1. Joy Sitler - Makeshift Rorschach Test
Excellent mastery over the guitar. It’s a low-arrangement song, building up slowly from guitar to bass to violin to tambourine, layering guitars for a full and complete sound. As in previous rounds, I just think you’ve picked a genre that lends itself very well to your vocal timbre. Your rhymes and lyrics in this song, too, have a wonderful sense of inevitability: what else could have been falling out of but love? You’ve done such an excellent job, to me, of building up a song that is technically on the simpler side (chord-progression wise and structurally) and keeping it engaging and filled with forward momentum. I’ll cop to personal taste as an influencing factor (this month has ben all Mountain Goats, Foxing, Emperor X, midwest emo and indie rock), but I just genuinely find this song moving and highly replay-able. This would go on the 2024 soundtrack if you dropped it on streaming.
2. Ironbark - El Ultimo Toro
Those moments of flamenco are enchanting. This song is such a gotcha, to me. You’re doing the Decemberists thing of telling a highly detailed story with character, plot, and archetypal roles, into which you sneak a profoundly affecting and broadly applicable human sentiment. I don’t mind that this is low arrangement. It’s got that spanish feel to it, and the fingerpicking keeps a lovely beat. There’s a few more instruments supporting softly, but they stay out of the way of your vocals, which are full and lovely. I think the song might be just a touch too long. Or that I would have preferred some sort of structural diversion or instrumental change by the time we got to “oh mi amigo toro, i don’t know what to say”, which is when it began to feel stagnant. But all in all, this is touching and beautifully executed.
3. The Alleviators - Sarah’s Basement
Y’all are so technically proficient. There is a combination of mixing, arrangement, and vocal energy that keeps all your songs sounding radio-ready. Your vocals are incredible, and you’ve written yourself some really fun melodic lines in this one. I think the thing that’s keeping this shy of the lead for me is the chorus: it doesn’t quite have a catchiness in the hook like you’ve had in other rounds. The “in that basement” feels similar to the energy of the rest of the verses, which is keeping me from a level of catharsis/sinking into the chorus. There’s a lot of great moments in here, though, lyrically– largely in the verses: the Halloween smoke machine, take your coat and take your time, the assonance and consonance on masses passing out. Largely reminds me of Rilo Kiley and that kind of early aughts indie rock. I think I’m just looking for something a little cleaner and sharper on the choruses, both melodically and lyrically.
4. glennny - Leaky Pipes
I love the shimmer of the guitar and the strong beat. Your chorus is well differentiated from your verses, and the guitar riffs that take us out of the chorus and back to the verse is great. There may be actually a little too much disparity between the energy between the verse, pre-chorus, and chorus. Each of the sections– including the bridge– feel a bit too much like they’re from different songs. There’s a throughline there lyrically, but some of the musical transitions feel jarring or unjustified. I love your interpretation of the photo and the story you were able to read into it, taking several different images– a child, arguing faces, a mushroom cloud– all from the prompt, and weaving them together into a thematically coherent whole.
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