Here are your rankings from Jim of Seattle:
Read on for Jim's reviews!
Terrific collection! As I look at my rankings, I’m repeatedly disappointed that this or that song scored so low in the list, because most songs here deserved to be higher than their ranking would indicate. Good job, everyone.
As I listened through the round, I kept thinking the same thing, “Nice song! Maybe a little borderline as far as the challenge goes, but still, good.” After about half a dozen of those, I decided the fault was not in any of the songs, but that maybe it wasn’t the best challenge in the first place. So, this time around, I’m not counting how clearly anyone followed the challenge. The body of work is too good, and the challenge was perhaps too ambiguous, so I’m ignoring the challenge. I did notice a preponderance of interesting guitar riffs though, as I could hear people trying to meet the challenge, so it was successful in that way. Everyone did it one way or another, and ultimately that didn’t matter to me. I might call it out if a song does a some noteworthy take on it, but otherwise, everyone is off the hook for the whole long-short thing.
DISTANCE
I’ve got no problem with two numbers anthropomorphized, and actually thought that was going to be fun. But it lost me when ever more weirdness was piled on top of it. I found myself trying to figure out what their being those numbers had to do with the story being told, and then I also found myself trying to figure out the thrust of the story at all. 6 wondered how the fountain was made, then decided something was off, and it went on like that. 8 started off distracted by some unknown noise, then went on about the weather, and there was a beach and painting, and the fountain was abandoned eventually, none of it connected at all. I really wanted to join in on this absurdist journey, but the absurdities were laid one on top of the other with no internal logic to them I could grasp, so I was just confused the whole time. Absurdity like this is right in my wheelhouse for music and writing and everything, and always has been. But I’ve learned that there’s a sweet spot, in which ¾ cup of absurd tastes just about right, but 1 ¼ cups is too much. And when it’s too much it loses too many people, so that the original ¾ cup of absurd doesn’t even work anymore.
I was reminded of David Lynch, who was so great at putting in not just the right amount of absurdities in a scene, but not too much, and those absurdities seemed to contain some sort of mysterious connection to each other and belonged together.
Unlike “Golden Child”, in which the aimless noodly approach actually enhanced the meaning of the song, in this one the music comes off as just another layer of absurd. I remember thinking to myself at one point, though I know this doesn’t completely make sense, “The musical accompaniment in this song isn’t even in English!”
There’s just nothing at all to hold onto in this one, I’m musically narratively, vocally, at sea completely. It’s not even in English, so to speak.
CELESTIAL DRIFT
OK, well I’d be totally shocked if these folks weren’t already familiar with “Hot Rod Lincoln” by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. I’m quite confident they are, and that this is an homage. (That was the second 45 I ever bought and I still have it and can sing it perfectly by heart btw.) But do they also know Sober’s “Driving” (he then went by Sober Irishman)? I was also reminded of that old favorite of mine.
Anyway, what fun this song is! I’ve got almost nothing to say about the performance and the arrangement. Letter-perfect. And the lyrics are such fun too. I can tell some fun was had finding rhymes for those town names. Now, before this gets committed to vinyl for posterity, I do think there are some low-hanging fruit lyrics to clean up. I can hear the fixes were already in progress, because a couple recorded lines don’t match what I’m reading, and the sung lines are better -- “85 miles an hour” instead of “80”, “slows ON down” instead of “slows down”) All these lyrics need to to trip off the tongue, and there are still a few stumbles in there. For example, I’d maybe change it to “that highway’s just insane” or “is insane” instead of “drives me insane”. Easier to sing. The two lines about grabbing lunch at Buc-ees is an awkward mouthful. The sports car could be of a one-syllable color. “Stopped and goed”, damn, that’s clever, lol. When the band drops out under just the appropriate lines, such as slowing down in traffic, using the well-maintained commode, etc., damn that’s clever part 2. And with the Doppler effect in the guitar at the end, the clever trilogy is complete. Holy crap, you were in the zone, man.
DAVID TARO
Well, of course, that chorus sells the song. Very satisfying and exciting. It’s one of my two favorite employments of the challenge. So very confident and dead-on.
I also love the idea behind the lyric. Great idea for a song, and you bring up specific examples to set it up. Excellent. The first example about the dog grabs our attention, nice and specific, and we’re right there with it from the very start. I appreciate that.
I found the following note to be the case with Taro’s Round 1 song as well, and that is that the lead vocal leans too heavily on the growly rock-vocalist style, and seems a little out of character. I don’t think that’s the case in the chorus, but he seems to be working too hard in the verses, and I would suggest he try a take that’s dialed back a little if I were listening in the booth. The melody is also pretty acrobatic, and I’m not sure the lead singer has the chops for it. I might suggest making it a slightly easier tune to sing, or else do a bunch of takes to see if he can hit all the notes.
I’m not sure how much mileage is gained by setting it as being sung by this ancient alchemist. Reading the lyrics, a couple words could be changed, “His name was John…”, “He could plot the stars”, “And though their methods change”, it actually seems tidier. Having it sung by the Elizabethan dude doesn’t gain anything, and it doesn’t make sense he’s looking at modern-day headlines. I mean, it’s fine, but I think it hurts the song more than helps it.
Nitpick: I would change it to “This Bryan Johnson”, to make it sound more like something he read in the headlines right under the story about the dog. By saying simply “And Bryan Johnson” implies the singer already knows about him, which undermines the image of looking at headlines and learning things in real time. (And btw, I’ve read all about him. What a nutjob.)
Lastly, I might work backward a bit arrangement-wise. The chorus is at 11, with everything going full blast, and sounds really great. But the verse and pre-chorus are already at like 8, so the big chorus doesn’t have as much impact as it could have, because it doesn’t have much room to grow. I might try holding the arrangement back a lot more at first, so when the chorus comes in it is bigger and more exciting. For example, I would leave out the organ entirely until the chorus. That sort of thing.
Top contender, though. I love this one.
WE HAPPY FEW
I’m glad I read the song notes finally, because it made me appreciate the song’s take on the challenge. I like how it was expanded into that summer/winter metaphor thing. That justifies the musically schizo style of the song a lot more. (Though there is mentio of a bridge which I’m not hearing or seeing in the lyrics. I assume they were referring to the instrumental break?) I like the winter parts, especially that bend in the vocal line at the end of every line. By the time it gets to winter verse 3 though, I’m finding myself impatient with it musically and want it to change it up a bit. I admire the lyric style, just being a series of descriptions of what winter and summer are like. The song doesn’t go anywhere with those lyrics and doesn’t turn them into a metaphor for a girl or something, and it uses some fresh imagery. I like the winter lyrics quite a bit. Of course, by choosing such a static style of images like that, th music needs to do more heavy lifting by creating moods to highlight those impressionistic lyrics. And as well-played as it is, it doesn’t really pull it off. The winter verses are pretty nice, but they don’t sound winter-y enough to me to underscore the images in the lyrics. I think the summer lyrics are less successful. Less unique, less visual. And musically, they don’t sound like summer at all. First off, I’ve never liked that Wizard of Doom vocal style being employed there. One can only really do one thing with it, which is to sound evil and angry. It’s far too limited as a technique, and has become cliché. It’s also just unpleasant and not particularly musical. Anyway, worst of all, it doesn’t make me think of summer. All in all, I think this song was an interesting concept, but ultimately a well-performed and noble miss.
FLINTSTEEL
This one is played as well as their round 1 entry, just as tight, just as well-produced. Very nice. I don’t feel that the songwriting and arrangement have the same inventiveness as Tarnished did, seems like this one might have been phoned in a little bit. This isn’t a genre I generally like, but what sold me on Tarnished was the musical cleverness and attention to detail, something that this one lacks. But as with Tarnished, I didn’t care about the lyrics so much, but reading along with them I do appreciate how singable they are. I really dug how the lyric kept the rhyme on lines 1 & 3 on every verse “Uncertainty/destiny/hyperbole/you will see” etc. That really works to unify the whole thing. I think there could be some rethink on the lines “There’s no end of days” and “We can make our fate”. I had to read it to make out “end of days”, and “fate” is a pretty distant rhyme for it. (Bryan Johnson would appreciate it though, as told in David Taro’s “Longevity”!)
GOVERNING DYNAMICS
Gotta say, even reading the song notes and learning what this song was supposedly about, I’m not getting AI from it, and there’s just no way I would ever get it without being told. For me these lyrics are too oblique to carry much meaning. I’m all for impressionistic lyrics, lists of images strung together. We Happy Few’s “winter” verses, and Dream Bells also have some nice ones in this round. These lyrics also have some things to recommend them, (“This cup passed round/Got a bitter taste” and “Flickering embers/Sink under my skin” for example), but there are too many different metaphors and images being introduced for me to piece anything together.
Off-hand idea: Would it read better if the chorus line were “Can’t deny the light” maybe? Heat and warmth are kind of the same thing, but I was tripped up because I was thinking, “If the fire is in the distance, it seems like it would be pretty easy to deny the heat, especially since you are not feeling warmth. But even if it’s in the distance, the light from the fire is definitely something I can’t deny.”
I know it’s very easy to dismiss thought processes like this as being too nitpicky, but I think songwriters need to think through stuff like that, because one never knows what kinds of things listeners are going to pick up on, or interpret differently than expected, so it’s better if little details are caught beforehand. (It’s why we all sweep and clean the house way more when throwing a party than we do for our regular lives. Guests feel good when noticing the effort put into things in their honor.)
It’s a good band though, and I find myself enjoying this one when it comes up. The return on investment of pitch correcting the lead vocals is high, because it’s a good, heartfelt performance, undermined by being off-pitch too much of the time. If I didn’t have that to distract me, I would find the lead vocal super strong, committed and musical.
The songwriting is pretty standard fare musically, nothing wrong with it, but lacking any specialness I’m likely to remember for very long after.
Quality effort to be sure, but feels like a Side 2/Track 4 album filler kind of outing.
HOT PINK HALO
This is really quite lovely. Congratulations. These kinds of super spare pieces are so fraught with landmines, they’re hard to pull off. One risks being boring, or pretentious, or self-indulgent, or any or all of those things. Fortunately this avoids all of those pitfalls.
In this round I’m noticing a lot with regard to the song notes, whether they are necessary, or add, or detract, or what. This song is an odd case, because I liked it better not knowing it was about Severance. I had already heard and adored it probably 3-4 times before I looked at the song notes, and when I saw it was about Mark S, and that the lyrics were making reference to Severance-y things, I actually wished I hadn’t known that, as those first few listens I was hearing “mark” as a verb, like making a mark of one’s current place before embarking on some journey. I thought that was a nice image. What’s so ironic about this is that I’m a huge Severance fan, (the season 2 finale was some of the most exciting and creative television I’ve seen in years), so I got all the references. I also wondered if that piano riff was a conscious take on the main Severance theme. Doesn’t matter either way, I just wondered.
Before I knew there was that connection, the song reminded me of Meredith Monk, who embodies a similar aesthetic as this song. (Her “Dolmen Music” is a favorite all-time album of mine).
I think a ton of impact was left on the table here, however. I wish the piano were played much more in time, for one thing. If this were a song I had somehow been capable of writing, I would have quantized the piano a great deal, to rub about the sort of sloppy timing that takes away from the impact of that riff. I also think the vocals push a little too hard and go sharp, which is a real shame. Again, if this were my own song I would have taken a great deal of care in adopting the perfectest approach in the vocal performance.
But I love all the other instrumental bits thrown in there. Subtle and elegant. I wish more attention had been paid to the sequence of those add-ins, as there are times when it feels like the song is building in a certain direction, but then doesn’t follow through, so the different accompaniments don’t feel organized ultimately. All in all, I don’t run across this reaction very often, but every once in a while I hear a song that I am just itching to cover. Definite favorite.
JOY SITLER
Because it appears this song was produced out of spite toward me, presumably because of my previous review, I am recusing myself from reviewing it, though I did include it in my rankings.
BIG OLD ENDLESS SKY
Sweet! So it’s the same basic vibe as Sunburnt Country I see. Why do I like this one so very much more? So I had to go back and compare the two. Having the lead guitar come in and out and letting the bass and drums have their day is much more effective, as my ear never gets tired, and so those stabs of fuzz guitar coming in with that riff work so much better than just wall to wall fuzz. Also I can hear the distortion on the vocal is pulled back a little on this new one. I ‘ve learned something here; I don’t hate distorted vocals and instruments as much as maybe I thought I did. In this one I like it, I think because the song gives it a lot of space to breathe. Man, that long note on FINE at the end is so arresting, with that riff repeating under it. Really nice. I was disappointed the song stopped right there.
I like these lyrics fine, it actually resonated with me enough that I was feeling sorry for everyone in that situation. Man, that really sucks, and I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have gotten that that was the topic of the song without the song bio, though. I don’t have the specific solution or anything, but I wish I could have known what the lyrics was talking about without having to read the notes. A couple lines feel sort of forced; “Our debt is a gold mine”, I THINK I get what that means, but it feels like a stretch. And as effective as that last bit is, “Is not fine” isn’t the most scintillating line. Anyway, I haven’t done my ranking as of writing this, but I’m guessing this one is up near the top somewhere. Good work.
DREAM BELLS
Oh wow, I think this one is an enormous success. This is just so lovely, everything about it is working for me. This is my #1 in this round by a couple horse lengths.
I really love the chord progressions here. It manages to hit that fine line between fresh and new but also weirdly inevitable. Every chord change feels interesting. I always strive to accomplish that, so that’s a big deal for me in this song. The melody is tuneful and interesting and satisfying as well.
The lyrics are also marvelous. (We Happy Few also wrote some lovely winter-based lyrics this round, oddly enough.) Vivid and fresh imagery, cliche avoided, even has a nice narrative form taking us through a winter season.
I think the lead vocal style and production are the right idea. I might try sliding the entire lead vocal track back a tiny nudge or two, because the whole song it feels ever-so-slightly ahead of the beat. It’s not enough that I can point to it anywhere, it’s more that I think the song requires everything feel laid back, and where the vocal sits seems to work against that effect.
I found myself initially not loving the retro synths, and longed for a more modern synth sound. But my attention was drawn to everything else in the song, so I sort of forgot about that and now I’m used to it this way. But I’m putting it out there that I did have that reaction. Might be worth it to spend some more cycles on finding the right blend of patches. Unless that’s the whole idea to sound retro. In any case I can’t tell if it’s on purpose or not.
Anyway, big favorite.
JEALOUS BROTHER
This one took me a while to understand my reaction to. I wasn’t liking it much when it would come up in the playlist, but when I would focus my attention on it, I was hearing good things. So this morning I put it on repeat to figure it out.
The chromatic riff thing was fun, and it was played really crisp, so I liked that. The rest of the song though spent much too long with I-IV-I-IV chords, and the verse and the chorus are both that way and stay in the same key, so the chromatic thing when it came in acted like a breather from the I-IVs. That got pretty tiring.
I also think the vocal performances are good. And the lyrics are hard to understand, but I didn’t mind them because there weren’t too many of them. Just enough specifics to hold it together.
I think the bigger issue is with the production, which is lead guitar-forward and too much mid-range. Both the bass and the vocals are kind of drowned out a bit, and putting EQ on the entire mix with a simple V would also help a lot. The song gets tiring on the ears.
Tiny thing I noticed: At the end of the instrumental bridge, with the repeated notes several times over, right before the vocals come back, I can hear the “splices” between the takes after every one. 1:42, 1:45 and 1:49.
JIM TYRRELL
This sounds like a very promising first draft of a good song. I really like the subject and tone of the lyrics. It sets up an interesting scene, but leaves enough to the imagination. I also really like the resignation in the final verse. Goes really well with the musical vibe. Only a couple lyrics seem look-at-again-able. I don’t really understand what “leaving without a fight” is supposed to be. Also, the meaning is a little obscured with “It makes me want to start again/And leave this town”. It sings way better that way of course, but if he were talking he’d say “It makes me want to leave this town and start again”. I think switching from first to second person should be fixed “It makes me want…/You’ve got to leave…” Lastly, I would say “But most just throwing shade”. Just stuff I noticed, no points taken off, the lyrics are cool.
I do have trouble with the verse structure. The first two lines are really sublime and I looked forward to them every verse. The next three lines just sit on the same chord the whole time, and that - plus that off-balance three lines thing going on - make the verse feel kind of odd. It sort of sounds like you ran out of ideas and thought you could get away with not having to think up any more chords and melody halfway through the verse :-). To be honest, after 5-6 times through the song I got used to it, but it took a while. Then I sort of liked how the song does it after all, but perhaps changing that chord up in some subtle ways like was done in last round would make it so that strange structure is kept, but the chord doesn’t feel “stuck”.
Lastly, I wanted the 3rd verse to be more of a bridge sound, so that when he gets to his resignation at the end, it feels more like he’s coming down from somewhere, maybe more effective.
Nice one. Reminded me of “In the Pines” by Smog, and of “Comin’ Back to Me” by Jefferson Airplane, both big favorites.
MOBIUS STRIP CLUB
This is a fun and interesting departure from the same old bar band sound. It was a fun listen because I wasn’t sure where you were going with this.
And indeed this is an ambitious song. In the right hands and with a few tweaks, it could be really cool. I get what the song is going for I think, and the vision is clear. The song suffers in execution, unfortunately. The melody is pretty athletic, pitch and rhythm-wise, so for this to be really successful, everything needs to be really clean, the pitches, the timing, the sync-up of the two vocals. None of those things is as exacting as it needs to be in this recording, but to be fair, the composer (who I’m guessing is the same person, but I don’t really know!) is asking the singer to perform beyond her capabilities. Or maybe without enough rehearsal. I’d like to hear this one again in a month after it having been practiced over and over a while.
The lyrics are really thick, but the slow and varying tempo and the swoopy melodic flourishes kind of get me to forget about that and just sort of float around in that world.
This isn’t one I’m likely to come back to, but it was fun to get to live with it a while anyway!
OMINOUS RIDE
To me the verse sounds like the verse to “We Will Rock You” by Queen. But I hear “Mississippi Queen” too.
Geez, this sounds pretty good for an iPad mic. Good job. I like how the guitars blend with the vocals in the chorus. Those vocal harmonies layered on there are pretty cool. It’s my favorite part. In general I like that lead guitar where the distortion is so muffled. It’s like ghee - all the good flavor without the unneeded parts. (Maybe that’s because of the cheap mic used!)
The vocals anticipate the beat though. Slide those back, argghh.
I found the naked unaccompanied vocals in the verse a little uncomfortable. The vocalist is fine, but it’s no Jimmy Page, and solid as it is, I don’t think it’s able to carry the whole song the way it needs to out and bare for all that time. In the last verses, where the guitar stays in, I can hear the lead vocal is really good, just not good enough to be by itself.
Also, we get the idea. I think there are far too many words, I’d cut the whole lyric down by half. The song rocks too well for us to care what it’s talking about.
One of the categories I score when ranking the songs is “Misc”, where a song can score extra points, or lose extra points, based on my totally subjective judgment “do I plain old like listening to it?”, and even though a few specific categories scored sort of low, that Misc category earns a few points back. Somehow the whole thing hangs together, but just barely.
PIGFARMER JR.
I really like these lyrics. Really cool organization, with every verse starting the same, and each thing about her is specific and relatable. And then when the band switches its rhythm for the chorus, and we hear the title line, it’s a nice release. So clean and purposeful.
I think the Beethoven rhythm works, especially because you drop out of it to lend variety to the chorus. I wish a little more attention was paid to the arrangement though; it feels demo-y, and that may have been a time constraint I realize. The bones are solid for the song though, and a more creative arrangement could be worth the effort. I might add some BG vocals and/or double-tracking.
The lead vocal is quite reedy and a little hard on the ears out by itself like that, especially on those long notes. The whole song sits in a really small vocal register, and my ears get a little tired of that.
Good job, though.
SIEBASS
The song suffers a bit from the same thing as the Pigfarmer Jr. Entry. The lead vocal is really reedy and paired with that sawtooth-y guitar is a lot of really pointy sounds together, with these long notes. And then in a later verse that high drone guitar is added, and I’m feeling an overdose of pointy drones on long notes. I really notice what an aural relief that moment of silence is a 1:15. That kind of pointed this out for me.
I think the songwriting here is pretty good. The falling, falling down bridge is kind of ragged, but I think it sort of works. The band is tight and rehearsed enough that the raggedy-ness of that bridge has to be on purpose. Something not quite perfect about it but I can’t figure it out. And I really enjoy the going-for-it personality of the lead vocal. He’s not just singin’ a song, he’s intentionally singing certain lines certain ways. That’s fun to listen to.
All these individual pieces of this are working, but not everything fits together. There is too much guitar energy buzzing all around this buzzy vocal for a thoroughly buzzy listening experience.
SOBER
It’s hard to review a song that has this much personal meaning. One feels petty or insensitive in the light of the song’s inspiration. It’s easy to lose the necessary detachment and evaluate the song in terms of its place in the competition.
In terms of expressing the feelings around the subject matter, this scores pretty high. Like a few other songs in this round, it uses the long held notes to express anguish, and it works very well. I’ve got to mention that sometimes those long notes are a little off-pitch, which is difficult because the tune sits on those notes for long stretches. I know it’s a one-week turnaround, and you certainly know your way around a vocal track, but gotta point out it was an ever-present nick on my brain every time I heard it. Not far off, but again, for a big long note, it’s noticeable.
This is really nicely arranged and played. Everyone on the recording is equally comfortable with the 7/8 (maybe it’s all the same person of course). Often when I hear adventurous time signatures in pop/rock songs, I can hear the players tighten up because the music has gotten hard, but I don’t sense that here.
I really love the tune and changes here. It’s interesting musically, and more importantly really underscores the feelings in the lyrics. Bullseye.
I stumble a bit at the lyrics. First off, I like how spare they are, and that they don’t fall into the too-many-words trap. I actually really like them for the most part, so these notes are in spite of how nice I find them: The chorus couplet feels awkward and fussy for the music and the sentiment is it expressing. “Guilt and shame radiate” isn’t a ‘big long notes’ kind of phrase. Just reading the lyrics without listening, the chorus couplet reads more like a pre-chorus, and the actual chorus would be something more raw and poetic, more like a emotional and possibly metaphoric stand-in to represent the feelings of guilt and shame that are radiating. Also, the idea of not being able to look away feels like a bit of a left turn, and doesn’t feel set up properly. It’s a great place to take the song, but I haven’t been set up for it well enough. If the guilt and shame and inability to look away is the main theme, I’d like to see that spelled out a little more. The verses don’t lead me to that feeling, kind of comes out of nowhere. I don’t know, maybe that’s not a problem, unsure here. But I do think if going with the big long wide open notes in the chorus, the lyrics under it need to be something less particular.
Anyway, all this is relatively minor. Great job.
STACKING THEORY
The coolest thing about this song is the inventive arrangement. I never would have landed on the collection of instruments you have here, yet it all seems to work. I was reminded immediately of Flaming Lips. That enormous timpani bass thing you’ve got going is super cool, and the other instruments you throw in along the way are surprising and interesting and yet somehow feel inevitable. It creates a super fun sonic space. I remember in Stacking Theory’s Round 1 song I mentioned there wasn’t enough dirt in the arrangement, but this time is way better in that way. I don’t know if this was a reaction to that note, but in any case, nice job.
I also love the changes and tune here. It doesn’t just sit on two chords and try to get away with an interesting arrangement, but keeps me guessing harmonically right to the end.
The bridge has that nice key change there, but I would definitely change up the arrangement enough to feel like we were in a new place, so the song goes somewhere sonically, and then can go back when it returns to the verse. BG vocals at the key change before ”the tallest person” perhaps, and a different arrangement there would have been effective and kept things fresh.
I did find the slowness of the song tiring, and given all that’s going on here, I’m surprised I have that reaction. Part of it is what I said about the bridge needing to change things up, but I also think it comes down to the lead vocal, which is pretty piercing and hot and dry and maybe more distorted than it needs to be. It’s not quite right yet. The vocal performance also sounds like the singer thinks the song is too slow, and is riding the brakes the whole way. I didn’t feel the singer getting into the slow dreamy groove enough. I don’t know, it’s not all gelling somehow.
I appreciate how the lyrics work both to tell the story, but also work if one doesn’t know the story at all. Couple nitpicks: Holding a big long note on the word “hurt” is a tough sell, as it’s a strange vowel sound. If the lyric had used “pain” instead of “hurt” there, for example, the singer would be able to really sell that “ai” sound. Going “urrrrrrrr” isn’t as effective.
One last thing which seems so obvious to me I almost wonder if it was an unintentional goof. Shouldn’t it be “the heights from which YOU fell”? Isn’t it about that other person’s fury raging, and the singer’s schadenfreude about it? And for that matter, isn’t it more about that other person’s drowning THEIR hurt? He just said he fell in love watching them lose it all, so it seems weird that then the chorus is talking about the singer’s own hurt. I mean, I get it, it just doesn’t feel totally clean.
Anyway, I appreciate the creativity that went into this one, really nice work.
THE DUTCH WIDOWS
I had to look up more about ‘hie’. I want to give this song points just for using that word. It really needs to have a comeback. I’m not giving the song points for that word, I’m just saying I want to. (Also, the internet tells me it is pronounced “high”. I don’t know myself, but there it is.)
This song is surprisingly catchy. That effect where the song seems like it’s repeating the same melody a second time in the verse, except it doesn’t, and holds one extra bar before the change (“sounds kind of lame” is the first example) threw me for a loop every time. I sort of loved being tricked that way. I want the extra bar before the change to have something else in it right there, but no big deal, it’s inventive and surprising and I dig it.
I have no idea what “Hie the night, hollow-cheeked and hardened” is supposed to mean, but it just sounds good, so I could care less. It’s a cool line, whatever it means. Matter of fact, I really don’t know what any of this song is on about, but the alliteration is fun. (Unfortunately “Hie” (the way you are pronouncing it, at least) sounds so close to “hail” that if one isn’t reading along, it’s pretty hard to make out.)
Sometimes I will complain if songs have completely opaque lyrics, because I want to know what the hell they’re talking about, but I don’t have that reaction here, and it’s making me wonder why. I think it actually ties in to one of my complaints about the song, and that is that the vocals are too tentative and mixed too low. That was my first note, and I was going to lead with that, but then I realized the lyrics didn’t make much sense but I didn’t care, and I wondered if maybe that’s because the vocals are mixed so low. Maybe if it was more out front I’d notice that I didn’t understand the lyrics? Hmmm…
But it’s not just that they are mixed low. The lead singer sounds like he doesn’t want to wake his aunt in the next room. I would like a little more muscle put into the lead vocal. The quietness works for the background vocals (Moody Blues, anyone?) but the lead seems too small for that band.
Speaking of which, the band is pretty active, but it doesn’t seem crowded to me. That bassist deserves some overtime pay I think. His contract states he’s paid by the note, I’m guessing. I kid, the bass is great. I also love the drum track.
This song is really solid all ‘round. I enjoy this song a lot. If only….
THE MOON BUREAU
“Fengiest of shuis”, lol. I’m gonna use that in conversation someday. Thanks.
This one doesn’t work for me on most levels. The dit-dit-dit style of the verse is stiff, and the lyrics don’t really lend itself to that rhythm so it sticks out. If a song is going to use terms like “waxwing drunk” and “penny turning verdigris”, it’s not going to work in such a patter style. It could get away with it with simple, conversational lines, but with this level of poetic terminology, that childlike tune is working against it, and so the song isn’t presenting a unified front.
The accompaniment and vocal style are also childlike, again working against the lyric. It sounds as if we are supposed to be listening to some sort of narrative, but the lyrics are too hard to follow.
I don’t think the treatment is too childlike, and I don’t think the lyrics are impossible, I just think they belong in two separate songs.
VEHICLES OF BEWARE
Short and sweet and simple and nails it. My favorite part is the melody on the second line on the IV chord. Pretty.
Not a lot to improve upon with this one. I’m kind of thinking “Yeah. Mission accomplished.”
“Eyes and ears ARE part of all”, my good man. Or else come up with a different line. For crying out loud… I don’t love that line anyway.
I also think there needs to be something else going on this the first time through that “Scratching scheming” verse, but I don’t know what that would be. Of course you layer more stuff in later, but as short as the song is, I wanted that to happen, or at least something more to happen, a bit sooner.
Anyway, like I said, mission accomplished, nice one.
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