Here are your rankings from Mike of The Dutch Widows:
Read on for Mike's reviews!
I’m not the most literate of music theorists, and I won’t pretend that I can discern exactly where the secondary dominant chords fall in every song, nor whether their use has been suitably prominent or creative. Part of the interest in this challenge for me was seeing what you all did with it, as I didn’t particularly understand it at first. I’m assured by Micah that everyone has responded to the challenge, and that we judges are free to judge the songs on the basis of whatever criteria we see fit.
I’m on holiday this week, so while my intention is to do full justice to the judging, it’s the first and only holiday I’ve had since last Christmas, and I’ve tried to balance writing reviews with not staring at a computer screen all week; these reviews may consequently be a little shorter than Round 1 as a result.
The Alleviators - A Start
A really nice take on a faltering, uncertain start to a relationship. There’s a charming naivety to the lyrics and the music reflects the mood with a soft, gentle feel to it. The vocals are great and the balance between the two voices is really good. I love the line “All these love songs that I lied to write” – that’s such a clever lyric, evoking the masks that everyone wears to get stuff done, but acknowledging the inner truth. Lovely stuff.
I’m not sure there’s a repeating chorus as such, not that there needs to be one, but it’s always nice to have a hook that can help stick a song in my brain, particularly when there are so many songs to listen to in a short period of time.
This Big Old Endless Sky - Sunshine / Abyss
This sounds like it’s almost on the edge of falling apart, but in a good way – it’s frenetic and edgy, but not careening, and the distorted vocal and insistent rhythm guitars give everything a manic feel. The harmonics coming off the distortion on the guitar in the right channel are awesome. There’s a hat tip to Sartre in this song as well as The Pannacotta Army song; something clearly in the air. I love where the guitars come back in after everything drops out for the nod to Sartre.
I had a slight discomfort over the use of the secondary dominant resolving to the dominant for a whole section, which borders on a key change for me. But if Micah’s happy there’s no foul here, I’m happy too.
Aside from a slightly clunky fill into the second verse, the drums are pretty great - the doubling up of the hi-hat into 16th notes for the last couple of lines of the choruses is super effective at cranking up pressure even higher than it already was. I’d maybe push them a touch higher in the mix for the full brain melt. The backing vocals widen things up beautifully for the outro too.
Bob Voyg - The Navigator
I don’t know the book, and so don’t know the context for the lyric, but I get the sense of someone that has to sacrifice something to provide a service to others, presumably some kind of navigation. Maybe like the pilot in Farscape. It doesn’t matter, but having been given a hint, I like to try and piece things together, at least without having to read the source text – time is limited…
The song has a nice sound to it, the synth pads, the incidental guitars that come and go, and the bass part that could be a double bass (or a plug-in) or maybe a guitar through an octave pedal. The vocals are really good, and the doubling/harmonies on either side sound great without overwhelming the lead vocal. The big guitar chords in the second chorus are really cool, sustaining chords rather than strumming gives so much more space, and provides a dramatic moment when the guitar changes up near the end.
With more time, this would probably become a well-loved album track, but a week and 21 songs (27 including shadows) is not enough time to get to the “well-loved old friend” stage with any of these songs.
Boo Lee Crosser - As often as I’d like
A bio that gives me a clue as to what the song’s about is always appreciated! Would I have pulled the meaning out of this without it? I don’t think I would have done, I suspect I would have assumed it had a more religious leaning to it.
It’s a nicely written lyric – my favourite part was the rhyming “kid” with “crooked”. The music works well, even with quite a sparse presentation. The lack of a repeating chorus tripped me in not giving me a hook to cling to. If I’d had more time I might have chopped the song up or played it on different devices to see how closely the choruses aligned melodically, because each time I got to the chorus, I had no memory of having just heard it - it felt like the first time pretty much every time.
☀️bucket - Shoot Me
Top marks for the song bio. It’s not often one gets the underlying musical theory portrayed pictorially. It looked very clever. I mean, it was wasted on me as I didn’t understand it, but I appreciated the effort.
There’s an unfinished sentence in the bio: “In “theoretical” terms, this means that this song tempers out the tetracot comma, which”
Which what? I was hoping that the missing words would help me understand the start of the sentence, which made little sense to me, even after Micah explained commas to me (sorry, Micah, it’s me, not your explanation!).
I love the sentiment behind the song – glorifying violence is not big or clever, no matter what you think of those involved, and the need for everyone to be on a side at the expense of any nuance is one of the most profoundly depressing aspects of the current global political climate.
Having said that, I didn’t particularly enjoy the song. Spoken word songs do not stand up to repeated listens for me, and the chorus is so primary coloured that the pay-off isn't big enough; I understand the ‘why’ of that decision, but the balance was skewed.
I liked the sound of the song – the guitars were suitably grungy and had great tone, the drum parts were really cool, and there’s a tension that builds through the verses that is probably linked to the underlying chord sequence.
Ultimately though, this hits me like a single idea stretched just beyond its natural lifespan; even at under 2 minutes, it felt long. I needed a change at some point to provide some colour or relief.
chewmeupspitmeout - the house i built wouldn't hold
It's a good lyric – it could be a metaphor for a relationship, could be geo-political, could just be a builder that’s not great at building. Multiple possibilities, and not knowing the exact story doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of it.
The mix is really good, with the excellent bass part, the Hammond (?) organ and the bubbly guitar parts the stand-outs for me. The vocal sits really nicely in the mix – it’s all really clear and the mix issues in Round 1 are completely resolved here. This is another song with a strong outro – this round has some cracking outros.
David Taro - Something About Her
A nice lyrical marrying of the challenge with the object of the singer’s desires; it’s arch and knowing, but works well. The “chord not in the tonic key” hitting the secondary dominant is really nice, so satisfying; it’s possibly my favourite example of implementing the challenge this round.
I don’t care about rhyming schemes particularly, but the bridge (“When everybody says..”) adopts what I’m going to call an ABCABC scheme, but the B and C rhymes are essentially the same words – “right” rhyming with “alright” and “matters” rhyming with “matters”. Maybe that’s OK in a contained part of the song like a bridge, but they do stand out when the rest of the lyric is crafted much more carefully.
There are some lovely Beatle-y moments either side of the bridge, descending runs, accents and chord changes that put me in mind of something like, well, Something. That could just be because this song also uses that word a lot, so I’m pre-conditioned to make the connection. Like a Pavlovian judge.
Flintsteel - Last of Your Name
Similar to glennny’s song, this is a song of contrasts for me. I really like the opening piano/string section, and I was excited to hear it continue in that vein, but the guitars drop in and I’m transported back to school in the late 80s. Everyone at school loved the hair metal bands, and me with my REM and Smiths obsession was very much a round peg in a square hole. Anyway, we’ve all moved on.
The guitar riff in the verses and the high guitar part that comes in at the end of every second stanza are both brilliant; those incidental parts are so well done that I can’t help but wish that the rest of the guitars were less conventional for the genre. I know it works, and it’s how it should sound, I just hanker after some difference.
The vocals are great – the word “fire” is particularly impressive – and the lyrics are archetypal for the genre, overblown and heroic and full of ancient imagery of blades, flames and vengeance. I really liked the answer to the questions “what's your reward? purpose? duty to them?” – the “no” is so emphatic. Just tickled me.
gammammannn - Collided
This is one of my favourite stories this round – a love song about a space probe and a (dwarf) planet is unusual but totally works as a proxy. The different vocal treatments for New Horizon and Pluto worked well, and kept me keyed in on who’s narrating at any given point. I liked the reference to “planetary dysphoria”, which I thought was very clever, and “my nitrogen heart” is a great phrase and would totally suit a song where it wasn’t quite as literal.
The song feels a little less structured than suits my ear – it’s more of a meander around rather than a direct A to B journey. The New Horizon and Pluto bridges are my favourite parts – they just open out and there’s a warmth to them, which then closes back in for the outro.
glennny - Mottainai (What a Waste!)
I now know what Mottainai means; every day’s a learning opportunity. I like that the lyric gives a sense of the regret at the waste (I presume of a relationship) without spoon feeding it to us.
This is a song of musical contrasts for me – the intro, up to and including the harmonics that start at the 16 second mark, is beautiful, properly lovely; I really wanted that to develop into the first verse, with the equally delightful acoustic guitar riff that runs through the verses underpinning it. But those twin, harmonised guitars drop in at 19 seconds, and the song disappears down a hole for me. I’m not a fan of guitar solos at the best of times, but twin harmonised guitars are my nails on a chalkboard, and almost nothing is likely to put me off a song more.
The electric guitars generally felt overwhelming in general – there’s that brilliant acoustic guitar part underneath them, but they just subsume everything else. The verse after the first chorus is a good example – the acoustic is playing a great part that would take us back into the song off the back of the chorus, but the rhythm electric guitar part crashes in with the singing, and the song is less interesting for it.
The electric guitar parts that work for me are the incidental details – the staccato eighth stabs in the pre-chorus are great, as are the harmonics that occur in various parts. It all just needed a heavy pruning to let the softer parts shine, to let the song breathe more.
The vocal harmonies on “cloud your mind” line are really nice and the chorus melody is really strong.
Good Guy Sôjàbé - Whatever, I’m Not Precious
I’m not 100% clear on the exact subject of the song, but the lyric is careworn, married to weary, sad music that’s spare but not sparse. The acoustic guitar sounds great, the strings swell and support in all the right places, the bass provides plenty of movement, the backing vocals thicken things up without intruding, and the lead vocal is just sublime. It’s got great tone, and delivery that’s so, so good; there’s a Vedder-esque wobble that I’m totally into. There’s an ache to this song, that I love.
The chorus melody has a slight 80s feel to it, not sure why, just reminds me of that period, and it’s instantly memorable; I was singing this for days. My partner heard this song twice, and could sing it back hours later.
My only nitpick was that I wanted something to take-off somewhere around 2m37s, when the chorus repeats – just a violin or similarly plaintive instrument, to disappear off into the ether with.
If this song isn’t my number 1 this round, I’ll be very surprised. I loved it the first time I heard it, and that enjoyment has not diminished over repeated listens. It surprises me every time I notice the running time, that it’s over 3 minutes long, as it disappears in a blink. I would, and will, listen to this song for pleasure long after this competition’s ended.
Governing Dynamics - Demolisher
This has a cool sound, albeit it’s not as heavy as it could be to suit the weight of the lyric. It’s quite a thin sounding song, lacking bottom end – the drums in particular sound very ‘mid-y’. I’m not at home, so don’t have my regular speakers and am working with headphones, airpods and laptop speakers, none of which are the best to judge bottom end, but it seems lighter down there compared to other songs.
I have no idea as to why the vocals are split and panned the way they are – a little left and a little right. It doesn’t seem to be linked to any difference in tone or viewpoint, just sounds like two people singing alternate lines in the same song (albeit the same singer taking both parts). I presume there was intention behind the choice, and I’m intrigued as to why as nothing jumps out as an obvious reason.
The chorus is melodically strong, putting me in a Pixies frame of mind, but I just wanted it to roar at me. The guitar part in the chorus is great – not sure if it’s played differently across the choruses, but I noticed it and admired it most in the second chorus.
The first half of the bridge is really nice, but the staccato guitar part in the second half has a little too much fuzziness to make that stabby pattern stick, and it ends up sounding a little messy. I would have liked it to sit somewhere between where it is, and the super clean guitar that follows immediately after the bridge. I love that clean guitar and it’s short little shelf life. It punctuates beautifully, them disappears into the night.
Hot Pink Halo - Borrowed Time
As ever, a very helpful bio to provide some backstory to contextualise the song. I can’t speak for others, but I appreciate a good bio to give me a footing in a song.
I liked the (what I think is a) mellotron at the start of each verse, providing a nice, understated drama to open the song, which is assisted by those held, sustained vocal notes from the second verse on.
There’s something about the drums in the first chorus that bother me every time I hear them. Similar to the Wendy Wiseman Fisher song, they sound like they belong in a different song somehow. Yet on the second chorus they sit much better in the pocket of the song. I suspect that they’re the same drum pattern, so I have no explanation as to why they sound odd to me first time round, they just do. LATER EDIT: this drum thing has niggled at my brain, so I’ve gone back over and over the starts of each chorus to try to work it out, and I think I know what’s throwing me. When I count what feels like the pulse of the song, the drums on the first chorus start half a beat late, compared with the second chorus, which starts bang on the pulse. Both choruses are in time, but that slight delay on the first chorus throws my brain out for a few bars each time.
The details are nicely done - the backing vocals in particular really elevate the song – the piano’s lovely too. It feels quite one paced, without much variation in mood or feel, a pattern of two repeating sections. There are changes in the energy – the third verse has drums under it and a lovely bass part for instance – but the differences are quite subtle, so the effect is muted. Just to mention the bass part in the third verse again – it is very good. Quite Sting-like in its pulsing sparseness. Well-chosen and well-played notes that provide a sense of movement that I appreciated.
Huge Shark - Wanting a Letter
An intriguing song that seems full or meaning, though I’m blowed if I know what it’s about. Which is fine; I don’t need to know what a song’s about. When the lyrics are as poetic and portentous as this, I can just lose myself in the mystery and enjoy it for what it is. My best guess would be someone shutting someone else out for reasons that evade me.
The music is really nicely conceived and played, and it’s an enjoyable listen. The harp (?) that punctuates the chorus is a really nice effect. The drums feel a bit wobbly in places, not out of time or anything, just not quite supporting or reinforcing as well as they could. I really like the sax in this – it’s used sparingly, tastefully, and never overplays. There’s a Blackstar-era Bowie feel about the way the sax punctuates lines, and the notes it plays, particularly the descending four note patterns (starting at around 38s).
The outro with the repeating title line is a strong way to end the song too. I’d love to know the backstory here.
Jealous Brother - Under the Waves
There’s a nice Calexico vibe to this; the guitar riff in the left channel is super, particularly those notes that are plucked a little bit harder. The verses are much stronger than the choruses, which suffer from not being hugely memorable for me; the verses are so good though, that the chorus would need to be phenomenal to step it up a level. The two guitar solos both feel overly long to me, but then, I don’t like guitar solos unless they’re either absolutely essential to move the song on. The solos here achieve a sense of transition in well under half their length, and they just keep going far longer than suits my ear. They really detracted from the song for me.
I’ve got no idea what the song’s about, but I don’t mind that. It’s not a narrative challenge, and the song does seem to be about something, I just can’t figure out what. Some kind of toxic situation where people now live underground or underwater? That’s the best I can come up with.
Möbius Strip Club – It Feels So Good
This has an early 60s girl group vibe to it, a feel of The Crystals. The hand claps, the melody of the “it feels so good” and the backing vocals, all contribute to that feel. I love those groups so I’m fully up for this. And cheesy? No, this comes off as heartfelt and sincere.
There are things that stop me getting all in on this - the autoharp and guitar sound out of time to me, they just drag the whole time and they need to be right on the beat to drive the song, and the reverb on the handclaps at the start completely removes their punch.
The vibe is good, but it needs much more musical precision to pull off and support the simplicity of the lyrical message.
OutLyer - Dive In
This sounds really good – some fine production chops on show. I’m not sure I know 100% what the song’s about – I get a sense of not wanting to miss out on something and that life’s too short to miss opportunities. It’s all vibes though, which is fine. There’s synergy between form and message, in that the music has a regretful tone that ties in with the sense of lyrical regret.
While I’m not super clear on the secondary dominant chords on quite a few songs, this one does seem particularly obscure. As noted elsewhere, Micah’s comfortable that everyone has responded to the challenge, so no foul here.
“A thousand miles couldn’t walk it if I wanted” – I mean, come on, some effort is needed here. The Proclaimers were perfectly happy to walk a thousand miles, albeit in two chunks of 500 miles, and this attitude seems a little defeatist!
As with a few others this round, this isn’t the most memorable of songs, but I enjoy it when I’m listening to it.
The Pannacotta Army - Jean-Paul
This is musically nice, it all sounds great, very breezy, very French, and even the whistling, which should be a hate crime in my view, sounds contextually good. It’s a nice little number, but doesn’t particularly float my boat.
I found the lyrics a touch underwhelming - they felt lightweight and superficial, and don’t give me anything I couldn’t find from a quick skim of a Wikipedia page. There doesn’t seem to be a point of view beyond “you’re a smart guy and I don’t really understand what you’re saying”. That feels OK for a verse, but it lacks traction for a whole song for me. The first two lines are brilliantly Morrissey-esque, and if they had been followed by something like the later line “Existentialists can still have fun”, you have a jumping off point for a take on Sartre that can still express the same lack of comprehension if that’s what the narrator wishes to say, but there’s an angle. It would give me something to engage with as a listener.
I could be misreading the whole song, and it’s all an arch misdirection, where the narrator is feigning a lack of understanding to make a point about just living life and not worrying about deeper questions around existence. If that’s the case, I apologise and you can ignore me.
SEE/MAN/SKI - Melton Mowbray
The Melton Mowbray Tourist Board will no doubt be in touch to adopt this as their new theme tune, to be played at all civic events.
It’s a nice sounding song – lead vocal and piano sound really good, and the drawn out backing vocals in the first verse are great. In fact, I really liked the backing vocals throughout – they do some really cool things in the choruses in particular (“melly mo melly mo melly mo”), and the “oh melly mo” lines are great.
Some of the lines might have benefitted from a less literal or geographically-accurate reading. King Coffee Shop may well be at 54a King Street, but that “a” felt one syllable too many in the line. Splitting “catholic” and “teachers” across two lines doesn’t really work due to the falling cadence on the word “catholic” and emphasis on the final “c”, which gives a false sense of finality, given that we’re mid-sentence. This is very much the song review equivalent of “do as I say, not as I do” as I do that all the time, and it doesn’t bother me when singing it, but maybe on repeated listening to this, I’m beginning to see Micah’s point of view as he normally picks me up on that kind of thing.
The chorus is a strange combination of a really memorable hook, in a slightly faltering setting. The stops at the end of every chorus broke the flow of the song every time and it never hits any kind of grove; I really wanted this to groove so much more than it does and the abruptness of those stops frustrated me every time they happened. The rhythm of the piano chords after each sung line in the chorus exactly fits the rhythm/syllables of the words from the chorus - was it a deliberate choice to avoid that more obvious refrain? It might have given the song a bit more flow if two forms of the chorus ran into each other.
The choice to step up drama on the last chorus was a good one, and I appreciated that change, though the juxtaposition of the aural drama with the mundanity of saying that your parents are from Melton Mowbray never reached a point where the drama felt warranted. The vocal and musical drama deserved a harder hitting sentiment to finish on (with all due respect to your folks).
Sober - I Didn’t Leave Texas
So much pedal steel. The Hammond (?) organ that comes in about midway, is really nice, with three parts that I particularly liked: the slide before the second chorus (which mirrors the pedal steel slide before the first chorus), the held note at the end of “how things used to be” in the second chorus – is that a 7th chord? – and the swirl at the end. I don’t have any great knowledge of country music, and this song would normally be well outside anything I’d listen to, so I don’t know if that that organ sound is common to the genre; it felt like more of a Memphis Soul thing, like Booker T Jones had dropped in and asked to sit in.
The two little runs on the lines “lady’s to blame” and “that’s all I can see” - is that the pedal steel or a different guitar – whatever they are, they’re sublime. High class musicianship, and they just happen twice. Those tiny details are what keeps me engaged across multiple listens.
Lyrically, this rocks. It’s self-contained, has a consistent viewpoint, and communicates something to me. The chorus “I didn’t leave X, X left me” feels like something that might have been done to death, but it still packs punch here.
Wendy Wiseman Fisher - Falls Red With You
The chorus is really nice, my favourite part of the song. The vocal pause between “your” and “leaving” and then running the line into the next is very similar to WWF’s Round 1 song, so I’m presuming it’s an approach that’s innate. I like it here, it works well.
The drum beat almost seems to be from a different song, and it doesn’t particularly cohere to my ear. The verses are very listy, painting a picture, but nothing seems to happen – it’s all scenery and backdrop, but no action. Four verses all painting the same autumnal picture felt overdone and there were plenty of opportunities to develop the story. The bridge gives a hint of what’s happening, but like the drums, the meandering melody feels dropped in from a different song, a different genre perhaps, a more choral piece.
The aspect I struggled with most is the audio balance - there’s no bottom end to the song at all. If there’s a bass part, it’s mixed super low and the drums have no low end at all. Which is fine for a short section as a stylistic choice or to punctuate difference, but to have this little bottom end across a whole song is tiring to listen to over multiple listens. Everything sizzles and with a lot of upper mid and high frequencies, there’s no oomph. (See Governing Dynamics for low frequency caveats!)
Micah Sommersmith - Three Cheers for the Judges [SHADOW]
A nice reward for getting reviews in on time! I’m hoping Micah is aware that the word “spunk” has a particular meaning in the UK that isn’t that aligned to the older meaning of courage and determination; it made me laugh every time. Childish, I know.
The Moon Bureau - Susie, Sunday Morning [SHADOW]
Ah, that delightful jangle. The big, deep (baritone?) guitar that flits between left and right after the first verse is a great detail/part. Like the West of Vine song, the hi-hat is dominant and a touch clunky – I wanted a lighter, almost fizzier sound to it to push it back into the mix.
The timing change just before the “Wednesday morning” line doesn’t quite land for me, it just jerked me out of the flow of the song, and the song never quite regains its groove. I presume that this was intentional to match the mood of the lyric, but it didn’t work for me.
Nathan Joe Long - What I Never Had [SHADOW]
This is a really nice sounding song; the instrumentation works great with the voice, and it’s a nicely written treatise on the topic described in the bio. At least for the first two verses, as I’m not entirely clear on the story in the third verse, which seems more personal and less oceanic. I’m happy not to be clear though – there’s poetry there, and that’s good enough for me.
The musical changes at the end were unexpected, but welcome. It’s nice to jump out of the established musical pattern and take us somewhere else, before swinging back to the prior feel. Nicely done.
Piss Enema – Maggot Cleanse [SHADOW]
To paraphrase one of the greatest writers that loved the sound of deadlines as they whooshed past him, I quite like this. Some of the metaphysical imagery was particularly effective, with interesting rhythmic devices that seemed to counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor of the humanity of the singer’s compassionate soul, which contrives through the medium of the verse structure to sublimate this and transcend that, and it comes to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of whatever the song was about.
Siebass - The Butterfly Garden in the Zoo [SHADOW]
My working presumption is that this is a true telling of the scattering of your brother's ashes - it feels like truth at its core. If this were a competing entry, this would be vying for my top spot.
The rhythm and delivery of the title line seemed so awkward and clunky to me for the first few listens, that I couldn’t understand the choice to sing it like that. But my view did a complete 180 with repeated listens and I grew to love that phrasing; it went from “what’s he done that for?” to “no, this brilliant, I’m an idiot for doubting”.
The story is beautifully told, with empathy, pathos and humour. The details are well-observed, and I feel like I’m there watching, probably on CCTV. The rhyming of “dust” and “hilarious” is great, and noting the placement of stones on an unmarked grave a really nice touch; an ongoing act of remembrance. Unmarked graves are typically associated with war or poverty, and it’s never struck me before that scattered ashes are essentially an unmarked grave, a location of remembrance without a physical marker. That’s a powerful thought.
The little crack in the voice at the end is heart-rending. Is that one take? I imagine that would be a difficult few lines to sing multiple times. I hope the butterfly garden in the zoo remains open to you and your family.
West of Vine - Let It [SHADOW]
This sounds great – the acoustic and electric guitars are so well balanced and complementary, and the vocal is great. The one fly in the soundscape ointment is the hi-hat that has quite a dominant, clunky sound; it either needed to come down in the mix, or use a lighter sounding cymbal.
Is the “96 tears” a deliberate reference to the Question Mark and the Mysterians song? Seems an oddly specific number not to be, though I’m not sure of the significance of that song in this lyric.
The backing vocal on the “I don't want to be the one who lets you down” line is really good. While I would like more of that, perhaps if there was more of it, it would be less effective. The Hammond (?) organ and backing vocals at the end too are great – it’s a really uplifting end, before the drop back to the acoustic guitar and voice for the intimate close.
No comments:
Post a Comment