Fourth: A New Normal. This was really hard to listen to, and I mean that as a huge compliment. I had a physical reaction of revulsion and fear taking this in, and the tempo drag at the end was visceral; you know the horrible thing is coming, you know it’s unavoidable, you listen anyway, and there it is.

I’m not going to lie. When I saw the title, and then the length, I shuddered a little, but I say this with all sincerity: you earned every second of those seven minutes, and I was wrong to doubt. You’ve written an excellent, powerful grotesque. This is a dark, violent, disturbing song; it left a huge impression on me. If I wasn’t terrified to watch this movie before, I certainly am now…

As far as the challenge goes, writing a multi-movement piece is a nice solution to the problem, and you executed it incredibly well. Top marks.

4) Chas Rock, “The Show”

I didn’t know I needed a song about “that guy” dancing at the wedding, but man am I glad this is the song I got. (Turns out I did, in fact, come to see the show.) If you can listen to this without dancing just a little in your seat, then you’re dead inside, and I feel sorry for you. The groove is immaculate, your distorted DJ voice is perfectly utilized, that opening bass riff hits just right, and the chorus is one of the most memorable things I’ve heard in a long time. Amazing hook, super sing-along-able. Respect for your vocal processing, too. You wrote a hit. I’ll be sending this to all my wedding DJ friends.

5) “BucketHat” Bobby Matheson, “The Flame-Proof Polka”

I knew I was going to love this from the title, and you didn’t disappoint. This is exactly the kind of gloriously weird shit I love to see in competitions like this. Your polka/klezmer approach is brilliant - pick a genre that has dramatic tempo changes as a standard convention, and then just fulfill the trope.

This lyric is deviously hilarious. Those Cole Porter-esque rhymes are my favorite kind of clever - “stoke her” against “polka,” and extra points for “dwindle” against “rekindle” - but you also capture that disturbing very much in love with fire thing that makes pyromania so unnerving. Your last verse is my favorite: a worryingly entertaining timetable, and a perfect conclusion to a very well-written piece of poetry.

Your instrumentation was perfect, and your non-musical elements were very well executed. The demented chuckle behind all of your instrumental breaks builds an atmosphere of whacky menace, and the over-the-top dancing grunts at the end were so vivid that I swear I hallucinated the animated music video for this song for a brief second before it ended.

I have but one quibble, and that is I feel like you went too far with the tempo shifting. It felt like no two consecutive bars were at the same tempo for the whole song. All the shifts make sense in context, and I can’t rightly knock you for embracing the challenge, but I feel like a decisive “this is middle tempo; these bars slow down; these bars are downtempo; this section speeds up” kind of roadmap would have been more effective. I would love to hear this with a full live band on it…

6) See-Man-Ski, “Sleep”

Using your daughter’s voice out front was really effective - at first I thought I was hearing a sample from some old movie, which grabbed my attention immediately. The song that follows is a masterclass in narrative-driven sound design… It sounds like waking up at 2 AM; the band emerges slowly from underwater, different elements registering and becoming clearer as you gradually drag yourself into grudging wakefulness, and the subtle accelerando creates an incredible forward momentum. The whole tempo shift feels very natural and organic. Your lyric reads like it ought to be a carefully crafted metaphor for something artsy and complex, but knowing it’s actually literal makes me love it even more; it’s like a Johnny Cash song - you’re just telling us what happened, but you do it so well that it feels immediate and significant. I also love the delivery of your last line - it’s like you realized she was asleep just before you said the last word, and then had to finish the sentence without waking her up… Really nice work.

7) Sober, “Waiting for the Crash”

Okay… I want to start by saying this is a REALLY strong song. The lyric is exquisitely crafted, as we’ve come to expect from your entries; the string band parts are composed well, played virtuosically, and mixed/mastered with an enviable precision. That four-on-the-floor thing is catchy, and I found myself lifting my drink to sing along with the chorus. Choruses that call out the devil are a special kind of awesome, and I appreciate all your references to foundational roots music. (I envy the confidence of people who don’t worry over what the paramedics would think about their music choices post-crash.) Well written, well sung, well done.

Having said all that, I gotta call you out on the challenge a little. Is there a tempo shift? Yup, it’s there. But it’s a teensy little one, right at the end of the chorus, and you could remove it completely without changing anything meaningful about the song. You checked the box, but you didn’t make that tempo change really part of the song, which I found disappointing considering that dramatic up-shifts in tempo are an established genre convention in the bluegrass/roots music you’re so clearly inspired by. An excellent song that would have scored higher if I didn’t have the challenge to consider.

8) Brother Baker, “The Silver Lining”

Congrats on the new gig! If you hadn’t mentioned in your song bio that you did this in two short sessions, I never would have known.

Your guitar work here is exquisite - this is exactly what I mean when I talk about virtuosity in service of the song; the tone is big and bold, and there are some quality dissonances and tricky bits, but it all fits very nicely into place, asserting its presence without ever dominating the vocal. The opening riff is a perfect little canvas for harmonic experimentation, and you exploit that very well.

Your melody feels genuinely natural over the shifts between 5/4 and 4/4, and makes my nerdy little heart happy. Your harmonic shifts under “I’m underselling myself… I’m always underselling myself” are really nice - I found myself reaching for my keyboard to figure out exactly what you were doing, and this is the first song in SpinTunes 18 to make me do that.

My one criticism is that your big rallentando feels off, somehow. The issue might just be metronome programming; up until that moment, the whole tune feels SUPER organic in a refreshing and powerful way, and then suddenly it’s like I can feel the click track dipping downwards… Great tune, tiny flaw, but significant in light of the challenge.

9) Third Cat, “Some Truths”

Nice work! You nailed the challenge - plenty of tempo changes, all of them integral to the song form, all of them organically performed. I’m a fan of your synth patches - nice and warm, smart lines.

Your melody is really compelling, and explaining why is like peeling an onion… The melody itself is well composed. But there’s the next layer of the track under it, with subtly shifting rhythms and textures that make the melody feel a little bit new with every repetition. But then there’s the vocal performance of it, which is smooth yet earnest… The more I listened to this, the more I liked it, because I heard something new every time I turned it on. Nice work.

10) Daniel Sitler, “Work In Progress”

The more I listen to this, the more I like it. That one-beat bar before your first tempo shift is a little jarring, but I think that’s the point. The contrast between the uptempo and downtempo sections is attention-grabbing - strong musical theater vibes here, with overtones of Panic! at the Disco, with that rapid-fire lyric delivery. I especially like the ending, where you take that rapid-fire delivery and slow it down, and loop it over itself; that’s a smart use of motivic resources, and it bring the tune to a solid close. 

One small criticism - everything in this recording sounds more or less organic, except that piano line; every note has the exact same velocity, so it sounds like a robot triggering patches. Experiment a little with varying the velocities a little to reflect your groove. (I don’t know what software your MIDI programmer friend uses, but there’s usually a “humanize” button somewhere. Worth a look.) A small quibble about a really nice tune.

11) Governing Dynamics, “Across the Wasteland”

I don’t know if you intended to invoke The Slip, but this sent my brain spinning towards their sound on the “Eisenhower” album, and that’s pretty high praise. I’m impressed with the epic scale of this song.

This is a good example of tempo changes done right. They all feel very intentional; almost orchestral in their execution.

You get a lot of mileage out of that guitar. I know it’s not a production challenge, but those texture/color changes are as distinctive and foundational as picking different instruments in an orchestral score, so it’s worth mentioning.

12) Cavedwellers, “Ricochet”

This was a really solid take on the challenge. Those tempo shifts were well-composed and properly embedded in the song. My favorite part was the guitar solo, especially the accelerando under the end of it; I swear the hair stood up on the back of my neck. (I know that harmonized guitar is technically pandering to the judges’ table, but when it’s done this well, it’s hard to complain.)

14)  The Dutch Widows, “An Awkward Mend"

I laughed out loud at your count-in. (My wife was not amused, which only made me laugh harder. Genuine thanks for that.)

I’m gonna come down solidly in favor of the quirkiness that permeates this song. I generally have a pretty low tolerance for “noise” in a song - I find that it’s most often used to cover up production flaws or compositional blank spots - but every sound in this song is doing honest work, outlining the anguish in the lyric, providing a nice backdrop to the vocal.

There’s something primal about the way your drums work, especially when they interact with those nonsense vocals at your tempo shift; it’s a proto-linguistic dance around a campfire, and something very close to my bones responds to it. (Your song bio is absolutely right, by the way: I can confidently state that the prescribed dance move does improve the experience of the song.) I enjoy the way your tempo change also changes the texture, bringing the drums to the front.

If I were mixing it - and I’m clearly not, so, grain of salt - I would have made the vocal just a tiny bit louder in this mix, but I’m nitpicking. Good concept, solid execution.

15) Temnere, “20w”

This is great. The lyrical concept is strong, the guitar work is bold and precise, the vocals are fantastic - excellent technique, intense delivery. I especially respect your octave doubling on the vocal. I found myself thinking, “I bet they’re reinforcing their vocals in the exactly same way they go about doubling their guitar parts,” and I think that’s really smart.

My only complaint is challenge-related; you have tempo changes in there, but they’re so subtle that they’re easy to miss. You checked the box, to be certain, but I didn’t get as much tempo-change flavor as I was hoping for.

16) Jocko Homomorphism, “Theorist’s Dilemma”

Extra cool points for the Le Guin reference - that was a great novel, and this was a cool song.

In a different context, the repetitiveness of your melody and verses would have bothered me, but I can’t complain about it here because I love your take on the challenge so damn much. The gradual acceleration plays a cool trick on the ear, because there isn’t a single moment when I say to myself, “this is speeding up,” but there are multiple moments when I suddenly realized you had gotten faster. I actually Googled “threshold of consciousness” after I listened to this, which is the psychological term for “the minimum above which stimuli enter awareness.” You’re playing around just at the edge of that threshold for tempo changes, and I think that’s super smart. Gold star.

17) Stacking Theory, “Escape the Grid”

Lots to say about this one. It’s a well-built song, but the second half of it feels a lot stronger than the first half. Your “jangle pop” has a little bit too much jangle in it - that guitar is just a touch too present, too bright, and it draws attention away from your vocal. That could be from the mixing, or it could be the way you voiced the chords; I’m not certain. The vocals also feel a little off, like they were mixed to be in a slightly different room from the rest of the song. The lyric is good, and rhythmically irregular in a way I really like, but I got Bob Dylan vibes from your melody - as in, lots of words over a single note - which is great when it works, but it doesn’t quite fit with the rest of your aesthetic.

It feels like the song really finds its feet where the background vocals enter on your chorus. That wash of organ as a transition into the downtempo section is very tasteful, and then you’re into the last half, where all the elements just gel better, for some reason. A strong finish.

A word of advice, re: your thoughts in the song bio… Stop caring about what we think, and just write what you want to write, as best as you can write it.

18) Sara Parsons, “Rewind, Retry”

Best wishes to your friend - This is a tricky one… The opening section is a fist-pumping party jam, and the closing section is a HARD downshift. I love that the melody is the same in both sections, rendered almost unrecognizable in the new context. The lines about having to move your car really stand out - you capture the way little things like parking stick in your head at moments of crisis, and you do it in a straightforward, literal way, which is hard to do effectively. Your vocal work is nice here, and the contrast in sections shows some versatility in a satisfying way.

Two small spots for improvement. First: the electric guitars sound very programmed. There might not be anything you can do about that if you don’t play guitar, but I seem to recall some nice ukulele going on in the first round; maybe try slapping a pitch changer and a distortion pedal on that, and see what happens? Just an idea.

Second: The transition between the uptempo and downtempo sections seemed a little… I think indecisive is the right word? It was clear that you were transitioning, but it wasn’t clear what you were transitioning towards. That section could have been shorter, or it could have been longer with more musical content in it - or something truly bizarre, like the noise music from “A Day in the Life.”

Sending best wishes to your friend. That’s a hell of a thing to go through. Let her know we’re all rooting for her.

19) Brian Gray, “End of the World”

This is genuinely wild, and I mean that in the best way. Very grateful for the song bio on this one. I see what you’re doing with the rhythm of the vocal, trying to draw attention to the internal rhymes; it’s a smart move, and something that a lot of my favorite musical theater people do regularly. I’m just not sure I’m 100% on board with the way that breaks up the conversational rhythm of the sentences, especially at the very beginning of the song. There were moments when I was having trouble following the narrative.

As for the challenge, you rocked those tempo changes. Every musical decision you made works in service of your scene changes. When you hear them, you don’t think “new tempo,” you think “new scene,” and that kind of seamless integration is to be applauded.

Also, re: your song bio, and having absolutely nothing to do with your song… The guy carrying the “The End is Nigh” sign in Watchmen is Rorschach, dude. (Go ahead. Dig out your copy and check the hair color and the silhouette against the chapters where the psychologist interviews him with the mask off. I didn’t believe it when I was first told about it.) Is this a useful plot twist for you? No idea. Just planting seeds.

20) The Brewhouse Sessions, “A Little Bit of Heaven”

 “Dad Rock” is an underserved genre - it’s a deep well of emotion that goes largely untapped. Your lyric is straightforward and heartfelt, and your earnest delivery had me nodding along with a little smile on my face. Thanks for this.

I have only one serious criticism, specific to the challenge - the ending rallentando feels out of place, dropped in to fulfill the requirements of the round, rather than because the song actually called for it.

A few smaller criticisms come to mind. The guitar feels a little robotic - you’re keeping good time, but it feels like you’re laser-focused on a metronome rather than relaxing into the groove. I would also take another look at that closing drum part - the big cymbal crash, all by itself at the end, feels a little abrupt, which you could easily fix by letting the guitars ring out over it.

21) Jealous Brother, “Uncle Jerry”

 Sorry, guys, but those tempo/feel shifts come out of nowhere; they don’t really work as a compositional element, and the performance doesn’t really do them justice. I think your decision to switch back and forth from straight to swung 8ths really worked against you, and you switch so frequently that there are moments where not everybody is playing the same feel, even if they nailed the tempo change. I spent all my attention points trying to track the shifts, and found I couldn’t follow your lyric, which is a shame. That “Dukes of Hazard” style narrative, racing to escape the cops in a home-brew hotrod, is a really smart lyrical approach to this challenge.

The piano solo is a blast, and the song finishes strong; the last verse contains your strongest lyrics, and is the point in the song where you seem most confident and comfortable as a band. It feels like the whole song wanted to sit in that feel, and I think I would have liked it better if it had. A song with good bones and a strong concept, stymied by the challenge.

22) Timothy Patrick Hinkle, “A Lost Love and a Roving Eye”

The first thing that jumped out at me was the cymbal “risers" you’re using as a percussive element. A decent idea, but they’re not quite percussive enough to justify their use in place of a hi-hat throughout the entire song. Your first section seems to be playing around with shifting the time signature underneath an unchanging riser-based ostinato, which is clever on paper, but in execution came out muddled; I could have used another percussive element to signal where “one” was more clearly.

I struggle with the tempo change here, because it seems like you’ve smooshed together two disparate songs, and the pairing doesn’t quite work for me. I think the downtempo section is pretty solid; you have a nice melody, some pleasant vocal harmonies, and a nice chord progression paired with good guitar work.

23) Menage a Tune, “No Time to Die”

Solid concept for a song; nice comedic payoff. I can hear the track for this in my head, complete with liberal “quoting” of the guitar riff from the James Bond theme song. Tempo change is in a nice spot for the transition. For the record, if they ever made a Bond movie with Wallace Shawn in it, I would be first in line to watch it, just so I could say I was there when it happened…