Here are your rankings from Mike of the Dutch Widows:
Read on for Mike's reviews!
I’m interested in how well the song embraced the challenge - was it integral, or was it crow-barred? Do the lyrics tell a satisfying story? For a challenge that requires a ‘narrative song’ to be written, that seems important to me and I’ve given weight to those I felt were narratively more satisfying or coherent. I’ve quite enjoyed getting deep into some of the details, probably too deep in some instances, but it’s helped to develop my thoughts on the songs and distinguish between them for the purposes of ranking.
I try not to get too hung up on production because it’s a song-writing challenge, not a song recording challenge, but where I found the production particularly elevated or detracted from the song, I’ve tried to reflect that.
I’m also trying to leave space for intention, in that you did it that way for a reason, and it’s not for me to say “you should have done it like this instead”. Sometimes I might throw in an idea or suggest something I personally would have liked, but it’s not my song, so take any such suggestions lightly.
The Alleviators - Right By You
This is a real heart string tugger, both in content and delivery. The earnest pledges to family could come off as syrupy in the wrong hands, but this stays the right side of the line for me and feels genuine and heartfelt.
The narrative is simple but nicely captured. It’s easy to let simplicity be one-dimensional and there’s skill here in evoking a daily routine by looking between the lines; the focus on micro details to communicate the macro. The first verse exemplifies this – he’s not getting up early in the morning to go to work, he’s searching for his keys in the dark so as not to wake the rest of the household. It’s a much subtler way of painting the same picture and I appreciate that a lot.
There are things in the sound/production that I’m less keen on, which are almost certainly personal taste. I found the doubled vocal through the majority of the song a little distancing – there’s a breathiness and whispery-ness that felt insubstantial somehow. When Beka sings the line “Cause this hour is the only time she has with mom and dad” on her own, it’s so, so good, and I wanted more of the song was sung that way. As I said in the introduction, I’m trying to be fair to people’s intentions, so I presume the effect was intentional, but as a listener, I found the doubled whispery vocal a little distracting.
From that line where Beka’s vocal is solo’d through the call/response part with Robin singing – it’s golden. It works an absolute treat. That parent/child lyrical mirroring of the song title with the parent wanting to ‘do right by you’ and the child’s wanting to ‘be right by you’ is such a nice bit of writing. Soloing Robin’s voice for the first two lines of that section is really effective – she’s got a great voice – and using an actual child to sing the child’s part worked really well.
This Big Old Endless Sky - It Only Felt like a Minute
An existential crisis of a song, a yearning for more than the daily grind of a working life. Been there. Still there, I guess. Days do pass much quicker as you get older, and before you know it, weeks, months and years have gone by. ‘Wake up’ is good advice.
The verses put me in mind of A House (the band, not a literal house) – it’s not quite sung, but nor is it spoken. It moves between the two in a natural, seamless way. The ‘wake up’ section is so good, elevating the song like a good chorus should and the vocal layering is excellent. It would be a super-satisfying chorus to repeat on a longer version of the song. While I love the self-assurance of putting this much effort into writing and producing a song that’s a smidge over a minute long, it’s absolutely good enough to carry off a much longer version, and that ‘wake up’ section would make a glorious exhortation of a chorus.
The sound/mix is great – the drums, the guitars, the vocals, the high staccato part in my left ear (a guitar?) are all spot on. It’s a really well-structured and layered song and there’s an urgency, a drive that feels to me almost like a sense of panic at things slipping away. Or I may be projecting a little.
Is there a rogue short stab of sound at 47s in the ‘wake up wake up’ section? I listened over and over and couldn’t quite be certain of what it was. A really short backing vocal? An ‘up’?
Having the final words on the song “Was that really eight hours, it only felt like a minute” end the song exactly on a minute would have been perfect, but 1m04s is pretty close.
Bob Voyg - A day in the life of a Mall Santa
The title is pretty key to understanding this song – the lyrics are not in themselves specific enough to get ‘Mall Santa’ as the narrator, and the bio doesn’t provide much of a clue. The first half the song is effective at communicating a slightly world-weary, jaundiced view of the world giving the impression that Mall Santa is tiring of his job. The tone has a touch of cynicism that I really liked.
The second half of the song takes a bit of turn though I’m not 100% certain if Mall Santa is still the narrator, or if this is a child’s (ruthlessly mercenary) viewpoint. I like it either way – the intrigue of Mall Santa being beholden to some shadowy figure where the power dynamic is based on something darker, more adult-oriented, or a child that is so resentful about what they’ve had to do to get to Santa for whatever reward they’re hoping for, that it becomes a dogged and ruthless exercise.
All of which is to say, this is a really cool lyric, and I’m intrigued by the story; I want to know more about people in the periphery, the object of Mall Santa’s infatuation, or the tired, desperate state the parents might have been in to put up with their rapacious child.
There’s a weariness to the music and vocal delivery that reflects Mall Santa’s tired and put-upon demeanour, stepping up in intensity at the point of interaction, the “Tell me what you want” line. Just after those lines, the narrator seems to either switch to the child, or Mall Santa starts fixating on being rewarded themselves by someone just out of the scene.
The written lyrics suggest that switch would have occurred at the point where the music steps up (“give me what I want” being the written lyric), whereas the sung lyric (“Tell me what you want”) maintains Mall Santa’s original viewpoint, switching focus three lines later without a change in musical feel. The written version might have been a touch more effective for me, with the musical change-up matching a change in narrator or focus, but the sung version still works, it just doesn’t have a musical signifier.
The mix is great – everything’s super clear and well-balanced, and it’s a good listen.
Boffo Yux Dudes - Say Hey!
The narrative to this one is clear if a little simplistic. The narrator is cheered by shouting the word ‘hey’ and goes through the day shouting ‘hey’. Unless I’m missing something, there doesn’t seem to be much more to it than that. I mean, that’s a perfectly fine premise, though it didn’t fire my imagination too much. The narrator comes across as a super upbeat person, but there’s little depth to their approach to life.
I spent a lot of time wondering if the variation in the spelling of ‘hey’ and ‘hay’ was intentional and important. If it was, I’ve not been able to discern a reason for it.
The staccato repeated ‘hey’ backing vocals are great. For some reason it puts me in mind of a line of marching gnomes or oompah loompahs all shouting ‘hey’ as they go about whatever work they do. There’s a higher pitched ‘hey’ that comes in every fourth gnomic ‘hey’, which is a lovely detail, filling out the sound really nicely.
I didn’t understand the interjections that appear and almost immediately disappear again - there’s a ‘no way’ and a woman singing a line. Perhaps they’re from a relevant film, TV or song or perhaps it’s the gnomes/oompah loompahs. Either way, I wasn’t sure what they signified or represented, so they were a little lost on me.
The song is totally solid musically – everything sounds good. Even with my depth comments, it's a fun and enjoyable listen.
Boo Lee Crosser - Exit Signs
There’s a strong narrative arc to this one. We’re dropped into the middle of a story - we don’t know why this happened, we’re just dealing with the immediate aftermath. The way the scenes jump from verse to verse - from initial encounter, to crime scene, to escape, to hospital - give the feel of someone slipping in and out of consciousness, of things coming into focus, engaging with a situation, and then fading out again. It’s very visual and it’s strong writing.
There’s some dark humour in there (“interrupted by my need to breathe” and “distracted by the bullet in my arm”) that I enjoyed. Did the narrator survive? I assume they did, given the declared admiration of resiliency in the song bio, but the references near the end to a chaplain, and a ‘grave’ mistake make me wonder if these were intentional allusions to death. I kind of like that this is not resolved clearly.
The verses are super strong – the melodies are great, I really like the delivery, and the music bounces along.
The first chorus is sung from a different viewpoint (I think) – some kind of medic, maybe – though I’m less clear on the second chorus, with a first person reference to haemorrhaging amongst words that could be spoken to the narrator.
The choruses have a more faltering rhythm, which provided a nice contrast, but also broke the mood/flow for me; I wanted the transition to flow more, but with repeated listens, I came to appreciate the song’s submitted form. Maybe my initial thought was just wrong.
The instrumental break after the first (sung) chorus felt a touch half-hearted and I really wanted it to soar – a searing violin line just lifting off.
Overall, I liked this one a lot.
☀bucket - Nickels to Roll
The marriage of story and music is super effective here – a song about being too busy to do anything extra-curricular is matched by the frenetic, relentless beat, pushing the listener through the crowded day. There’s an Underworld/Hawkwind crossover vibe to this, which I’m all in favour of. The narrative arc is clear, and while daily family life seems to be a commonly-trodden path this round, this takes a nice angle, distinct from the approach adopted by others who looked at a similar theme. The narrative to this is simple enough, but the relentlessness of the beat and the delivery elevates the simplicity to an infectious earworm. The vocal delivery felt a bit wearing after multiple listens, though it’s a totally warranted approach, thematically.
There are some great lines in here – “no time to get old” and “I think I overcommitted though I’d never admit it and even if I did my schedule would not permit it”. It’s a nicely conceived lyric.
The bass and the drums sound great. The short instrumental section after the first ‘busy busy’ section (from around 1min15s) is brilliant – I love everything about that section, the break, the way the drums come in, the guitar part, the beat, the groaning vocal. It’s brilliant.
chewmeupspitmeout - Deja vu, Deja me
I like the arc of this – a repeating Groundhog Day where events and conversations recycle endlessly, and Bill Murray reference aside, it doesn’t overly labour the point. I like the audio media references – skipping record, rewound cassette – a nice nod to physical song media. Not making a fuss due to national characteristics was a nice touch too.
The vocal melodies are particularly pleasing to my ear, especially, the pre-choruses where it takes on a slightly minor feel (e.g. I’m sure this temporal…). And we get a fade out; I do like a good fade out.
There’s a lot to like here, but it’s difficult to review the song without noting the guitar that overwhelms the song for me; it makes it difficult to hear much else, even the lead vocal is obscured at times. I don’t know if that was a deliberate choice, if time was a factor, or something else, but it made it a hard listen. It’s a really cool guitar part, but it’s too dominant and needed to be tamed and dragged back into the mix.
Mix aside, it’s a good song, with a decent narrative arc. Flipping the monotony of an ever-repeating day on its head by being happy to spend time with the ‘you’ in the final verse is a really neat subversion of the narrator’s prior resigned air.
David Taro - Rosettina
An elderly woman going through her day thinking about her life, prompted by photos or changes to her surroundings is a great premise. The snapshots of her life occurring during her day fulfil the clever refrain “It’s a day in your life or your life in a day” – we see the arc of her life within the constraints of a day. I think that’s a really good framing and nicely different from other takes this round.
There are a couple of lyrical nit-picks that pull me out of the song. The line “she’s as old as a woman can be”; I can’t quite work out why, but it sticks out and jars every time I hear it. I’m sure it’s just a way of saying that Rosettina is really old, without just saying that, but it just chafes for a reason I can’t quite explain.
The other lyrical point is more about a lack of narrative flow. The lines “Aged twenty-one she met a pharmacist’s son, it was a Genovese love affair” don’t tie-in with the preceding lines and don’t develop beyond that simple statement. They feel narratively isolated in a section where the obvious familial links between the four visiting generations and the original romantic spark could have been drawn more directly. Maybe with more time, those lines could have been finessed a little to link the two parts together in a more satisfying way.
With lyrical nit-picks aired, it seems only to fair to say that I really like the final four line verse – that’s some strong pathos. We’re all just passing through. Indeed.
The music is super polished, perhaps a little too perfect for me – I like a few rough edges – but that doesn’t take away from it being a really a good listen. The vocal’s strong and the piano’s great, pushing the song along and giving the whole thing some energy and bounce. The musical bridge with the horns and ‘ba da ba bap bap’ vocals is excellent - my favourite bit of the song. The slide is a bit overused for my tastes – it’s a very 70s MOR sound – and would have more impact if used just in the verse (for example) with something punchier in the choruses. But these are minor points of taste and overall it’s a really good song, delivered really well.
Dog Star Pilot - Only Thing
The narrative is good, perhaps a touch over-reliant on place names, with little peripheral detail – there’s no clue on the ‘why’ of the journey rather than the journey itself. There’s a sense that there is a reason, but it’s not clear. Maybe the reason doesn’t matter, maybe the fact that a journey is being made at all is the story here. But having set out a steely focus of getting through Nebraska in a day, I want to know more. I don’t necessarily need everything spelled out, but some hints would have given the narrative part of the song more depth and would have pulled me, as a listener, into the heart of things. The details we get (motel, broken coffee machine, red stain, bad choices) give us something, but not enough to know whether they’re incidental/situational details, or related to why the narrator needs to get through Nebraska. It works, but it doesn’t pull me in as much as it could have done with a little more fleshing out.
I love the chorus – it gets me every time. That little drop on the word ‘drive’ is just great - I love that note. Despite the a cappella nature being a result of circumstance rather than intention, I love this presentation and the song doesn’t suffer for it. Sometimes, you can theorise or rationalise something and try to intellectualise your way to a view and sometimes, your gut just takes over and you just love something for what it is.
If this was a musical challenge, it would be very near the top of my list, but I think the lack of depth to the story may push it down a little.
Falcon Artist - School Bus Driver
The premise for this is good and has potential, but it needed far more development and depth for me. The story feels very ‘first idea’ and it hasn’t been developed much beyond that initial kernel. There’s almost no depth to the story, and with everything set out at face value, there’s little room for the imagination to see into the lives of the people involved beyond the surface; I found it difficult to get invested in the story and I’m not left with any understanding beyond the functional.
There are a few inconsistencies in the story that I found confusing. For instance, the kids have a sad expression on their face, yet they are also as jolly as the driver, who is as jolly as can be. So I’m not sure whether the kids are jolly or sad? Maybe the driver turns them from jolly to sad by telling them the rules every morning, and clamping down on clowning around. I mean, that doesn’t sound like much fun to me. Seat belts are fine though – that’s just sensible
Lyrically it’s almost got a nursery rhyme-like feel, but doesn’t quite land it. More dynamism would have held me closer - it’s very one level throughout, without much harmonic or dynamic variation or range. I’m left with the feeling that there’s a really good song here but it needs more development.
Flintsteel - Tau Zero
The bio to this song is super important for me, because I’d not heard of time dilation before, and it took several reads of the bio and some research into the phenomenon to understand how this could have happened within a 24 hour period. I mean there are lyrical clues – travelling lights years and eons passing, both being mere moments for the narrator – but without knowing what time dilation was, I didn’t pick up on the hints.
I disappeared down a bit of a rabbit hole, but I did learn that Queen wrote a time dilation song that they played to a Marx brother, that an effect similar to the doppler effect is relevant (though I didn’t get to the bottom of whether a light-based doppler effect takes place or doesn’t take place, due to something to do with the constancy of the speed of light), and that there was an Einstein’s cat experiment, where the cat’s life depended on the timing of two clocks in different inertial timeframes. Why are scientists always trying to kill cats in the name of theoretical physics?
Anyway, now I’ve got my head round the theoretical physics of it, it’s a totally valid interpretation of the challenge in terms of a 24 hour timeframe!
Is the archaic form of language a metal thing - “nomads thus fated to roam”..? It’s an odd phrasing, though more so on the page – it works fine in the song.
The song’s great, musically interesting, and held my attention over repeated listens. I’m not big into the style, but I can appreciate the virtuosity on display and the fine song-writing chops. The drop from the second chorus (“through the darkest of nights…”) into the musical break at 3m17s is really nice, and the build back up into the guitar solo via some great drumming and an echo of the intro, had me head banging along (well, nodding). This is well-crafted stuff.
Fluke Wilson - Tommy Bahama Backfire
It took me quite a while to get a handle on the story here, and even now, I’m not 100% certain I have it straight. I think it’s the story of being in the wrong place at the time, though it isn’t bad luck, the narrator has been set-up. The narrator’s been mistaken for someone else and is being tortured to get information that they don’t have. The misidentification was caused by the narrator wearing a shirt they were given by a man at an airport, and he was presumably the intended target. By wearing the man’s shirt, the narrator’s mistaken identity appears intentional, and the consequences for the narrator are unpleasant. That seems to make the most sense to me.
The narrative hangs together, but it took a lot of piecing together for me to land on what I hope is the right story. I’m not sure why it took me so long, and I wondered whether the lyrics used the most effective parts to tell the story. But starting with a kidnapping, having a moment to provide some background, and then dealing with the consequences, is a perfectly good sequencing of the story. Once I’d (hopefully) landed on the correct story, I couldn’t see how the story could have been told any better, so I think the fault must lie with me.
For a guy and guitar song, there’s definitely good dynamic range with quiet parts and louder parts. The song doesn’t really hit a groove for me until the last section at around 3mins when we hit a Pixies/Radiohead kind of vibe. Before that, there are too many instances where the words are rushed to get them in for me to relax into the song.
There are a couple of editing flubs at the end, I think. A reprise of an older (slightly longer) version of the song pops up after the song fades, and then a third version appears after that. I don’t mind those elements particularly, but if they were unintentional, you need to check where the end of the song is when bouncing out your final version.
gammammannn - Just Walk
A nice take on the brief; it’s different from the rest in capturing a walk with a friend. I’m taking the lyrics/descriptions at face value, though I’m not entirely sure if Gloopy is real or imagined. Gloopy’s existence doesn’t really matter I guess, as they serve a narrative purpose in reassuring the narrator when it’s needed.
I’ve not come across the phrase ‘walk of avoidance’ before, so I’m not sure what that means in this context. Google was no help, though I did end up down a ‘self-avoiding walk’ rabbit hole, but I think that’s more of a fractal maths thing.
I really like the bass in the intro and first Steve – there’s something pleasingly fat and round about it. That section would work well as the theme tune for the Gloopy-themed kids TV programme I think should now exist.
The drops have a very claustrophobic feel, which serve as a great counterpoint to the bouncier Steves. I’m excited to see a Larry appear – has there been a Larry before? Larry’s quite disconcerting lyrically, and something bad has clearly happened, but I’m not quite sure what. I’m concerned for Gloopy’s safety, partly out of a general concern for the real/imaginary character in the song, and partly out of concern for the TV pitch that I want to see happen. Maybe not knowing Gloopy’s fate is for the best – the bio certainly hints at darkness, so maybe that’s curtains for Gloopy.
The track really stands out from the crowd due its aesthetic difference, and there’s plenty of skill on show.
glennny - I Have Until Midnight
No qualms about the validity of the narrative here – solidly hitting the brief. Does it matter that there’s no clarity as to what the narrator is doing their best to avoid signing? Does the word ‘serve’ in the chorus provide a clue – is it some kind of legal situation..? I mean, it doesn’t matter in the wider scheme of things, and I’m pretty happy to have a little mystery normally, but the centrality of the ‘thing’ in the story, and in light of the lengths that the narrator is prepared to go to avoid engaging with it, means it must be something pretty big and I can’t help but wonder about it. The impression I came away with was divorce papers, though there’s thin evidence to support that thought. The chorus suggests someone trying to control the narrator by being overly fair towards them, which makes me think that the narrator’s avoidant and protesting reaction says more about them than the mysterious background figure.
Is the 10:15 on a Saturday night a little reference to The Cure? I hope so. Given the reference to Geddy (I presume, Lee) in the preceding lines, it’s certainly possible. Kudos if it is.
The guitars are really good throughout, I wouldn’t expect anything else – the high wavering notes in the chorus particularly stood out to me; a lovely musical detail. The vocals are solid throughout too. There’s much to like here, if I only knew what the ‘thing’ was…
Good Guy Sôjàbé - Justice Never Sleeps
Solid narrative and fits the timeline stipulations, so bang on brief. I don’t really have much comment on the story being told; it had a good level of detail, and there were no particular gaps or confusing elements to scratch at my brain (beyond having to look up some words – resyk and skedways, specifically – as I have no idea about Judge Dredd). It’s probably due to my lack of familiarity with the world, but the story didn’t particularly trigger much of a response in me – it’s someone killing people or doling out justice. There didn’t seem to be much depth to it and as a result I couldn’t get that invested. I liked the line about the civilian being booked for being rude – a touch of humour that provided a bit of lightness. I loved the lyric ‘the afternoon is violent’, it’s such an evocative line, though in this instance, I suspect it’s literal. In a less violent song, that line would be very poetic.
Sound-wise, I liked it a whole lot. That guitar part (from about 11s) is ace, a really nice riff and the vocals are great throughout. The screamier vocals work super well in the choruses, and I love the tone of the lead vocal. The dying tail of the screamed vocal at the end was probably my favourite bit, but I’m a sucker for that kind of thing.
Governing Dynamics - Outtahere
Is this a narrative about something not happening - someone wasting time and wishing they weren’t? I mean, something not happening is still something happening, so it meets the brief for me. The opening four lines are really good, my favourite part of the lyric, setting up the story beautifully without spelling it out. Although the rest of the lyric doesn’t quite hit the same highs for me, it does a decent job at conveying the narrator’s need to escape their situation, ending with the hope of an escape. The interjection from a third party works well as a device to snap them out of their malaise, and I liked the naturalness of that short conversation.
The chorus is my favourite part of the song – as it should be - it coheres in a really pleasing way, with the melody, guitars, and the backing vocals (especially the backing vocals) all gelling into a series of great, uplifting moments. The chorus to this has been stuck in my head more than almost all any other song this round, with perhaps only The Alleviators running it close. There’s a common thread there, I think.
Hot Pink Halo - Move Mountains
Some songs started high in my initial rankings, and dropped as I started listening more closely and analysing the narratives; this one took the opposite route. On first listen, the sparse arrangement and its relatively quiet presentation placed it lower in my initial rankings, but the more I listened, the higher it rose in my both my appreciation of it and my rankings.
It's a deceptively clever lyric, a quiet sadness underlain with a steely strength to not be broken by illness.
When I think of mountains in a medical context, I have an image of the charts that used to hang on the end of the beds, where the medical staff plot various vital signs over the course of a patient’s stay, blood pressure, heart rate, that kind of thing. I suspect mountainous graphs of vital signs is probably not great and steady charts of blood pressure or heart rate are probably healthier. Unless they’re steady and too high, I guess. Anyway, I know those are not the mountains that need to be moved here – thanks song bio!
Whatever the similarities in some of the chosen narratives in other songs, no-one else chose to set their song in a TB sanitorium and pin their narrative on the thoughts of a patient being so tormented by the same, unchanging view that they see it at night when they close their eyes to go to sleep. It’s with them 24/7, and we get to see inside one of those 24 hour periods. I would imagine there’s some displacement on the part of the narrator, that by focussing on the fly in the ointment it suppresses thoughts around their illness. It’s human nature to focus on the irritation in a situation. It’s very princess and the pea. But with TB.
I love that the request to move the mountains is framed with an offer of reciprocity – I’d do this for you, won’t you do it for me. Like that makes the request any more achievable. The emptiness of the offer isn’t apparent to the narrator, such is their need for the situation to be resolved. Or maybe they know the offer’s empty, but don’t care. It doesn’t really matter, but it’s nice to think about the narrator’s motivations, and I find I’m more likely to do that when I get invested in the story.
The music is gentle and pulsing, and the backing vocals are ethereal, almost angelic. It put me in mind of O Superman by Laurie Anderson, and though the songs are not that similar, they share an aesthetic.
The vocals throughout are great – those lines where the breath’s running out really grew on me, the strain of forcing out the last words before the air deserts the singer. For a song about someone with a lung-based illness, that shortage of breath was an effective creative decision.
Huey Long's Big Strong Thick Pink Magnum Opus - Asphalt
I mean, first up, that’s a strong artist name. The song is an interesting recasting of a true story (according to the bio), now told in the second person. The story’s dark, but I enjoyed it and it’s well written. It hits a nice balance between enough detail to understand, but not spoon feeding every plot point; the listener has to join some of the dots.
The bio provides detailed back story, which helped me understand the context, but the song stands on its own. The bio floats a philosophical question that the song seeks to address, and I really appreciated the layers here. The bio is interesting, in noting the author’s preparedness to “lethally defend” themselves, which strikes me as a strange way of expressing that thought. I’m not certain of the nationality of Huey Long (I initially thought American, but the vocals sound more British), so I don’t know if that’s connected to that choice of words. I also had to look up what a balisong is.
In terms of the music, I liked the shifting vocals and much as I tried to work out what (or if) the different tones represented in terms of shifting perspectives, I couldn’t pin them down to something specific.
The song grooves along on the back of a gnarly-sounding guitar riff and everything sounds good, if grimy (which suits the story). The guitar that comes in at “They knew you were too poor” has a cool Stones-y vibe to it that I really liked.
Huge Shark - Fine
When I was away from my notes, listening to the first verse, I was thinking about those moments where you wake in the night and have a great idea for a lyric, or a book or whatever, but it fades into the night as you fall back to sleep and it’s lost forever. I thought the song bio said something about waking in the night with an idea, and I was feeling pleased with my comprehension skills, before checking and realising that was a different song and there’s no bio for this one. I struggled to pin down the exact narrative of this song and there’s no bio to help.
It seems more of a vibes or feelings song than a straight narrative about something specific, but I could be looking past an obvious meaning. I think it’s a moment where the narrator is sitting with someone that’s ill or dying, and in the absence of a definitive indication from the artist, that’s what I’m going with.
The music is like a warm, comforting blanket or a hug. Really well conceived and delivered. The arpeggio on what sounds like a doubled banjo/piano gives the song a nice, gentle, drive. The vocal’s really good – there’s a slight waver to the voice in some sections that I really like. The imagery is nicely captured – silhouettes falling across a drifting hand being a particular favourite; hands don’t drift normally, but as an image of someone sliding away, it’s powerful. I love when words make poetical sense even when used in a way that is, strictly, grammatically not quite right. Walker Percy wrote an essay in the late 1950s about this, called ‘Mistake As A Metaphor’, which is worth a read (Content Warning: a lot of the language in the essay is very much of its time).
If my interpretation is right about the subject matter, I’m picturing a dark room with someone in a bed towards the end of their life, with the narrator next to them, anticipating the loss while trying to hold on to last moments, dust motes caught in the sunlight coming through the window. It’s very evocative.
Jealous Brother - A Backpack and Two Sandwiches
I’ve gone over the narrative details of this one quite a few times, and I’m struggling to make sense of the story. A train journey from Minnesota to Chicago is a really good premise for a song, and offers lots of potential for an interesting story. But so many people come and go, and there’s a sharp left turn at the end bringing in a high school the narrator went to (with two people that had not been mentioned until that point) that I was left reeling with plot points but nothing to link them.
In the context of a challenge to write a narrative song that takes place in a 24 hour period, a song where I couldn’t find a narrative throughline that made sense to me, and that seemed to jump around, is going to fare less well relative to those that may have spun a tighter narrative web. The details have been intentionally included, so I’d love to know the intended narrative arc that I’m no doubt looking past.
Musically, it’s sounds good; I’m not knowledgeable about American music to be certain of the genre – is it zydeco? Or zydeco-adjacent? It has a certain southern flavour to it – maybe that’s why Louisiana cropped up as a reference? Is there a washboard in there? I think there is, and it’s such a cool sound. There are a lot of lovely musical flourishes and details, and I loved the “to that shit hole” backing vocals – they made me chuckle each time.
miscellaneous owl - Don’t Look Back
A sad song of loss, that gets quite meta by being a song about writing a song. I’ve got lost in the weeds of this in terms of whether the described scenes happen as the narrator is making a journey on their way to write a song, or if the scenes that occur after the narrator picks up a guitar on the seventh line are the song that’s written to capture the narrator’s feelings. The metaphysical nature of what happens at end of the journey perhaps suggests the latter.
The acknowledgement in the last verse that a song is being written could either be part of the song that was written in the song, or as observed by the narrator having written the song.
To have produced this level of duality in a song is super clever, though I’m left with the uneasy feeling that I’m over-thinking the narrative structure!
The story feels mythically Greek, presumably deliberately so, with Orpheus/the narrator descending into the underworld/subway to bring someone back using music, not looking back, with the added detail of paying of a ferryman to get a subway ticket. There’s so much to unpack.
I like the dogs being the guardians of the underground as the narrator heads down to the subway; the underground is London’s equivalent of the subway, so it’s a nice internal reference.
It’s a soft, whisper of a song, wistful and regretful that gives lies to the emotional weight of the narrative. The imagery is really well-observed, little details that paint a much bigger scene. Having noted this elsewhere (The Alleviators for one), I will say again that focussing on the micro and letting the macro take care of itself is one of my favourite things in songwriting. It makes the listener put some effort in, which makes it a rewarding endeavour for all parties.
I don’t know what the bass part is being played on, but it sounds great. Got a lovely round tone – maybe some kind of nylon strung instrument..? Not sure, but I like it. Is there a page turn just before the “three dogs howl” line? I like that – it adds to a live feeling soundscape.
Möbius Strip Club - Angela
The narrative is suitably dramatic and I like the flight of fancy the original event has inspired. The opening two stanzas cleverly set up the context for the story, and firmly root it in a 24 period – very nicely done!
I like the detail that Angela disappeared on the last day of the family holiday, but had left a note on the bed before they’d left, for it to be found when the rest of the family got home. I’m glad that Angela’s disappearance was deliberate and not related to her getting into trouble when swimming but it also hints at a point of considerable jeopardy for Angela when the family was setting off on holiday. What if someone had forgotten something and had to dash back into the house and found the note? Angela would have been forced to confess her intentions face-to-face, the holiday would have been ruined, and Angela’s escape plan potentially ruined.
I also wondered why Angela chose to leave and are we being given a clue in the final line with the narrator crying that she’s “mine, and mine alone!”. That sounds quite suffocating and maybe the root of why Angela’s done what she’s done. My favourite line is “now she isn’t anywhere” – it’s such a self-unaware line for the narrator to sing. Clearly, Angela is somewhere, even if she had got into trouble swimming, she would still be somewhere. But maybe the narrator’s self-involved and limited field of reference speaks to the sentiment in the final line too. If Angela’s not where the narrator expects her to be, she can’t be anywhere. It feels a very revealing line.
I have a tiny lyrical nit-pick – are dunes ever craggy? Aren’t they wind-formed hummocks of sand, occasionally with grasses growing in them..? I’m struggling to imagine a craggy dune. Tiny really, but it popped into my head every time that I heard that line.
The third chorus takes a dramatic turn, with some almost screamed backing vocals really adding to the rising sense of panic at Angela’s continued absence.
There are some musical timing issues with some of the strumming being a bit hesitant, and the drums come in after the first chorus slightly out of time. The drums in general could be louder and heaver – they’re quite quiet and ‘thin’ sounding – and the instrumentation was all a touch quiet relative to the acoustic guitar and voice (which were nicely balanced).
But these are minor quibbles in a really enjoyable and engaging song.
Nathan Joe Long - Remember Monangah
Similar to the Jealous Brother song, this song contains a lot of details that didn’t form a narrative arc for me to give me the sense of the story.
I think the song starts with either a victim or survivor of the disaster telling its story, and then it shifts to a spouse, a child, and finishes by noting that the disaster is marked with an annual event. A lot of the lyrical detail is nicely expressed, but I’m not sure all of these things make sense in a single 24 hour period, at least not without some clear scene setting to anchor the story.
I think the story would be better served by not repeating the initial description of the disaster, treating the song more as a linear telling of the story without the need for a repeated refrain, and to tighten up the viewpoints and timeframes. Some of the child’s section are beautifully written, but also include a lot of detail that doesn’t move the story on, like the cake making verse.
The song has a lovely feel to it, it’s well-performed and the vocals are really good. I loved the line “for a drip of scrip” – there’s something really satisfying about the way it’s sung, a really pleasing rhythm.
OutLyer - HEY ALEXA
Shifting narrator in a song can be an effective way of providing insight into motivations or events, or help to structure a scene with a second, alternative viewpoint. The narrator in this song shifts in a way that I found confusing and that didn’t seem to serve the story or narrative.
It starts with a series of questions, which I took to be questions asked of Alexa – “you ask me”.
I’m making the assumption that the ‘Alexa’ in the song is the virtual Amazon assistant, and not an actual person; I think there’s enough cultural traction around that name for that to be a reasonable assumption. While it’s possible that Alexa is a person, I don’t think it would change my review of the song.
The chorus introduces jeopardy, but doesn’t provide any indication as to the nature of that, and the narrator shifts to someone that’s speaking to Alexa. After the first chorus, there’s a shift to situational and timing descriptions, though I’m not clear who the narrator is. The final verse seeks to resolve the story with the narrator thanking Alexa and noting that they got away with it, but we don’t know what they got away with or how Alexa helped.
The chorus seems like it should tie everything together, but there’s so little detail in the verses, and the perspective is continually shifting, that I’m not sure I ever formed a cohesive picture of what was going beyond something bad happened and a neighbour saw. The hints aren’t enough for me to tie it all together. And that’s OK, songs don’t need to follow a strict linear narrative, but in a narrative challenge that might not compare well with songs that knitted together tighter stories.
Leaving all that aside, it’s a lovely sounding song. On first listen, it was pretty high on my rankings, and it was the lack of a clear story that pulled it down relative to others. The chorus is still one of my favourites pieces of music this round and that autotune/Melodyne effect on the vocal works so well in this context. If there wasn’t a need to write a narrative song, this would score pretty highly for me.
The Pannacotta Army - Leaving LA
The bio backstory to this is really good, but I didn’t get a sense of any inner turmoil in the song with the narrator speculating on the futility of their life choices and considering significant changes. The bio suggests dilemma and introspection, and big thoughts about patterns and ways to break them, but the lyric is largely situational, not emotional.
There is a hint of conflict in the chorus, but it seems more about rationalising the current action rather than a wider thought about potentially futile behavioural patterns. The line “I’ve heard that song before” could be a metaphor about repeated behavioural patterns, but without any sense of turmoil, it could just as easily be about a song on the radio.
I don’t hear any speculation on the futility of the narrator’s choices, nor about the nature of significant changes that might be needed to break existing patterns, beyond flying next time they make a journey. But the next journey isn’t tied to the problematic patterns in the song, it's all implied in the bio. Even at face value as a song about a journey, the song comfortably meets the brief, but I wanted more – I wanted the more nuanced and complex story the bio described.
Musically, it’s really nice, laid back with a hint of jazziness about it. Everything’s played beautifully, and the mix is super. I get a lovely lyrical hint of The Littlest Hobo tv series from the chorus.
SEE/MAN/SKI - The Hermit
The bio suggests that the song is written from the point of view of a recluse, rather than the narrator being socially withdrawn and ‘like’ a recluse/hermit, but that viewpoint doesn’t feel truthful in the lyric. I’m not a psychologist, but I’m not sure a reclusive narrator would have the self-awareness to frame their situation in this way. Would a recluse be miserable and bored by staying at home and is the question of not being able to quit one that would even arise? To accept that you can’t quit, one must first acknowledge that there might be a choice, rather than something innate. Am I taking this all too literally? Perhaps.
I think there was an opportunity to dig a little deeper into motive or compulsion beyond a simple “I can’t quit” and the bridge might have provided some contrasting impulse or desire to escape the situation, which may have made the “I can’t quit” land more truthfully. Also, I’m not sure about a pile of letters “by” the floor, surely on the floor, rather than near it. It’s a rather minor quibble, though.
The opening piano riff is really good, a lovely circular part, and the guitar that comes in after the first chorus is just as good; that guitar could have taken a little bump up in the mix to get full value from it. The backing vocals are really nice, both the higher pitched, ‘straining’ almost doubled lead vocal and the more ethereal parts in the instrumental break (which would also have been helped with a bit more volume). The contrast in groove between verse and chorus serves to really elevate the chorus, though the bridge was my favourite musical element; the change in feel and vocal was great, giving the song a real injection of energy.
Siebass - We Are the Sum of These
Conceptually, this is great. Setting the repeating patterns of working parental life against the ticking of a clock, which serves to emphasise the monotony of the day-to-day is a really neat idea. The repeated sleeping/driving/working/driving/reading sections do a great job of representing those parts of the day where we’re doing tasks, but perhaps without necessarily being wholly present; autopiloting one’s way through parts of the day.
So, while I’d give top marks for the concept, I found myself struggling with repeated listens of the two note, one word sections. The portrayal of the monotony of the daily grind, felt a touch laborious as a listener. It felt like a song where the concept was given a higher priority than any other consideration, which is noble and admirable, but potentially limiting in a song competition.
I really love the musical sections, particularly the second one, which has a little more energy than the first, there just weren’t enough of those bits. The comic interjections are funny, particularly the traffic one, but I didn’t find they had longevity over sustained and repeated listening. Does putting lemon juice on apples stop them turning brown? Does it make them taste lemony?
The tick-tocking would have satisfied my need for universal alignment if the song had been set at 60bpm, but it was good decision to have it slightly quicker. And it’s true, tortellini is fun to say.
Sober - Long Way Round
To better understand the story, I plotted the journey, at least as I understood it, plus the much shorter route that explains the punchline at the end. It definitely helped me grasp the enormity of the effort. It’s a mad route to take - about 24,500 km versus about 6,600km.
I’m sure I wrote a review once that leant on the old cliché that I could listen to Sober read the phonebook and would still love it, and this song sort of tests that, with significant spoken sections that feel more like storytelling than a song. But in a narrative challenge is that an issue? Elvis pulled it off in Are You Lonesome Tonight, so why not Sober? I’m totally comfortable that I just compared Sober to Elvis Presley.
Narratively, it’s an interesting listen, and educational too; I came away having learnt things. It definitely hits the ‘narrative’ part of the brief by being an actual story, read by someone that reads stories for an actual job. Plus by speaking the words rather than singing them, you can fit in so many more words than would have been possible by singing. Was that the motivation for adopting this approach – there was a story to tell and to fit it in, it was either this or a 10min song - or was it a musical choice first and foremost, with the words coming late? In a song competition, it’s a bold choice and it’d be interesting to know why.
As a general rule, I find spoken songs have a much shorter shelf-life than songs that are sung in a more traditional way – they don’t stand up to as many listenings before I find my interest wavers a little. While this did largely hold my attention, a spoken song just doesn’t satisfy me as much as sung song.
The jaunty country that underpins the words is really well-played – the pedal steel swells provide a great bed for the twangier guitar, with the shuffling snare pushing the whole thing along. The chorus pulls me in every time – it’s a strong melody, and the pay-off in the title line is great. There’s probably a rowdy song or three in tales of drinking absinthe and jager, assuming you can remember them.
Wendy Wiseman Fisher - Where the Pumpkins Lie
The story is intriguing, interesting, and beautifully delivered. The lyrical details paint small pictures that add up to the overarching story, without spoon-feeding the listener, which I appreciated. I particularly liked that both seeds and bodies are put in the ground - the start and end of life in the same place has a nice circularity to it. The place names aren’t just a list of locations, but are each tied to an element of the journey, which serves to both document progress and give a flavour of the experience. Does the whole trip take place on the I-5?
I wasn’t sure about the isolated ‘blood on linoleum’ right at the start – was that scene setting, or providing an anchor for later call-backs? I think the song would have worked perfectly well without that line. And are we sure the body in the trunk is dead, and doesn’t reappear in the trunk in Fluke Wilson’s song?
The instrumentation builds nicely, and the layering of vocals is great. The backing vocals, especially in the choruses, are brilliant and who doesn’t love some kettle drums to add some thunderous dramatic flourishes? The pauses before certain words felt overused to me and I might have limited them to the choruses where they’re super-effective and provide a launch point for the backing vocals to take flight. But that’s a really small nitpick in what was a really enjoyable listen, every time I did so.
Joy Sitler - Cigarettes and Microgreens [SHADOW]
I like that the 24 hours covered by the song ends at the point of narration, with the preceding 24 hours providing the story’s arc; that’s a subtly different approach from the other songs that I appreciated. There are plenty of great lines here (even if one has to balance one’s admiration for the lyric writing with concerns over the underlying complexities that gave rise to them) – “only micro greens and a diet something” being my favourite. The lack of interest in even naming what’s being eaten says a lot about the narrator’s relationship with food.
The music’s great – the guitars sound particularly awesome – and it all just rocks along in a way I really enjoyed. If this had been a competing entry, I suspect it would have performed well in my ranking.
Vehicles of Beware - Terminal [SHADOW]
Another very strong narrative from a fellow judge. It’s a lovely take on the consequences of compounding fractional delays and how they can add up, in this case, to something pretty significant by missing the death of a loved one. Like many others this round, this is story telling through the little details to provide the bigger picture, which I really like, and this is particularly well done. The switch in narrator from third person to first in the bridge is great, and the music cranks up to match the protagonist’s stress and anxiety. That balances nicely with the softer, subtler music marking the death at the end.
Musically, it’s really nicely written, played and mixed, and the tying of music to story is excellent. I particularly love the way the melody develops over the first six lines of each verse – the high part on the sixth line in each verse is really good.
As with Joy’s song, if this had been a competing entry, this would have ranked pretty highly in my rankings.
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