What an incredible round. I'm glad I didn't have to rank any of these songs against each other, because it would have been a difficult job indeed. Thanks to all the judges who took on that responsibility!
Since I don't have rankings, I don't have to justify liking any one song more than any other. Thus, rather than comparing the songs to each other, in my reviews I try to zero in on my strongest impressions of the song, whether positive or negative, and/or focus on the feedback I hope is most helpful for each contestant to hear, whether it deals with big-picture conceptualizing or mechanical details like syllable stress, rhyme scheme, and mixing.
Read on for my reviews!
Carrie Spillane - The Shape of Our Goodbye
What a lovely way to start SpinTunes 26! Your voice is gorgeous, the piano is restrained but engaging, and the choral layers in the final chorus are simply beautiful. My one complaint sonically is with the solo violin, which I am assuming is a virtual instrument. I would rather hear a real violin played with more shape and character, or a synth pad that’s not trying to sound like something it’s not.
You pull off some unlikely slant rhymes: e.g. corner/warning; reaction/questions. The looseness of the individual rhymes makes it easy to miss how sophisticated your overall rhyme scheme is. At the beginning you establish an AAB CCB scheme (always a solid choice, and one I’ll always appreciate because it shows you’re thinking more than one line ahead) with “Reykjavik / make it quick / bar // ago / I know / are”. It seems like the next section will follow suit: “separate / see your face / plan // wide / time…” Here we expect a single closing line to rhyme with “plan”, but instead you give us an entirely new couplet with the rhyme “direct flight / connection”. It destabilizes us for just a moment and it serves to bring the energy level up as it leads right into the chorus. If you did this consciously, you’re very clever; if you did it unconsciously, you have a great intuitive sense for shape. Either way, it’s wonderful, and I wanted to zoom in on that specific moment to highlight how unostentatiously good the songwriting is here.
Cosmic Ray Corruption - Trapped in a Hypertorus
Cool beat. Lyrically, the hypertorus seems to be a metaphor for life under modern corporate capitalism. Works for me; you don’t bang the listener over the head with it.
The vocal delivery sits in a weird place between singing and rapping. If you’re trying to sing, I want more melodic variety and a lot more pitch precision. If you’re trying to rap, I want a more energetic delivery, more rhythmic precision, and more dense wordplay.
The Moon Bureau - Your Geometric Dreams
Too cute. I think you’ve hit what you were aiming for just about dead on. I do think some of the instrumental interludes between verses can be trimmed, but the one that contains the key change leading into the ending section is just great.
West Of Vine - A Hole Shaped Like Ohio (In My Heart)
The Dreams Corporation - Tesseracts
Boy howdy is there a lot going on here. This song succeeds at placing the listener inside an alien and vaguely hostile world while also being pleasant enough to listen to so as not to completely alienate the audience. For instance, the extended synth solo starting at 3:13 is largely atonal with completely unpredictable phrase length and shape, but is anchored by a regular drum pattern and the engaging repeated vocal hook “A grid of - a grid of tesseracts”. When those predictable elements fall away for the piano ending, you do start to lose me and I think that section could be trimmed considerably.
Other than the aforementioned “A grid of tesseracts” hook, my favorite vocal bit is how you emphasize and draw out the ending “s” sound in “tesseracts / laps / relax”. It’s not necessary but it’s clearly intentional, and very memorable. A lesson for everyone: Make Choices! Do Things!
Jealous Brother - Hexagons
This is pretty darn fun. The central metaphor is great, allowing you to play both with the “crammed together” idea and the “stinging each other” idea. The band sounds terrific, although I wouldn't object to a little more variety in the groove between sections.
There's a moment of vocal delivery weirdness that sticks out to me - “It STARTed out [PAUSE] with a drum set AND a prayer” with the result that you're rhyming “and a prayer” with “hair”. If you take out the pause you get “It STARTed out with a DRUM set and a PRAYER”, with “prayer” then landing on the strong beat and giving you the “prayer”/”hair” rhyme more cleanly.
Vom Vorton - Out of Shape
Ah, the beach. What better place to notice how much more attractive other people are than oneself?
I dig the opening muted guitar riff and the way it keeps me guessing. In fact the guitars (and synths!) sound great throughout. In terms of lyrical content and imagery, it all hangs together pretty well, although I'm not sure about “you're a hexagon”. Is that a self-evidently sexy or otherwise impressive shape?
There are some pretty weird scansion moments, like “slow moTION” and “I'm A square peg”. I care about these things. I will always care.
Hot Pink Halo - Gather Between The Stars
This song is very good. Your vocal layering is gorgeous, the mix is lush, your piano playing is lovely, the lyrics are characteristically thoughtful and surprising. The song is so good, in fact, that it’s important to me that you fix the one thing wrong with it.
When you sing “make space” at 1:50 and 2:48, your lead vocal places the ending “-ce” of “space” one beat before the choral backing vocal does. I implore you to either place the ending consonant at the same time in both parts, OR hold the backing vocal “space” an extra four beats or so into the instrumental section, so that it’s clear the two vocals are doing Different Things and it’s not just a careless mistake. Please. Do this for me.
Jennifer Lynne and the Dandelion Rebellion - If I Don't Pack My Bag
The central line that this song is built around, “if I don’t pack my bags maybe I won’t have to go”, is a great one, and you imbue the entire song with a sense of melancholy that is conveyed clearly through both the lyrics and the vocal performance.
Some of your lines are overstuffed with syllables - “Cradled in the crabgrass clinging to remnants of red paint” is one that really stands out. Your guitar accompaniment is very subdued, which sort of works in your favor given how rhythmically messy some of the vocal lines are; if the underlying waltz rhythm was spelled out more clearly, the irregular vocal rhythms would seem even more out of place. But as it is, it all adds up to a lot of uncertainty and feeling metrically unmoored.
I suspect that if you continue to workshop this song, you’ll be able to revise the lyrics such that they fall into place more cleanly and thus more powerfully. The fact that there are a lot of discrepancies between the exact wording of your lyrics as written and as sung (e.g. written “Why I won’t do my laundry” vs. sung “The laundry I won’t do”) is another piece of evidence that this song is not fully realized yet, but when it gets there I think it will be a really strong piece of songwriting.
▷ - Don’t be a, be a
As a general principle, if you're gonna meet a SpinTunes challenge by writing a song explicitly about meeting a SpinTunes challenge, it better be a heck of a lot of fun to listen to. Luckily, that's the case here.
Lots to like sonically but the bit that makes me laugh out loud is the voice you do on “but i dont want to~”.
Cheslain - Bokeh the Squid
Your lyrics here are hazy and impressionistic, which is perfectly apt for the subject matter. The music is pleasantly off-kilter. It all washes over me in a way that I like.
Best Dad In Yorkshire - Cross It Out
If I had to summarize the central message of this song, it would be something like “You've tried to claim me as one of your own, which I never agreed to. Whatever you've got going on, leave me out of it.” If there's a more specific context (like a particular ideology or political movement), it's not apparent to me, and I don't think it needs to be. The emotional core is clear enough, and the details are sketchy enough that the listener can apply the song to their own life. That's pretty cool.
Musically the song supports that emotional core as well. Reading your song bio, I can imagine the song continuing to build to the “throat-shredding intensity” you mentioned, and can see how you might feel that you fell short. But also, some of my best songs have come from trying to sound like my musical heroes while being unable not to sound like myself, so I think you can feel good about where this song ended up!
David Dolan - Square in a Round World
I like these lyrics a lot. The first verse in particular is great; the image of the loner at the party standing in the corner while the extraverts dance and have fun is a bit of a cliche, but you bring it to life through the imagery in your lyrics. And I like the progression throughout the song, where by the last chorus the singer has come to accept himself with his differences.
It’s a good thing the lyrics have that arc to them, because musically this song is sort of idling in place: it’s the same chord progression throughout; the verses have basically the same vocal melody as the choruses; and the bridge is simply spoken. This song might work well at an open jam session; you can announce the chord changes and everyone can play along hearing it for the first time, which can be fun and satisfying. But as a listener I’m left wanting more variety.
Falcon Artist - The Spire
This song led me to learn about the namesake monument, which I had never heard of before. I certainly appreciate it for that! I also enjoy that this song has some fairly sophisticated chord changes going on, with the choruses clearly in G major and verses feeling in A minor, with the E to Am progression making for a nice contrast to the chorus, and a good use of the D chord to bring it back to G major.
Lyrically, you’re playing it pretty safe. You say “every one that see the shape of it, they say its pretty” - which, from my further reading about it, does not seem to be a universal opinion. I think it’s pretty cool, and it sounds like you do too, but it seems like touching on the controversy around it - if only to defend it against its detractors! - would make for a more interesting song.
Stacking Theory - the shape we’re in
This is a classic Stacking Theory track - I can feel the despair ooze out of my speakers. It sounds great, and I think you’ve landed where you wanted to land, but man, it’s a bummer.
Pigfarmer Jr - Heart-Shaped Pillow
A classic country ballad with great acoustic guitar playing and a nice electric riff (I really enjoy the interplay between the two acoustic guitars panned right and left).
You have a tendency especially in the chorus to rush some rhythms that don’t need to be rushed. In particular, the following words and phrases seem jammed together, even when the empty spaces after them in the vocal line suggest they don’t need to be: “pillow”, “fuck-up”, “too strong” “woman I” “doesn’t”.
I also wish the chorus had more melodic shape; there’s a lot of hanging out on the same note, which gets fatiguing to listen to.
Huge Shark - Spheres
I like this song. The lyrics, melody, and vocal performance are all great.
The drums fully kick in at about 1:45 and sound great. They’re engaging, forward in the mix, and give the song a big boost of energy at the right time. For the first half of the song, though, the drums are not working. They are similarly busy, but they are way back in the mix, so it’s just clutter. I would much rather hear drums that were sparser and more intentional but still loud and present. (There’s a cymbal crash at 0:36 that is so far back in the mix that it doesn’t accomplish anything; it sounds like a mistake.)
My Ominous Ride review below touches on similar issues, so feel free to keep reading…
Ominous Ride - Bad Shape
Speaking of drums far back in the mix… I need to hear that snare drum! Your guitars and layered vocals sound great because you’re the one playing/singing, you know what you want and you know what you like. I suspect you’re not a drummer but you know you “need” drums, so you’re relying on your DAW to provide drums for you but you don’t trust it, you don’t trust your own judgment of it, or you don’t want to highlight the part of the arrangement that’s not really “you”, so you bury it way back in the mix. I’ve been in this exact same position. My solution is to make my drums dead simple but make them loud enough to be heard doing the thing they’re supposed to be doing, which is providing the rhythmic underpinning of the song, driving the song forward, and occasionally emphasizing key rhythmic figures in the rest of the arrangement by doubling them.
Paul Dermody - Making Circles on the Ground
I’m glad you followed up about this song to make sure it was included, because I dig it. It sounds like something I would have heard in my house growing up (my parents came of age right in the middle of the 60s folk music revival). The chorus is instantly memorable with all the “ground ground ground” rhymes and corresponding melodic figure, and the plainly direct, even didactic message of the song is helped along with plenty of visual/physical imagery. The bridge makes an intriguing shift in perspective; I’m not certain, but it seems that it is from the point of view of the “you” from the rest of the song, addressed back at the verse/chorus narrator? In any case, it makes for a nice change.
There are a lot of timing issues in your performance; it sounds like each musical section is a new vocal take and they don’t line up rhythmically very well. I don’t suspect it will be an issue when you perform this one live, as I hope you do!
My other note is that the bridge dips way into the bottom of your range; I’d recommend either 1) lifting up the key of the whole song a few steps, 2) keeping the key where it is but bringing the bridge up a full octave, or 3) if I’m right about the perspective shift, recruiting another singer to come in and sing the bridge.
David Taro - Tessellations
Yeah, I dig this. Easily the best sing-along chorus in the round. And I love when you lead into the chorus with that lift on the word “plane” at the end of the prechorus. Throw in an AABCCB rhyme scheme in the verses and some bold couplets like “Art and science / Jigsaw-tight, a bold alliance” and you’ve got me eating out of the palm of your hand.
The only part of the song that I don’t think is working is the bridge, which feels both lyrically and musically like you got to that part of the song and thought, “Well, I guess I need a bridge here…” I’d rather just get back to the chorus sooner.
Ross Durand - What the Hell?
Sonically, this is great. The energy and confidence in the vocal delivery and guitar playing are all solid.
There’s a very common habit among people of all political persuasions to say something to the effect of, “My opponent believes A but not B, even though one logically follows from the other. What hypocrisy! What intellectual dishonesty! What idiocy! Meanwhile, I happen to believe B but not A… but we don’t need to dwell on the implications of that.”
In this song, you start by criticizing Hegseth for his “no fat generals” stance. It seems that you think viewing someone’s weight as a proxy for their ability to lead is “pretty weird”. By the end of the song, you’ve called Trump “the super-sized president”, immediately concluding that “everybody’s lost”. The intention is to call out this administration’s hypocrisy, but you’ve also indicated that insulting your political opponent’s weight is, in fact, fair game.
Berkeley Social Scene - The Einstein Hat (Aperiodic Monotile)
I dig that dark, sludgy bass (or guitar?) riff that kicks things off and plays under the chorus. The band hangs together well.
Despite lines like “I’m on your side” and “I’ve got your back”, there’s a vaguely accusatory and even spiteful tone to much of the lyrics, though of course because it’s all references to or metaphors for the properties of this particular shape, there’s no actual emotional stakes. The shape is not functioning as a metaphor for anything else; in fact, the metaphors run the other direction. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but it does mean that the song feels more like an intellectual exercise than an emotional experience.
traumadolls - Flattened
Good lyrics, with fairly straightforward, literal verses (professional and familial expectations, etc.) contrasting with a more metaphorical, imagistic chorus (“You want aerodynamics / Why flatten me down?”). This is a solid strategy for giving your verses and choruses a different feel while maintaining coherence across the song as a whole.
The instrumental sounds great, especially the drums and guitars. In contrast, the fuzz effect on the vocal becomes grating since it is used across the entire song. It’s probably a purely aesthetic choice, but since it is so different from the crisp, clean instrumental, it sounds like something that might be used to mask poor recording quality on the vocal or a lack of confidence in the vocal delivery.
I’d also like a little more variation in the energy level between verse and chorus, but I suppose the sense of resigned exhaustion is the point.
chewmeupspitmeout - be a circle in a world of squares
There are some really delightfully unexpected harmonic shifts in this song that make it a pleasure to listen to. In particular I enjoy the chromatic descent on “be a circle till the squares realize”.
Lyrically, you've got a message of sorts in the chorus (basically encouraging individuality, as far as I can tell), whereas the verses seem mostly an excuse to deploy as many shape-based puns as possible. That's not necessarily a complaint.
Star Bear - Tessellation
Your lyrics are great. You’ve got a point to make, which you start by expressing in metaphor and which becomes more direct as the song goes on, with the “You feel like my enemy” verse and finally ending with the plea that “This is worth saving”. I actually think this is a solid songwriting strategy: start with imagery, metaphor, and/or storytelling, and end by explicitly making your point. (In a completely different genre, “The Mary Ellen Carter” by Stan Rogers does this too, and I’ll never pass up an opportunity to cite it.)
Digging into the lyrics more specifically, I love how one verse contains the line “You’re a pattern in the stars” and the next contains “You are a star hiding in the pattern”. Rhetorical inversions are cool and more people should use them!
Musically, I’m less drawn in, in large part due to the vocal delivery. The whiney vocal tone is off-putting, and the frequent pitch and timing issues in the vocal are made all the more apparent when the vocals are doubled.
miscellaneous owl - Alfred Hitchcock Silhouette
Wow, those filthy, squealy guitars really demand attention! This song combines a super hooky, high-energy musical performance with thoughtful, erudite lyrics, which of course is something you’ve demonstrated a knack for many times before.
On a technical level, this is almost unimpeachable, although your vocal is a little out of control on “cigarettes” at 1:03. And what’s going on mix-wise underneath “The director” at 2:27? It sounds like the instruments are all submerged underwater for about 1 second.
I expect to hear Gentle Brontosaurus tear up the stage with this one soon, please and thank you.
Boffo Yux Dudes - Icosahedron
This has all the hallmarks of a classic BYD track: high energy, a nerdy context, catchy melodies and clever wordplay. The highlight of the song is the “roll, roll, roll” coda accompanied by appropriately rolling tom tom fills.
I’ve pointed this out where it occurs in other people’s songs in much less prominent places, so it’s only fair I do for you as well: your chorus rhymes “natural ONE” with “icosaHEDron”. The mismatch in syllable stress is disappointing, but you’ve set yourself up for failure; there are vanishingly few true rhymes for “icosahedron” that are not simply other forms of polyhedron. “Speed run” is the most promising rhyme that RhymeZone has to offer. Maybe there’s something there?
Stefan Szabo - Circles
At any given moment, this song sounds beautiful. The warm synths, atmospheric guitar, and gentle but insistent drums make for a lovely sonic bed to rest in. Stretched over the course of a nearly four-minute song with little variation, however, they start to lose their appeal, especially when joined to a vocal melody that’s essentially the same from verse to chorus and is highly repetitive even within musical sections to boot.
Now, perhaps that’s the point: the lyrics are about going in circles while very little changes, so the music goes in circles while very little changes.
Betty and the Rubble - Tesseract
Four-part harmony on the word “tesseract” is a brilliant touch, and a tesseract is a great metaphor for seeing oneself as more complex and expansive than other people’s preconceptions. That's a really solid foundation to build a song on.
Your melody has a nice shape but it’s often at war with your lyrics over syllable stress. Sometimes, like “It's time TO accept the fact”, “Can I get you A drink”, or “LimitLESS, beYOND form”, the result is just awkward, but sometimes, like “When queer IS the shoe that fits”, it actively hinders understanding of your message. In that line, the key word is “queer”, but it's not stressed like it would be if you spoke it. And since “queer is the shoe that fits” is not an established phrase that people are used to hearing, you have to phrase it naturally if you want to be understood. (For several listens I heard it as “When fear is the shoe that fits”, which is not at all what you're trying to communicate.)
So Then I Says to Mabel, I Says - Fallen Arches
There’s some strong songwriting on display here. You have a central insight with a strong visual component that lends itself to vivid, imagistic writing and ties together your descriptions of creation and destruction in a compelling way.
On a mechanical level your lyrics work well too; the only awkwardness I picked up on is the emphasis on the word “a” in “Ends in a decline”.
Pitch issues in the vocal and timing issues in the guitar make the performance sound rather sloppy, which means unfortunately that the strength of the songwriting is not as readily apparent as it would be with a tighter performance.
Also In Blue - Vicious Circle
I have been to my share of contradances so I’m familiar with “circle to the right” as a dance call. “Duo duo” sounds like it could be too, but it’s not one I’m familiar with, and since a “duo” is two people it’s odd to include in a song that specifies the “dancer” is all alone. So I don’t know what to make of that.
But with that out of the way, I like this song quite a bit. It’s certainly relatable in a grim way, the energy is good, and the hook is memorable (and starting with the hook is a great choice for this song). I especially like the second verse where the narrator contemplates adopting better habits, but wonders if that would be “just another angle to the spin” (a great turn of phrase!). It’s your brain trying to trick you, but it’s all too believable from inside the situation depicted in the song.
I’m not sold on the bridge (“I get so bored it blows my mind…”). It doesn’t introduce a new perspective or idea and it brings the energy down. It might be better to cut it entirely, close out on a few repetitions of the chorus, and end well before the dreaded 4 minute mark.
Flintsteel - Demon, Awake!
He’s at it again, folks. Glad to be back under the spell of that voodoo that you do so well. The guitar playing is terrific as usual here; I especially want to shout out the arpeggiated figure at 0:14 that leads us out of the instrumental introduction and into the verse.
The subject matter is appropriately hardcore, although I want to know the emotional stakes sooner; eventually you mention “my queen by my side” but at the beginning the narrator expresses a generic refusal of death’s power without any explicit reference to the specific person he’s lost.
Musically, you start to lose me at 2:54 with the synth solo. The instrument sound doesn’t have much character in it, and it sounds like the attack on every single note is the exact same velocity (I think I’ve complained about this with you before!). And from 3:13 to 3:29 you take a page from GF Handel’s playbook and repeat the same figure five times, a step higher each time. It’s at least two times too many. I’m happy when the chorus vocals come back in to end the song on a suitably epic note.
Siebass - Always around
The harmonica is pretty good. The guitar is pretty good. The whine in your vocal performance is unpleasant, the melody is completely unmemorable, and the lyrics are bathetic. Your narrator does not earn any sympathy from me because it is a circle, not a person, and its problems are not presented in a way that I (a person, not a circle) can relate to. If this is meant to be a comedy song, the idea of a sad circle is a little bit funny, but I’m a firm believer that comedy songs need actual jokes in them and not just a jokey premise.
Nathan Joe Long - A Thousand Paper Cranes
Your voice sounds good here - you convey a lot of expression and character while still being mostly in control of pitch and timing.
Otherwise, I'm struggling with this song. There's not enough going on musically, and there's too much going on lyrically. The vocal melody is highly repetitive, and the guitar accompaniment is largely the same throughout the entire song, so while any given moment is pleasant enough to listen to, it’s hard to maintain my interest over four minutes.
Lyrically, this song is stuffed with imagery: paper cranes, construction cranes, gardening, drowning, cages, history, snow… But it’s hard to say what it all adds up to aside from a general sense of inadequacy and an inability to connect emotionally. It’s all so wide-ranging that it doesn’t cohere for me in a satisfying way.
Ironbark - Hourglass
I’m conflicted about this song. On the one hand, it’s sonically gorgeous and is brimming with artful turns of phrase and surprising harmonic shifts. On the other hand, the central metaphor is not working for me in the way that I expect you, the songwriter, are hoping it will.
At the beginning, the hourglass appears as the symbol of the version of femininity that our heroine fails to adhere to. Given our sympathy for her, and the language you use to describe it (including what I believe is only the second appearance of the word “tits” in a SpinTunes entry), we leave the first third of the song with the impression HOURGLASS = BAD.
But by the end of the song, the hourglass has come to represent something entirely different: the shape of a lifetime. Yes, there’s the painful part in the middle, but then it opens up to more possibilities and more beauty. So perhaps, HOURGLASS = NOT THAT BAD ACTUALLY?
But then what do we do with the first image? Are we to backfill our more nuanced view from the end of the song onto the normative body shape? “Hey, this sexist bullshit isn’t so bad now that we got a decent metaphor for the human experience out of it!” Or in the other direction: “Hey kids, you’re in the tits of life right now. Enjoy it while you can!” The whole premise just feels off to me.
Am I overthinking this? Of course, I am absolutely overthinking this. But what else are we doing here?
(Additionally, the line “her husband of more than ten years” took me by surprise - from the rest of the lyrics, I was imagining more like forty years, although I suppose that is indeed “more than ten”.)
Sunflower Bastard - Stadium
I can’t pretend to understand how the two halves of this song fit together; all I can do is enjoy the experience.
Sober - Boxes
I think I’m always likely to prefer barn-burning bluegrass Sober to sedate country and western Sober, but it doesn’t feel fair to compare what you’ve done here to something completely different you could have done instead.
In any case, your steel playing is lovely and your voice is in fine form. Your snare drum is dull and woody; I’d like to hear a little more crack in the sound. And I can't help but disapprove of the “sawdust”/“trust” rhyme with its mismatched syllable stress.
The Pannacotta Army - Rough Diamond
Charming. Musically, this is a delight, and I have no notes for improvement on that front.
The insufferable part of me that thinks songs should be as thematically tight and consistent as crossword puzzles can’t help but be annoyed at how two of the suits are referenced by simply naming a specific card of that suit, while the other two are not.
Additionally, the closing line “you still fill me up with pride” is anticlimactic. In a song like this (and maybe in songs in general!) the closing line of the chorus should feel like a punchline, even if it’s not haha funny. The idea of being proud of or embarrassed by your partner is not introduced at all anywhere else in the song, and - perhaps more egregiously - it doesn’t even rhyme with anything!
glennny - The Octagon
I like this song, and I want to point out one smart and effective songwriting technique.
In the first verse, you’re setting the stage and establishing that we’re talking about board games, and you conclude with the line “The timer is up”, in the all-too-familiar context of other players taking too long on their turns.
Later in the song, you repeat the line “The timer is up”, but this time the context is zoomed way out: we’re not talking about a turn in a board game but an entire stage of life that has reached its end. The emotional impact of the later line is made all stronger by juxtaposing it with the innocence and humor of the earlier one. That’s the good stuff right there.
Boo Lee Crosser - i haven’t been thinking of you
This is a tough one. A lot of us felt Joy’s loss deeply, but I think you were the closest to her by far out of any of us here. It makes perfect sense that you’d need to write a song like this, and I hope having the song and having the experience of writing it is more valuable than whatever score you get from the judges.\
There’s a lot of honest emotion in here, and a number of lines hit me pretty hard, most of all one I didn’t expect: “Convince myself that you moved away”, which is such a simple and heart-breaking way of trying to deal with the absence of someone you care about.
I struggle with the title and the line “But don’t let the title fool ya”; it’s clear from the lyrics as a whole that you have been thinking of her, so this line in the chorus is not refuting anything except the title itself, and the title is not used or referred to directly, either to support or refute, in the rest of the song… in which case, why use this title at all?
the profane bells - Circle Back to the Start
Change your name as many times as you want; that voice will always be instantly recognizable. In this song, the weariness and resignation in your voice match perfectly with the lyrical theme of regrets and dwelling in the past, while at the same time keeping the song from coming off as overly bitter and accusatory, as I think a higher-energy delivery would. You’re simply too tired to be mad!
Have you used those “baaa ba ba baaaa” backing vocals before? It feels like something I’ve heard from you already, but maybe it’s just my imagination.
Christine Fanning - Square
Here is, I believe, another song about a young person’s fear to leave home and venture out on their own, although unlike Jennifer Lynne’s “If I Don't Pack My Bag”, this one appears to be from the perspective of a parent or other caring elder trying to encourage the young person to set out.
The image of the young person stuck in the roundabout is a great metaphor for their inability to leave. Your voice is quite lovely, and you have some moments of very nice harmony, but the repeating guitar figure is difficult to listen to, makes for an unpleasant contrast with your voice, and keeps this song from being the immersive, meditative experience that I think it could be.
N/A - Round in
Sonically, this is gorgeous; the texture created by the instruments and vocals together is quite lovely. And the central idea is an intriguing one; going around in triangles seems to involve a lot of highs and lows with sharp corners marking the transitions between them. “No curve to soften the fall” indeed. It’s an intriguing idea, but it’s simply not fleshed out enough for me to really know what to do with. I want more!
Brother Baker - The Rhombus
Like at least one other song this round, this song is straightforwardly about a shape that wishes it was a different shape. Since shapes do not actually have feelings or desires, the emotional stakes in the lyrics are entirely imaginary. Therefore, the music and performance are going to have to do the heavy lifting in terms of emotional engagement.
Luckily, you pull it off pretty well! The energy level is definitely high (although that might partially be a function of your file being approximately seventeen times louder than everyone else's). The guitars sound great and you are all in on the vocal delivery. The pre chorus “The shapes surround me” provide a cool contrasting moment and build of energy to land triumphantly on the chorus.
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