Hello everyone, and thank you for a wonderful round full of some really great songs. I wish I had more time this week to devote to reviews, and I apologize if anyone feels you’ve gotten short shrift from me. Hopefully the reviews from your actual judges more than make up for it.
Since I don’t have to rank the songs, here are my reviews in more or less submission order:
Daniel Sitler - Work In Progress
This is a demo of a great song. The melody and lyrics are great, I love the transitions, and the multi-layered closing section is perfect. The fast sections need more energy; the instrumentation needs to build more - at 0:09 you have four hi-hat pick-ups that introduce… nothing. And the piano is extremely stiff; sampled piano in particular is always in danger of sounding too robotic unless there’s a real attempt at phrasing, either while recording or by editing the velocity of each note afterwards.
Chas Rock - The Show
This is why you leave the kids with their grandparents! The infectious groove and vocal delivery really sell this song, which revels in its ridiculousness. You’re playing with the trope of the immature manchild, whose juvenile antics are all good fun until he interacts with an actual child, in which case he’s unable to be the grown-up he needs to be. It’s a bit off-putting that this results in the kid actually getting hurt - perhaps you could achieve the same contrast by having the dad knock the kid’s cake out of his hand, or break something, or knock over a table; something more embarrassing than actually dangerous. Lyrically, you’re already clearly having more fun describing him dancing in the fast sections than in the slow sections, where your lyric choices seem more utilitarian, and could easily be edited without sacrificing the feel of the song.
Also, the line “He'll stop it dropping where concrete doth meet ass bone” is real confusing. I think it means “He’s getting so low, the only thing stopping him from getting even lower is the physical barrier of the floor” but the inclusion of both “concrete” (a hard thing) and “ass bone” (a fragile thing) makes it seems like he’s injuring himself, which I don’t think is the case but just muddles things up a bit.
Sara Parsons - Rewind, Retry
Out of all the entries in this round, you might have the biggest contrast between sections: in addition to the required tempo change, you have new instrumentation; a new melody (at first); new vocal inflections; and, the rationale behind the change, a new lyrical focus and emotional content. Of course it’s all deliberate, but the end result to me is that the two sections don’t feel like parts of the same song, but more like two songs rammed together. The solution that some other contestants have found is to maintain more or less the same instrumentation from section to section; that way you can at least imagine you’re at a live show and the same band is playing the whole thing.
I absolutely love the couplet “I took a phone call in the parking lot outside of the ER / She's gonna get admitted so I gotta move my car”. I recently was in the position of supporting someone who was in a medical emergency (things are much better now), and while you’re trying to provide emotional support, and going through all kinds of emotions yourself, you also have to deal with the extremely mundane and annoying things like moving your car. It’s a concrete detail that does a lot of work to make the situation real.
I’m very sorry about your friend.
Stacking Theory - Escape the Grid
I appreciate that the fast and slow sections, while definitely contrasting, still feel like part of the same sound world and fit together nicely. The lyrics aren't my favorite, reading as pretty didactic, with not a lot in the way of interesting imagery. Thematically they certainly complement the music well, though, and this is a song that it's easy to sit back and enjoy without thinking too hard about it.
See-Man-Ski - Sleep
I also have young children, and I’ve also lost plenty of sleep as a result. My reaction to this song is the same reaction I have whenever I see a parent scolding their child in public (even knowing that I’ve surely scolded my own children just as harshly), namely: “Come on, give the kid a break!”
The gradual accelerando, combined with the sonic buildup throughout the song, is certainly effective at portraying the singer’s mounting anger, but it’s anger at a child, for waking him up at night, which is something children do, because they’re children. The song doesn’t offer any critique or contextualization of this anger, or suggest any self-reflection on the part of the singer. It’s a one-note song, and that note isn’t fun to hear.
Jealous Brother - Uncle Jerry
This is a fun story, and definitely feels like the kind of family tall tale that gets retold for decades until no one is really sure exactly how much truth is in it.
The relationships took me a bit to tease out - Uncle Jerry is Jerry boy’s dad, and George’s uncle, so presumably George and Jerry boy are cousins? It seems an odd choice to make Uncle Jerry the title character but not introduce him until most of the way through the song. Also, referring to him as “Uncle Jerry” seems to put more focus on George (presumably to Jerry boy he’s just “Dad”), whereas the lyrics throughout put George and Jerry boy on equal footing. These are somewhat minor quibbles, but in a story song like this, ambiguity tends just to be frustrating and impede understanding of the story, rather than providing something interesting to chew on.
The energy flags and the story stalls out when you go from the fast tempo back to the slow tempo and reintroduce the noodly piano from the intro. I think in this case focusing on the tempo changes for the challenge actually impeded the effectiveness of the song.
Sober - Waiting for the Crash
The tempo change at the end of the chorus definitely achieves its desired effect of creating/portraying momentary disorientation and even panic. There’s obviously some very intense experiences and emotions behind the song, but the lyrics get bogged down in insider jargon and the music is not quite intense enough to convey the emotion on its own - the instrumentation doesn’t build a lot and the vocals are in the same low, almost talk-singing register throughout the verses and choruses.
The Dutch Widows - An Awkward Mend
I really enjoy this song. The lyrics of the middle faster section demonstrate the same tendency I’ve noticed in some of your other songs in that they sound cool, and then you read them and try to make sense of them and they slip through your fingers like sand. But the song’s general idea is clear enough: I messed up! Somehow! The specifics aren’t important!
Indeed, while clear, poetic, and coherent lyrics aren’t your strong suit, you find a way to use that to your advantage: your singing style and arrangement and mixing choices mean that your vocals are part of the overall mix rather than the main attraction, so the specific semantic content of the lyrics is of lesser importance than the sounds themselves and the overall impression they give. Indeed, I had to scan your lyrics to make sure that your nonsense syllables were actually nonsense!
The tempo changes work well, I think - it’s certainly abrupt but it helps that the fuzzy guitar layers continue unbroken through the change, lending a sense of continuity.
Timothy Patrick Hinkle - A Lost Love and a Roving Eye
This is a classic piece of Hinkle psychedelia, with an intriguing story and impressive scope. The backwards cymbals throughout the song are too loud, too harsh, and too pervasive, and they make it difficult for me to give this repeated listens.
The Brewhouse Sessions - A Little Bit of Heaven
The singer's voice does a lot to carry this song: it's confident and full, with a hint of grit to keep things interesting. The instrumental is solid, with nothing particularly standing out to me. Lyrically, this needs some tightening up: in the first verse, for example, the word "were" is stretched oddly long in the second line, and in the fourth line the word "incredibly" is rushed. Some of the problem is the lyrics themselves having irregular line lengths and stress patterns, and some of it is the singer not nailing down the vocal enough to be certain of where the syllables should fall.
I think it would be worth it, either with this song if you choose to revise it, or in the future, to think more consciously about stress patterns and line lengths. For instance, the first verse here could be fairly easily straightened out, perhaps like so:
Thinking back some years ago
When you were a tiny baby
Newborn eyes stared up at me
Oh how blessed a man could be
You certainly don't have to maintain the same line length or stress pattern throughout a song, but it should be a conscious decision rather than an afterthought.
Phlubububub - Threads!
(A Musical Odyssey in Four Movements: Jimmy and Ruth/Threnody for the Victims of Sheffield/Under a Cold Sky/A New Normal)
What impresses me about this song is that you've managed to make 4 wildly disparate sections still feel like parts of a single whole, which I think is due at least in part to your consistency of mixing choices and instrumental and vocal sounds.
Each section definitely captures the feel you're going for; my favorite purely from a listener's perspective is the opening part, with its tasty guitar playing and excellent harmonica solo, although your falsetto does leave a bit to be desired.
This is not a comment on the song itself, but I find the exclamation point in the title to be in extremely poor taste and entirely at odds with what you're doing in the song itself.
Jocko Homomorphism - Theorist’s Dilemma
This is fun and wild with plenty of cool sounds. I appreciate when the "And I'm staying up all night" section comes around, because the relentless 7/4 trochaic trimeter starts to get wearying quickly, especially as the snare hits on the same beats as the stressed syllables in the vocal - A danger I'm always facing with compound time signatures is getting stuck in a particular rhythmic pattern, and I think you've fallen into that trap here.
That "And I'm staying up all night" section, though - you really make your spoken sections work well. Your voice is animated and expressive in a way that it isn't always when you're singing more conventionally melodic material.
New Fangled Trolleys - Dat Studio Money
Entering a songwriting contest that promises, as a main element, feedback on your music from volunteer judges, and then submitting a song that very explicitly says that you don't care what other people think about your music, is certainly an interesting strategy. It might pay off for you; I honestly have no idea! I'll just say that you're lucky I don't contribute to the rankings.
Brian Gray - End of the World
You ask in your song bio if it works- it definitely does. I think the instrumentation could be beefed up a bit, but this is an excellent opener; it's easy to imagine the staging, especially as the voices come together near the end.
Don't say "cray-cray".
Cavedwellers - Ricochet
The guitars are especially tasty this round, including the lovely guitar harmony in the middle section. The tempo changes add some nice variety and help define the structure of the song. This is a good thing because the lyrics are extremely opaque. You’re using politically charged words and phrases, but I can’t call this a political song because that usually implies a clear message, or at least a clear point of view. This is a buzzword salad. Your ultra-smooth, polished execution, both lyrically and instrumentally, which is often a selling point for your songs, is a further detriment here because there’s no clear emotional charge to the music.
Third Cat - Some Truths
I love a good one-line repeating chorus. I really ought to try it myself sometime. That chorus is a good anchor to the lyrics, which are a bit opaque, though I think I’ve got the general idea: The narrator is emotionally stunted and/or unstable, and Alice is either ending things now or strongly considering it.
I have no idea how the second verse fits into this story, though: “sounds like you treat our lives / like a child treats their toys”. Who is “you” and who is “our”? Is this Alice speaking, accusing the narrator of emotional manipulation? Or is it the narrator pushing back against the idea that they’re the only one at fault here?
The dreamy vocals, guitars and synths are excellent. I hate the constant clicking hi hat. Hate it a lot.
Governing Dynamics - Across the Wasteland
The increase in tempo towards the end of the song is very effective, especially when paired with the wailing guitars and the text “My heart is racing”: It’s a clear, effective text-music pairing and it’s the highlight of the song for me. I wish the song ended suddenly at the high point, rather than dropping out of time for the ending reprise of the first verse, especially since I don’t know what those lyrics mean, so they don’t communicate anything for me, unlike the preceding accelerando.
I don’t mind the wall of fuzz that starts at 1:35, but it’s a little disorienting when it drops out in the middle of a verse at 2:12, only to return at a similarly arbitrary point a few seconds later. It’s such a conspicuous part of the texture that its presence or absence should mean something, if only as a marker of section transitions.
You make some seriously odd phrasing choices, e.g. “At 2a… m a-... gain” or “Across the wasteland place your … bets raise your colors”. There seems to be very little relationship between musical phrases and grammatical ones.
In general I probably should call out specific chord changes that I really like more often. Here’s one: at 1:27 the chord change under the word “up” in “Everyone is buying up and tuning in” is perfect.
Jim of Seattle - Snorkeling, Snorkeling
This song is fun and charming and funny and very much does not need to be four and a half minutes. Keep the stanzas with fun rhymes (killin'/grillin'/still in; air/there/rare), be merciless in paring down the rest.
The sound effects and "live energy" contribute a lot to the fun of the piece. It really does feel like a recording of an informal sing-along, which makes the choice to fade out the music but not the ocean sounds an odd one. Were the singers on a boat that floated out to sea while the microphone stayed on the shore?
Temnere - 20w
This is good stuff - the uneasy, off-kilter state described in the lyrics is portrayed well in the music, especially in the breakdown section. The sparkly piano riffs do seem to detract from the mood, though.
Brother Baker - The Silver Lining
This delivers the rock, and is a fun listen. The high energy is great. The lyrics are vague but with a clear emotional valence, and the music carries things when the lyrics lack detail, so I didn't have a problem with that. The one section that didn't work for me was the unison shouting, especially with lines like "I'm not doing this for you" - I feel like I'm being lectured.
“BucketHat” Bobby Matheson - The Flame-Proof Polka
This is pretty fantastic, and I want it to dive even deeper into deranged Slavic folk-punk territory: group shouting, heavier percussion, more mid-range instrumentation (that high register on the accordion combined with the high plucked instrument start to grate a bit), and probably a bit less loss of momentum in the slower section. I'm sure this brief review seems pretty critical, but that's just because I know exactly where you're trying to go and I want you to get closer.
PS I know this is not actually what you're going for, but I am no stranger to off-the-rails accordion-driven songs about flamethrowers myself: https://youtu.be/pfWISTLlSaM
Menage a Tune - No Time to Die
Knowing that this was submitted under less than ideal circumstances, I won't comment on the music except to say that there's certainly some good melodic material in here, and it's not too hard to imagine what it could be with full instrumentation.
As for the lyrics: Wallace Shawn as James Bond is a funny idea. Funny ideas do not, on their own, turn automatically into funny songs. Without (hopefully) being too mean spirited, there's plenty of material to mine jokes from. You don't even need to comment on his personal appearance: given his other roles, his intellectual reputation, his age, and his personal politics, there's plenty that makes WS = JB an absurd proposition. You gotta dig into the material, and so far you've just scratched the surface.
Entertainment Brothers - Slowly (SHADOW)
“I love you but you cheated so I’m going to kill you” is a well-worn song trope, and one that I’m pretty weary of. This song doesn’t do much to distinguish itself against all the other songs in this category, although I suppose it’s interesting that we don’t know for sure that she’s cheating - maybe she really is just getting a package?
Red Watcher - No Measure (SHADOW)
This is lovely. It's simple and heartfelt and I'm glad I got to hear it.
The Pleasantry - So Fucking Loud (SHADOW)
You’ve done a great job of using the music to portray the experience described in the lyrics. Unfortunately, the experience you’re describing is an unpleasant one, and thus the experience of listening to the song is also an unpleasant one. Music doesn’t always have to make you feel good, but this song isn’t in service of anything other than, “Hey, here’s a feeling that sucks. Let’s make you feel that way now!”
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