Here are your rankings from SpinTunes 23 Champion truth:
Read on for truth's reviews!
1. David Taro - Don't You Want Me Anymore: Great song. Catchy! It has high and low points emotionally that keep things fresh. Great dropout before final choruses. I love the synth line. Great vocal! Epic sound stage for the last instrumental chorus. You are clearly motivated by motive, and
2. Celestial Drift - Skinner: Coolest trick chord in the round. Plenty of rhythmic complexity, but nothing that detracts from the lead vocal line, quite the contrary. The bank robbery scene really turned up the roots prog rock of the accompaniment. Exciting! Dang, it's like a theater piece! Love the sound of their downfall. I'm getting some Spiderland creepy vibes from this
3. Vehicles of Beware - Lordless Lucy: Well I definitely did not expect a fat Jethro Tull style riff after that intro. Delightful! Damn, did that ever get big at the end. I wish it kept ramping up; a song like this needs to stretch its legs a bit.
4. Governing Dynamics - Put The Gun Down: Beautiful guitars and beautiful voices. Dreamy atmosphere with a prominent drum part and a very up front vocal, and you balance everything well. Another "maybe" song, first we were falling for it, now we look at a mirage of it. Was there a "maybe" moment in round 2? Anyway, telling someone to "put the gun down" is a good theatrical gambit, and having got our attention, you sustained it.
5. The Moon Bureau - I Left My Sweater at the Discotheque: I feel like an angry young man listening to this late 70s Brit groove. Nice story idea and narrative. Cute curt ending. A solid piece of craftsmanship.
6. Jealous Brother - Low Bottoms: Dig the melody of the verse, nice harmony line to boot. I like the fiddle. I like the 80s college rock vibe, more Athens GA sounds suits me just fine. Ooh, the acoustic coda is really cool…most effective way to put a period at the end of the paragraph? Don't know. Worked for Los Lobos and Rod Stewart once upon a time.
7. Dream Bells - Temple: The intro is filthy and gorgeous. The lyric is pretty angsty, and the vocal processing makes sense, though it is a lost opportunity to develop a recognizable topline melody in those sections. Pretty bridge is a welcome respite from the rage music. Only it's not a bridge but a coda, and this doesn't make much sense to me from a narrative perspective. Are things not as grim as the body of the song would lead us to believe? Eh, maybe there's comfort in that. Confusing, though. The 1-5-b6-5 motive is heard in diminution and retrograde, which is pretty cool!
8. Sober - The Harder Road: Is that percussion just guitar with muted strings? I don't love the chorus hook, it's nice and you really sing the heck out of it, but despite laying it out on the line like that, belting at the top of your range, the notes and lyrics fall a little flat for me.
9. The Dutch Widows - There's always a book to justify the actions of a thin-skinned baby man and he probably wrote it...: The counter melodies step on the lead vocal line in a way that could have been avoided by having more contrast between them. Didn't love said chorus lead vocal. Calculated for catchiness but not in an appealing way. Motivic development is not that extensive and not that prominent.
10. Flintsteel - Absolved: I was just watching this documentary where Questlove talks about his conversion to Drum n Bass in a Camden nightclub in the early 90s. Your vocal line is very much paced out like "sweet love" by Anita Baker, where your drums are just as frenetic as a drum n bass drum part. Apropos of nothing I guess, but I wonder if I would like this song more if there were parts of the vocal in shorter notes that justified the double time drums. Anyway this is up to your usual high standards, a good song among some great and good songs. I don't have much to criticize. Well done.
11. The Big Old Endless Sky - Of Ragged Mountain Ranges: The opening bass riff is really promising. I loved the snarl and distortion, though the distortion on most of the other instruments I find off putting. The ending was not satisfying to these ears.
12. Hot Pink Halo - Radiant Joy: I'm sorry for your loss. I like the how the phrasing is laid out in your chorus, good use of tests . Very pretty bridge move with that 12 string guitar! Motivic development wasn't so clear to these ears.
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