Here are your Round 2 rankings from SpinTunes 20 Champion Ironbark:
Read on for Ironbark's reviews!
Stacking Theory - Sea Change
Kicking off with a big cheesy 'baby'? Nice continuity. A charming song with sweet, effective lyrics. 'Cautiously warming your heart' is a lovely line. I have to admit that Sea Change took me to Siggy and David first, but you're probably riffing on Ariel, aren't you? That slow descent through the keys on 'what I haven't got' is great, like sinking down through sand. Good clean arrangement: bonus marks for the soft guitar fuzz. Top stuff.
Mandrake - Chaotic Thought Process
Much better use of space this round, a big improvement to my ears. (You still stack all the percussion dead centre, but I'll put that down to taste.) Looking forward to more top end on the vocals next time, fingers crossed. Lots of nice sonic touches (shout-out to the soft drink can at 1:55) and I like the contrast between the sparse verses and the lush waves of synth on the chorus. Key changes work well, though the transitions in and out feel (intentionally?) slightly hesitant and clunky, particularly the vocal timing on 'thought pro...cess'. 'Solve a simple solution' is no doubt intentional too, but it does bug me every time. (Find a solution/solve a problem, grr.) Good blend of pop and experimentalism.
iveg - Kara Lost the Keys
This is a lot of fun. Nice synth bass, and I love the little synth squiggles punctuating the chorus. The key changes are good, but they don't come through so well in performance: after each modulation, the vocal nearly always enters unsure of itself and a little off pitch, which saps away much of the thrill. An on-pitch vocal is pretty vital in welcoming the listener to a new key, I reckon, so another take really nailing those important notes would make me enjoy the song a lot more. (Though I'm now wondering if it's intentionally pitchy as part of the attempt to throw off Kara. Cunning.)
Glennny - No Fool At All
Some key changes trigger a warm buzz in the brain. This song hits that button again and again: satisfying modulations that feel unforced and organic. The move into C for the chorus is particularly good. The whole arrangement is beautiful, mandolins and carefree doo-doo vocals offering comfort as the lyrics quietly sink in. It's a wonderful song, handling very hard stuff with a light, compassionate touch, and a clear favourite from the first time I heard it. (I think an untreated vocal would suit the song better. That strange (flanger/phaser?) effect makes your voice sound thin and metallic on the high notes.)
Cavedwellers - Don't Take It Lightly
The brass is a lovely touch. I particularly like the trumpets on 'sweet old world'. Fine key changes, but there's no real transition or interplay between the different sections - it feels more like a band cycling through a medley of song fragments. Odd. Then again, fair play: life's a weird medley of marriage and love and death so we might as well blow those horns and dance. Maybe the best outro in a round with some damn fine outros.
Phlub - In Memory
The verse chords and vocal melody feel like a deliberate Nirvana homage, which is fine with me. Good lyrics. (Weird sound on the G with the intro guitar. Fret problems?) Listening repeatedly for judging makes me impatient, so take this with a grain of salt, but I wonder if you've overcommitted to conceptual neatness at the expense of a concise song. We're handcuffed to this Titanic, and we'll be sticking it out till we're back at D, no matter what. It's very effective and fits the song - you sound increasingly emptied-out as we descend past the bottom of your comfortable vocal range - but it keeps going after the point has been made, I think. Strong song regardless.
Siebass - Turn the Key
I like these lyrics, condensing a lot of life and emotion into a few minutes, with enough individual detail to feel universal. Musically, I found the similarity to 'Such Great Heights' very distracting at first - same key and tempo even - but those juicy pre-chorus harmonies give it a distinct personality, and the fuller arrangement on the chorus is satisfying. The key change bridge does feel like a bit of an afterthought, and it would have been nice to modulate back to home key rather than shrug and leave it hanging, but overall I liked this song a lot.
The Pannacotta Army - No For An Answer
That core kick/clap/guitar groove creates a lovely wistful mood. Great production and arrangement as per. The subtle harmonium(?) is a great touch. The lyrics tread similar ground to 'Coming Up Short' but lack a bit of that song's sparkle in the eye. You're fairly straight down the line here, without any particularly memorable turns of phrase. And it's an odd response to the key change challenge: if anything, this song feels more committed to a single key than your usual fare, with only brief excursions off base. Still enjoyed it thoroughly.
Tunes By LJ - Modulate Me
Possibly my ears playing tricks on me, but the bass synth feels slightly lopsided, like it's panned off-centre and pulling the mix to the left. My only nitpick on a pleasingly minimalist arrangement. Very sly approach to the challenge. Going meta with lyrics can end up feeling gimmicky, but this lands firmly on the right side of the line for me, marrying the emotional and musical layers very neatly and skilfully. Bravo.
Sober - The First Will Be The Last
The Truck Driver's Key Change is probably the lowest-hanging fruit for this challenge (and it doesn't help that Jealous Brother played a very similar hand last round), but you shift those gears with flair, and a different flourish each time. Repeatedly foregrounding the four-note path you're walking ties in well with the song's theme, as well as preparing the listener's ear. Interesting lyrics (after a bit of redundancy in the first verse). The mystical framing didn't quite hold water for me, and the wandering 'you' makes the harsh judgement-day verse slightly messy, perhaps, but verses 2 and 3 stand well on their own. Excellent arrangement and performance as usual: the hushed transition from fourth to final verse is a treat.
GFS - Ready
Lift up your lighters, crowd. The big fist-pump key change works really well - a defiant turn of the page - and the modulation back is deftly handled. As in 'Vertical Vision', you hop from metaphor to metaphor to repeat the same basic message, rather than settling on a central idea and developing it. It's a valid approach and works in the moment, but at the cost of deeper impact, perhaps. Good production once again - love the little mellotron-y additions near the end.
The Dutch Widows - A Moderate Alligator
I don't remember reading the 'anthemic outro' part of the challenge, but I'm pleased so many of you did. Droll lyrics, hitting a bizarre sweet spot between naivety and existential numbness. It's rare to hear a line like 'Remain child-free in perpetuity for the sake of humankind' followed by 'Where do I find an alligator that's nice?' I'm not completely sold on the dissonance/disconnect between vocals and guitar on the pre-chorus (works much better on the chorus) and that snare sounds a bit ill, but otherwise thumbs up.
Ominous Ride - Drift Asunder
There's an out-of-time quality to your music. (Or perhaps a 70s/80s quality with that flanged guitar.) Hushed and dramatic, on the cusp of prog. Maybe a dash of Fleetwood Mac's 'The Chain'. It's an evocative sound. As you say, the key change here isn't ambitious - you just shift up to G minor and down again without otherwise altering the song - but it works to heighten and lower the energy level. I like that slump back to Em at 1:40. Sorry the challenge wasn't inspiring for you, but I'm glad NyQuil stepped up to fill the gap: some great imagery in these lyrics, like a dream you can't quite shake.
chewmeupspitmeout - you don't belong to me
Love that opening arp, and the whole musical aesthetic here. It's like 80s pop boiled down to its spooky bones. (Speaking of which, have you heard the album 'I Blame Society' by The Ballet? Might be up your alley.) I think the high pulsing organ fights against the vocal harmonies in the first half of the chorus, and the middle eight feels undercooked musically. The rest is great.
Hot Pink Halo - Shape Shifter
Very catchy. I like these lyrics - tactile and evocative and possibly fairly horny. Hopping up a tone isn't the most ambitious key change in the world, but it's reliable. Good guitars and nice backing vocals on the chorus. Wouldn't mind it if you turned the bass up a bit. And the transition from chorus back to verse feels like a missed opportunity for some fun modulation. You just leave the new key hanging awkwardly and slink back to D. What would Andy Partridge do? But this is, as the kids probably no longer say, a 'bop'.
The Popped Hearts - Hey Jane
This is a good round for my 80s nostalgia: love the chunky guitar against that curly synth line. And I have the deepest respect for someone who spends nearly half of a 1:49 song on an extended outro. It's a tale as old as time: boy meets girl, boy (very very briefly) loses (sight of) girl, boy launches into amusingly elaborate singalong coda. Can't beat the classics.
nightingale's fiddle - Chicago
Ha, I officially revoke my earlier comment about your vocals being emotionally detached. That opening figure - gentle chords over bare octaves - is lovely. And the switch from swooning ballad to pissed-off rant is a great twist. (My biggest regret this round is skimming the lyrics before listening, so I knew it was coming.) I feel you could use a little more musical connective tissue to help this flow as a song, particularly moving out of the chorus, and from intro into verse. It's quite stop-start. (Though someone once demonstrated to me what a faff it is to change keys on a harp, so fair enough.) And the punchline loses force when repeated - more detail on what particular breed of arsehole we're dealing with might help here. (Or just finish at 2:20?)
Jealous Brother - Time Has Its Orders
In terms of destination your key change isn't the boldest, but I like how you get there, flirting between A minor and A major before settling on the major. It's a nice moment of musical uncertainty in a song that otherwise saves most of its invention for the lyrics. It's not that the music is lacking - it's well arranged and performed - but it seems happy to be a backdrop to these little snapshots of entropy and decay, which really dig into the brain.
Brain Weasels - Intervention
Great song, full of drama and rattling forward like it's hunting or being hunted. I love the sound and melody of the rising guitar in the pre-chorus section, and the key changes all work really well. I realise I'm sounding like the time police again, but 2:45 feels like the perfect place to end the song. Running through the chorus a few more times might work in live performance, but comes as an anticlimax after that great high-stakes interplay between the voices. (I was crossing my fingers for Joy's vocal cords.)
Jim Tyrrell - The Fall
The modulations from C into A are beautifully done, and the arrangement is great throughout. Strong horn lines. This is a song where the performance really alters the meaning. On paper, it feels like the conciliatory tone of the final stanza might be setting things on a hopeful trajectory, and the key change seems to suggest that too, but you sing with such an emphatic snarl that I don't see a happy ending for these two. There are moments of humour here - I like the invitation to dance immediately undercut by 'I can't really dance' - but oof, the protagonist sounds ready to burn the whole thing down. Love the bah bah outro, however ironic its optimism may be. At around 3 minutes I was beginning to feel it was too long. By 3:15 I'd changed my mind. By 3:30 I was leaning back to my earlier view. Sounds lovely though.
Pigfarmer Jr - Say Goodbye To The River
A touching song, all the more moving for reading your song bio. You have a knack for boiling life down into simple, direct statements that cut to the heart. I wonder if you could add a little more specific detail without sacrificing the universality: we come to understand your mother's situation, but don't learn much of her as a person. Maybe that's for another song. As an entry in a key change challenge it's a bit underpowered - stepping up one tone for that lonely instrumental is a relatively low-stakes response, and not in any way essential to the song - but that's the judge's hat talking. This is a sweet, sad song and beautiful tribute to your mother.
Governing Dynamics - Where's The Fire
Where you say the first verse is in Bb Lydian, I hear it as pretty firmly rooted in F. Weird, maybe we hear keys differently. (Or, more likely, I'm just wrong.) These are strong, resonant lyrics, couched in metaphor again but with a human story beating just beneath. The arrangement is good, a little oddly balanced to my ears: the bass is very soft, and I think I'd like those textural guitars more if they were brought forward and given more character, MBV-style. The big leap to the chorus is sudden and stark. I'm not sure it evoked a feeling in me beyond 'that was a key change', which lends weight to my theory that we hear these things differently. (I probably have bad taste in keys.)
Jon Porobil feat. Cybronica - Couches (SHADOW)
Effective contrast between Cybronica's Angel of Sustainable Couch Usage and JP's endearingly scuzzy opportunist. Good stuff. If you'd had more time, it might have been fun to hear those musical hints in Cybronica's second verse developed into a full-blown synth-pop arrangement. Nice work from both of you.
▷ - Bottles (SHADOW)
As with your official entry, some nicely inventive synth work and sound design. I like the rising ba-ba-bas. The lyrics are... there, I guess? They feel like an in-joke, and aren't strange enough to be independently interesting. Good sounds though.
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