Read on for your Final Round reviews from Paul R. Potts!
The Restless Mind 11: SpinTunes 26, Round 4
25 October 2026
SpinTunes 26, Round 4
Hello, dear readers!
It’s been another difficult week at the Potts House and I made it more difficult by recording a cover song with my son. As I result I’m pressed harder for time this week than I have been for any of the previous rounds of SpinTunes 26. Grace has overdue homework, and I’m supposed to be at an outdoor masked Halloween get-together for COVID-safe folks with a number of my kids in an hour and 48 minutes, and I’ve still got to get myself fed and washed, and get my wife Grace fed, so let’s gooooo… I’m gonna be writing these reviews quickly. The only thing that might save me is that I only actually have to rank four songs, and the reviews of the shadows can wait.
General Thoughts on Round 4
The challenge this time was quite open-ended: “Write and record a song inspired by this photo, from the family collection of our judge Mo.” The photo in question is a faded black-and-white picture of a young white child with light-colored hair sticking up on top like a baby bird, sitting on a porch swing, reaching out to touch one of the two unlit candles on a birthday cake. It’s a lovely, funny, adorable photo and the contestants ran with the challenge! They pulled out all the stops writing-wise, music-wise, and production-wise and ranking them was hard. In this round, the contestants themselves rank each other, and the judges rankings are used only as tie-breakers. I am hoping for an overwhelming consensus among the contestants so I don’t have to feel responsible for anyone losing!
But anyway, here they are, in ranked order:
The Contenders
1: miscellaneous owl — The Day the Aliens Landed
On my very first listen-through, I realized that this was the one. Oh, I listened to all the songs several more times, but nothing was going to change my mind. Earlier in SpinTunes 26 I was not imagining that miscellaneous owl would do so well. I ranked their songs 15th, 24th, and 12th. But this song is my favorite of the round. It’s more a short story than a poem, a genuinely wild ride, and a very imaginative extrapolation on the challenge. I love the storyline that it unfolds so very much — to me it reads as an alternate history, a “cozy apocalypse,” about a Sean of the Dead-like character, but a happier one, with a mother whose head he didn’t have to blow off with a shotgun.
I’m reminded of Ray Bradbury’s stories, scary but warm, with all the telling details of a midwest childhood, against the backdrop of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. I am in fact quite awed by the skill displayed in the writing of the flowing, alliterative, mostly-rhymed lyrics that don’t fall into neat verses but move like a real person telling a real story. When the harmony vocals kick in on the choruses, it’s gorgeous.
I’m very out-of-practice with my music theory, and I don’t quite know exactly what is going on with the chords, and don’t have time today to pull out my guitar and try to figure it out, but the way this song seems to float between major and minor is really beautiful. The brief (understandably so) theremin solo is amazing. The artist mentions in the song notes that “I had to do like 20 takes of the theremin solo because it’s so freaking hard to get it on pitch, so I hope you enjoy it.” I don’t have a theremin, so I don’t quite know what it is like to use one, but I’ve had similar struggles to get intonation perfect on fretless bass. I do enjoy it very much, thank you!
Owl, just as you were inspired by this photo, it’s been an inspiration to watch your progress in this contest!
2. Sober — The Cycle
We’ve got an impassioned, upbeat, and dare I say it, bouncy song from Sober about a happy, light-hearted topic: generational child abuse. I’m an early member of Generation X, and I was verbally and physically abused as a child — but forgive me, I’ve just repeated myself. In the time and place I come from, this was just called “parenting.”
I have made different choices with my life — my wife and I still have seven kids living under our roof, and one long-since out on his own. I have been a flawed parent but I have also, in my way, and with the patient help of my loving wife, done my best to overturn my deep-seated notions of “parenting” to try to be a more supportive parent. I don’t always succeed — I find my father’s and stepfather’s voices coming out of my mouth sometimes. But every day I wake up and try again.
I admire this song very much — musically, it’s beautifully done, with a moving vocal performance and perfectly arranged instrumentation. It would be my number one choice if miscellaneous owl’s story-like song hadn’t captured the imagination of this kid, who grew up on science fiction, quite as hard as it did.
I mentioned above that the challenge was very open-ended. Every artist got to see what they wanted to see, and follow where their imagination went with what they saw. Sober, my imagination would not have run down such a dark path, but I’m glad yours did. I hope it was cathartic and there is a sense of closure for you at the end of it.
3. Stefan Szabo — Shades of Gray
The music here is absolutely stellar, propulsive, as if bluegrass had been blended with a bit of Led Zeppelin, and the vocal performance impassioned and supremely competent and confident. I’m dazzled by the stacked vocal harmonies. Who all is singing?
There’s some strategic ambiguity in the lyrics:
When we were young it only felt right
’til death do us part sure sounds black and white
But it’s hard to find the right words to say
When all I see are shades of gray
Is the narrator suggesting that relationship wasn’t as black-and-white as he thought, and therefore he is no longer married?
This is my wife’s favorite — she said “I started to dance involuntarily.”
4. traumadolls — Burning Memories
I like many things about this song — the use of bass and multiple instruments including the propulsive synth arpeggios and pitch bender effect. I like the concept. The lyrics are intriguing and the idea that our memories are always “burning up” as we age, and they fade, and we get further and further away in time, is a sad truth that is worth remembering as best we can, every day.
All that said, the song feels slightly less than the sum of its parts. The shifts between sections introduce, melodically and harmonically, a feeling that there is a lack of continuity, where the sections don’t reinforce each other. The vocal performances are good, but they don’t light up my hippocampus and amygdala the way that some songs do. A strong effort, but not the strongest this round. I hope to hear more work from traumadolls in the future.
Shadows
Although we don’t rank them, I am including a few comments on the shadow entries.
Best Dad in Yorkshire — Little Baby Mo [SHADOW]
BDIY has a somewhat literal take on the challenge. According to some back-channel chatter, the photo, from the late 1940s or early 1950s, is not a photo of Spintunes judge Mo as a child. For one thing, she’d be almost 80 years old, and I don’t think she is. (Is she?) But I don’t think the contestants were given any details, so if the they want to imagine it as Mo, I think that’s entirely fine.
I like the raucous guitars in this track. it’s a jam. The way the singing style gets looser and looser-pitched as the song goes on emphasizes the sense of chaos and improvisation, a deliberate rawness that I like.
Now, the lyrics. There’s a weird fraughtness to men telling women they should smile more. Does this apply to addressing their imagined past infant selves who are already smiling? I’m afraid that question may be above my pay grade. I’m a bit unsure about some of these lyrics, as well. “A quick release of something internal” — is a diaper involved? Was the smile because of gas?
Anyway, it’s a fun shadow, and I’m glad that Best Dad is still rocking out!
Hot Pink Halo — Two [SHADOW]
Per the song notes, HPH thought “back to being two.” I have some memories of that age, but they are pretty vague — more like memories of memories, at this point, remembered so many times that it’s more like I’m remembering that I once remembered them. The lyrics are beautiful and carry the subjective experience of being two:
Two eyes open
Make their way
Around the room
Brand new
They remember
The music, ethereal piano played with heavy use of the sustain pedal, strings — and is that clarinet? — is touching and brings back, for me, the days when everything was new. The vocal performance is breathy and beautiful, echoing and in conversation with itself. Damn. I’ve got something in my eye. I’m a long way from my own childhood.
Nathan Joe Long — Start of More [SHADOW]
This is an impressive display of multi-instrument prowess from NJL!
It looks like NJL also thought the child was Mo. He takes the idea of a very curious young child to a somewhat dark place:
Gonna touch the light
Never mind the burn
Running from my cradle to my urn
It becomes what English majors call an extended metaphor. It looked to me like the child was touching the candles before they were lit, or maybe after, but maybe I’m just an optimist. I have seen my own kids grab at lit birthday candles before (not a metaphor). I think at least one of my kids tried to eat the lit candle, like Howl eating Calcifer. Now that’s a metaphor!
NJL’s song notes say “the mastering chain was the pair of RND Shelford channels into the SSL Fusion with the RND Portico master buss processor on the insert back into the SSL SiX” and I’m looking at my sad lonely SSL SiX with malfunctioning main outputs and scolding it, saying “Hey! What’s wrong with you? Why aren’t you a whole rack of gear???” (RND is “Rupert Neve Designs.) Well, I know why. That stuff is far beyond my budget. I keep entering the Sweetwater gear giveaway contests, so maybe someday! But I’ve got to make more use of the gear I’ve got, at least for now.
Micah Sommersmith — If I Knew Now What I Knew Then [SHADOW]
Micah takes an approach a bit like Hot Pink Halo’s approach and identifies as himself as a child.
There’s a photo of me when I’m two years old
With a shining smile that could light the world
For pure contentment, all it’d take. Was an old porch swing and a birthday cake
The guitar, drums, and accordian make a great energetic backing, and I smiled at the shouted backup vocals in the last chorus. Nice job!
I especially like the bridge lyrics:
But learning is forgetting, I think there’s truth in that
There’s not much room for wisdom when your head is filled with facts
At some point or another I put down my childish ways
Perhaps I’ll pick them up again some day
I’m reminded of a line from Londo in Babylon Five:
Something my father said. He was old, very old at the time. I went into his room, and he was sitting alone in the dark crying. So, I asked him what was wrong, and he said, “My shoes are too tight. But, it doesn’t matter, because I have forgotten how to dance.”
It’s OK. I couldn’t manage the monkey bars either. Here’s to remembering how to dance!
Final Thoughts
It’s been a fascination, a delight, and an inspiration to be your judge for SpinTunes 26. I hope that someday my work and family responsibilties will lighten and I’ll be able to be a contestant again. I’ve got more songs in me, I think. If I’m not able to, though, maybe my children will!
Bye for now!
As always, this content is available for your use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Thanks for reading!
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