Here are your rankings from SpinTunes 23 Champion glennny:
Read on for glennny's reviews!
1- Vehicles of Beware- Getting to the Gig
What an excellent take on the challenge! Not only did you embrace it, but you also showed off its beauty and potential. Usually, I’d complain about the lack of orchestration, but the sparseness of this really works well. The guitar tone is so good, the playing is wonderful. I loved this in the car really loud. The melody is catchy and gorgeous. I love the vocal performance. I’m very excited for your next song! This is excellent!
2- Jealous Brother- I Think You Know
My top 3 were very close. This grabbed me off the bat. This was nearly my favorite. The chorus stuck in my head along with the super-catchy riff. I enjoy the instrumental break. I still wish there was a guitar solo. The performance and the mix is great. Listen what i really want is to jam this song with you guys and take the solo. The drums are nice and loud. Great ending chord! I loved it! Great job!
3- The Moon Bureau- Fail Pyre
This is amazing! I’m wildly impressed with how much music and melody and delightful orchestration you fit into 1:39. The 4 bar solo is delightful. I really want albums and albums of your music. I’m a fan. These lyrics are beautiful and clever. Like I told Jealous Brother, my top 3 were very close. Expert take on the challenge! This was such a joy to listen to. This is a keeper! What a gem! Great mix! The glimmering electric is so tasteful and pretty. I love the acoustic strum throughout. The drums are also tasty and catchy! I have no complaints, I’m awestruck!
4- Sober - Look Away
Wow! What great performances! It’s so nice to hear the killer banjo. We have different tastes in mixes. Is it a Country thing to have the vocals so loud compared to the instruments? You’re an excellent vocalist, I still think we could hear the vocals just fine lower in the mix. I want much louder drums. The songwriting is awesome. I love the dynamics. I like your ratio of lyrics to time and music. The passionate vocals really sell this. Very cool!
5- Joy Sitler- Throwing a Party
There’s quite the Front Bottoms influence on this one. The incidental horn, the vocal melody, the structure, all feels very FB. I really like the Front Bottoms, good choice of pastiche. The chorus sticks in my head when I’m away from the fight. Having the challenge in lyrics of the chorus makes this the advertisement for this fight (at least in my head). It’s quite verbose, but it tells the story well. This always conjures up a bar like the one I was at last night, I can imagine you sit down at the piano and belt this out, a horn player and a drummer follow and join in. The vibe is great. I liked this a lot!
6-Flintsteel- Stay Alive
This would have been my son’s favorite song when he was 10. This feels like the theme song to a Sonic game. This is a little too pop for me. There’s no denying how great the guitar playing is. The structure is excellent. The instrumental breakdown with the long soaring notes juxtaposed with the short staccato stabs is my favorite part. The vocals are very good! The melody doesn’t grab me as much as the music. This is a lesson in right hand guitar technique. I wish I could add a little quirk into this, just a dash of King Crimson or Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. Nice job!
7- The Big Old Endless Sky- The One About the Housing Affordability Crisis
Oh man, I feel this subject matter here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I just love the vocal performance! Great long notes! This rocks! There’s a band called Geggy Tah, they had a song called Sacred Cow. This bass riff always reminds me of that song. I need to explore a trip to Melbourne I guess, although I highly suggest coming to Seattle in August. I love the vibe, i love the energy!
8- David Taro- Longevity
What a great recording! The mix is perfect. I love all of the tones and all of the performances. Tasty solo! Sweet and creamy tone! I could sit in the solo section for a few minutes (I just saw a Phish tribute band last night). The lyrics are okay. The performance is so good! Nice obvious take on the challenge. Good job!
9- Governing Dynamics- Fire in the Distance
My Spotify suggestion algorithm would certainly suggest Governing Dynamics to me. I listen to this genre a lot. I wonder if that makes me pickier with your songs. I just have one big nitpick. That is the guitars are too quiet. Vocals are too loud. The prechorus “time is money…” those guitar stabs lack force. I want some Pixies dynamics and a really distorted loud stab there, along the Weezer Say It Aint So vibe. I do love how poetic your lyrics are. Sweet solo, but too short. I enjoy the “AI bad” thesis of this, but I totally disagree with it. And that’s okay. In general I find this too verbose, I want more music in my music. It’s a minor criticism (Peter Gabriel won’t listen to me either). Cool song!
10- Celestial Drift- Southbound I-75
Welcome back! Is that lap steel? I really enjoy the lap steel. All the playing is really good. This pickin’ and grinnin’ reminds me of watching He-Haw with my grandparents. There’s not much poetry in the lyrics, but plenty of story. It’s a light-hearted song. The vocal delivery makes this fell novelty. This is done really well and I think accomplishes what it sets out to do.
11- Siebass- It’s Been a Long Time
Nicely constructed song! That bass tone is so killer! I really enjoy the slight pause before “LONG TIME”. It’s a good hook. Excellent use of cowbell. I enjoy the solo, I wonder how many takes you took. I’d probably take a few more takes. I don’t think the note choice live up to the potential. Good take on the challenge. You know, you could always do a bass solo, just a thought. I enjoyed it!
12- Stacking Theory- The Mistake
There’s a lot of cool sounds in this one. It’s so long. I think it would be stronger editing it down. Cut the verse in half. That music interlude at 2:10 with the slide up guitar lick is really beautiful. I enjoy the melodic echo solo. It feels very Depeche with the timpani and drum machine. I’d like to hear the Big Old Endless Sky cover this song. Mostly I’m saying, I wish there was a live drummer (or a robot made to sound liek a live drummer). The multi track vocal stocks near the end are very cool.
13- The Dutch Widows- Hie the Night
There’s hardly any dynamics in the vocals. The production is really nice. I like where all the instruments sit. I love the balance of them all. I don’t find the chorus very catchy. You’re resting on the laurels of being such a good producer. The challenge box is checked. I like the bass line. I’m yearning for an instrumental break, I’m yearning for a solo. It suffers from feeling too samey throughout.
14- Pigfarmer Jr. -Human Again
HUMAN AGAIN is an anagram for U AI HANGMAN. Challenge box is checked. This feels like lyrics came before the melody. The acoustics sound great, i love the hard pan for them. The chorus is underwhelming. To me, the chorus sounds like a Pre-Chorus, I wanted a super catchy 8 bar chorus after that. Good singing, I’d like to hear you concentrate on melody first sometime. I enjoyed this.
15- Dream Bells- Caerus
Nice lyrics! I much prefer poetry to story or cliche in my lyrics. I love your voice. The challenge box is checked. I really miss drums, there’s a good pulse to it. There’s a lot of hiss. Very pretty synth pads. This washes by quickly, It’s very ambient. I don’t think i like the guide vocal melody. I think a counterpoint would have worked better, or have been more interesting. This is pleasant but there’s not much of an arc to it. There’s almost no drama to it, it’s all at the same level of intensity.
16- Ominous Ride- Hallucination
It’s a really muddy mix. I do like the dynamics. The drums and vocal with guitar stabs verse works very well. This chorus is nowhere near as catchy as Pour Some Sugar On Me. I’m not a fan of the lyrics, they’re okay, they serve in “place vocal noises here”. The tempo drags a bit. I like the loud grungy guitar riff. I think 1.5K boosted in the vocals, and dampered in the other instruments might help the vocals stand out. I’m glad you didn’t just raise the volume of the vocals and have quiet instruments. I wish there was some more music, a solo, or music break etc.
17- We Happy Few- Winter Waits, Summer Spins
This starts really strong! I like the mix a lot. The slide guitars are great. The vese building up to the chorus is really cool. Then the monster vocals come in, and feel awkward to me. That vocal voice takes me out of the song. I appreciate the vocal variation, i think loud passionate vocals would have worked better. I didn’t need the commentary at the end.
18- Hot Pink Halo- Mark, Run
This sounds more like soundtrack music. It’s almost score. I’m starving for the Eno synth that makes brief appearances. It’s mostly girl and piano. There’s not enough melody to hold my attention. I get bored listening to this, it really drags for me. It’s performed well. I like your voice a lot on this one. You happened to be sandwich between two of my favorite songs, I tried to not listen in the submitted order for that reason. It couldn’t have been a more difficult place to be. This is a good piece of art, but not a song i want to listen to repeatedly.
19- Distance- 48
So inventive. So clever. Too clever. You really punish the listener with the starts and stops. The tempo changes. There are some sour vocal bends too. Listening to this makes me feel lost. There’s probably a drug where this becomes the best song ever. There’s not a groove to swim in, we are getting thrashed around in choppy waters. It’s not doubletime or half time shifts, its a complete jerk around. So if i divorce myself from the urge to get into a groove I enjoy this more. The synth lines are delightful.
20- Mobius Strip Club- The Galaxy of You
Is it possible that “..arms” is out of your range? Is that too low of a note for you? Are you just out of breath at the end of that line? I’m always astounded and impressed with your vibrato, but I don’t agree with everywhere you use it. I call it over singing. It feels like showing off, and it takes me out of the drama of the song. The vocals are soooo loud. Why!?!? The instruments are buried. It’s really rough to see me on a song without drums, or at least a clear pulse. Where do i clap? How do I dance? I actually really like the lyrics. “Freckles bespeckle…” delights me the most.
21- Jim Tyrell- Shadows
Everything you do, you do well. I just don’t feel like you do much. Your guitar playing is great. Your voice is really good. My beef is the writing. The lyrics are really good. All that is not enough. It feels like you have a verse idea, but then no chorus idea. There’s no melodic hook to latch on to. If there were the vocal dynamics and range of Joni Mitchell this would work for me. I’m just not hearing enough music in this song.
No comments:
Post a Comment