Write a Hatchet Job (Reviews)

[Billymojo]

Belated Reviews

Balance Lost: Yup, sounds fab. Jangly guitar, adventuresome bass. Composition, playing, arrangement, recording all top drawer. Wouldn’t change a thing.

Berkeley: Nice hook and good pop sensibility. Guitar perhaps mixed a little high or overdriven more than necessary for this kind of tune. Bridge is beautiful. Vocals: ehh.

Greg Boethin: Your songwriting, last fight and this are well above average. And your vocals are excellent. But poor production spoils it. Bass is muddy. There’s a lot of mud in the lower frequencies. Perhaps rerecord with a chopping rhythm guitar and some high end. Oh, the noodling guitar: Not for me.

Benny C: Parts, farts. OK, it made me laugh.

Daddy Bop: The contrast between the style of playing and the lyric creates an irony that is SO delicious. Beautiful playing, sweet melody. Killing never seemed like so much fun.

Birt Kristin: When this title came out I sez to myself, “What am I gonna do with this?” Not a problem for you. A love song about tools? Fairly strange. Sounds good though.

Brown Word: I’m beginning to really dig your sound. But then you do something different every week, so what am I talkin’ about? Fun stuff, indeed.

Glennny: It’s beautiful. The creepy lyric is even creepier with the MOR arrangement. It’s something my mom would like. Until she listened carefully to the lyric. Then: Ha ha.

Greggers: I like the first guitar part; unique, and good use of repetition. Adding second guitar at 2:40 doesn’t work for me. Good use of verb on vocal. I’m missing drums when the song goes loud and the tune never really goes anywhere.

HATE Noise: Love the creepy organ. Hand claps are nice touch. Vocals are oddly produced but fit right in. Think I might like this a lot.

Ice Weasels: Drums are annoying and get in the way of what is a fine tune. A good story (you had me at “that’s how you make good art”) with some good sounding instruments coming and going.

Ken’s Super Duper Band: Mid 70s pop/punk sound with lyric addressing contemporary issues. Cool. Too precise for my taste. I’d prefer it a little sloppier and angrier. But overall a well done homage to the music of a prior era.

Kenzie Chickens: Me. Dunno if it’s right to make a lame joke while imitating the music of one of my heroes. But now it’s done. Amen.

Klownhole: This isn’t very good, but I like the spirited live sound. Love your drummer and drums: Well placed, prominent in the mix and not gated or otherwise cleaned up.

Lookouts: I haven’t been able to enjoy your vocal delivery overall. But this is one of your better tunes. It’s got a good hook.

Milton: Geeze, a lotta good sounding weirdness in this fight. I like the spare arrangement; every note counts. It’s all about bass and drums. Nice.

Mime Cavity: Three minutes would have been enough. (I did listen to the whole thing.) But not bad, not bad at all. Ominous and powerful. And I liked the ending, not just because it took so dang long for you to get to it. Correct me if I’m wrong about this Songfighters, but do we have some sort of unwritten rule to keep tunes short? As a favor to those who write reviews? I’d love to run my dance numbers out to eight minutes if it’s not bad form.

Mister Ease: Well produced with nice subtle build throughout. Composition doesn’t jump out at me but it’s not bad in any respect.

Paco: Something new. I like that you took your usual unexpected chord changes and used them in a more traditional sound. Bold move. Well recorded wooden guitars and excellent vocal arrangement and performance. You consistently come up with chord changes that are new to me but that work, sounding natural.

Johnny Reb: Guitars out of tune? Nasty tone on lead guitar.

Ryan Rickenbach: Kick and tambourine. Nice. Added third vocal. Nice. Well performed and recorded old school tune. Vocals are tip-top.

Sonofsupercar: Your usual big sound with confident and distinctive vocal up front. I love your sound.

Spitball: Don’t know enough about this genre to have an opinion. I like the orchestral hits.

Tiny Ghost: Takes me right back.

Tuners Union: I’ve been waiting to hear more from you guys since Wish You Would. Fab vocals all around. Just really well done all around.

Ux Mpuzm: Are Wreckdom’s fingerprints on this? Either way I like it. Some pretty sick stuff. Wish I could pull off something like this. Don’t know what else to say except that it’s beautiful and I like it a lot.