Congrats to Cavedwellers and Jon Eric for making it into the final! But also, really, congrats to everyone in this round for making some excellent songs--I complained constantly to the other judges about how it was hard to rank these because everyone did a really good job in different ways. I had to write all my reviews so I could think about and articulate what I did and didn’t like about each before I could really solidify my rankings (didn’t post the reviews till today because I wanted to review the shadows as well). My opinion is not going to be terribly important from this point onwards, so I will just say right now this was a ton of fun and I really enjoyed hearing everyone’s songs this year and getting a chance to peer into the inner workings of Nur Ein judging! It has been a pleasure and an honor to rain down my fiery judgment upon you all. I also really appreciate how many excellent shadow entries we have had, and the new reinstatement rule has added a fun bit of spice this year--special shoutout to see-man-ski for getting reinstated and then making it so far.
Cavedwellers - Such a cool intro, I love the combo of that synth with the chiming, interlocking acoustic guitars, and the swing into the mellow groove of the verse. The guitarmonies are cool, although the melody of that lead doesn’t particularly inspire me, and the transition back out of that solo struck me as kind of abrupt. But I do I particularly like the way the outro lead floats over the reappearing acoustics at the end. Great vocals, very expressive and warm. I like the fact that the polyrhythmic elements are completely integrated and all sound natural here (I had my money on you guys as doing a good job with this!), and the melody flows smoothly from section to section. The lyrics are full of a sort of mannered, cerebral wordplay that I appreciate, but am not really engaged by. I get your story and the allusions to the challenge within the lyrics themselves, and I like all your repeating, evolving phrases and rhymes, but I had trouble feeling emotionally connected to the lyrics; my emotional involvement with this really came via the performances instead of the words.
Frankie Big Face - This is dripping with ambience, and I like the texture and mood you create here. I also really enjoyed your take on the challenge--the different riffs are all clear, and the layers interlock in interesting and pleasing ways. The lyrics on the whole are a little vague, but you get some good, striking, vivid imagery in there too, like that whole last verse. I liked the instrumentation on the whole, good choices of tone and instrument throughout, good vocal delivery for the style. The drums did feel a little odd to me... it seemed like there were some fills just thrown in there at slightly strange, random places. My main issue with this song was that it felt like it was headed somewhere and never really got there. It seems like a good song to listen to and just get lost in when driving late at night, when it’s all very quiet and dark, but it never seems to resolve and really deliver on the promise of the rest of the song. I would have liked to have heard the grand ending you had originally planned on. P.S. for what it’s worth, I was the one who suggested this challenge, not Mo. Do you owe Grumpy Mike some money now?
Jon Eric - I’ve enjoyed hearing you play with different sounds and styles throughout this competition and this is another new direction where I’m not sure I would want to listen to an entire album of it, but I was into hearing it as a standalone single song. Super inspirational-sounding, and it kind of fuses 80’s and 2010s, like if Max Martin produced a Vangelis album--I dig those deep pulsing synths, and the bendy higher lead. The soaring chorus melody is fantastic and the harmonies work perfectly there. The oh-ohs were divisive within the judging panel… I opined that I would happily never listen to
another millennial whoop again, I wasn’t a fan of that part. The modulation is sweet--felt like you were thinking about ways to keep it interesting all the way through. I had some issues with the mix… biggest issue was that it sounds like the lead vocal is panned really heavily to the left, which I found distracting. Lyrically, it’s an interesting perspective, but the “pulling your earlobes/poking your lymph nodes” lines were weird and kind of ugly, and jumped out at me, which might be good if you take the point of view that at least it’s interesting and any attention is good attention, but to me they don’t fit with the style of the song, and I spent more time thinking about those than any of the rest of the lyrics, and not in a positive way. I’m kind of torn about how you approached the challenge aspect of this. On the one hand, I think you sell it really well in your liner notes, and I like that you had a whole conceptual backing for what you did. But on the other hand, when I actually listen, the handclaps feel like a very small part of the song, and the polyrhythm stuff feels slight and almost accidental.
Max Bombast - I like the way you incorporated the alarm beep as part of the challenge, and your approach to the challenge felt confident and fluid. Well performed, you kept the various elements crisp and tense. Good energy in the vocals, suitable for the frantic feel of this track, and the falsetto harmonies are excellent, but I will say I wasn’t a huge fan of the low growly “I”/”A”(scending)/”De”(scending) vocal delivery in the first prechorus, partly because I just didn’t find it very appealing to listen to, but more because it places emphasis on the wrong spot in those words/sentences and I found myself wondering why you were emphasizing it. In theory, I thought it was fun to do a sequel to someone else’s song, but in practice I ended up feeling like I had heard basically this whole exact song before... the music, arrangement, and instrumentation is all very much in your comfort zone, and then I feel like the verse melody quotes “Space Oddity” (“shining green and blue” = “really made the grade”), and the lyrical content didn’t feel fresh to me either, since the idea came directly from Grumpy Mike’s “Rear Window” with a dash of Planet of the Apes thrown in there. (YMMV, I know Ben said he loves space opera stuff so I would anticipate that not particularly bothering him, but we’ll see.) I liked the use of the ship’s voice to give a brief little break from the relentless rhythm and introduce the solo section, and the little heartbeat detail at the end.
Moss Palace - This is really charming and pretty (bonus points for vibraslap too!) It’s a really catchy, airy, feel-good kind of song. The arrangement works well but gets out of the way of the vocals, which are much more prominent. The vocal performance is lovely as usual, but something sounds slightly unnatural about the vocal processing to me, like there are maybe some artifacts on there from tuning or compression or something, and as the other judges I think have mentioned, vox seemed a bit too dry. The lyrics are simple but memorable (I particularly like the first verse and the way “quoting poetry” tumbles into the next line, and the knife thrower bit). I thought “you” and “do” was a bit of a weak rhyme--I had to look at the rhyme scheme of the previous verse to figure out what you were trying to do there, because from just listening to it, it didn’t sound like that part rhymed at all. I wouldn’t really have noticed the polyrhythmic elements without the liner notes, which at least means they were smoothly integrated, but I think it was also not very adventurous, and less compelling as a take on the challenge than some of the other songs that took a bolder approach.
Shadows:
Balance Lost - This is really fun, it has a great funky 90’s throwback groove. Also some bringing the ruckus! Lots of cool little bits in the mix like the stuff that comes in around 1:25, the aaaaah backing vox, the nice squelchy wah guitar, the wobbly synth. I love the vocal rhythms in the chorus.
Hot Pink Halo - These are really lovely lyrics, these collaborators you found have a way with words. And I really like your lyrical concept, although I don’t think I would have gotten that it was about the solstice or dislocation without you explaining that. I like that you’ve left a lot of space in this, although I found myself wanting more dynamics and a bigger build over the course of the song--it starts to feel very slow and very long after a while, and after the first chorus where you bring in the harmonies I was hoping you’d bring in a full drum kit there and launch into a higher-energy take on the remainder of the tune. It’s a cool arrangement, though, with the different layers coming in and interesting things with the panning and multiple vocals happening at once (those high held ones are nice), I’m just impatient. I would have liked some bigger jumps and variations in the melody as well--I feel like I’ve heard very similar melodies from some of your other songs, and this kind of hangs around in the same small range of notes and rhythms.
Lichen Throat - Ooh, the little riff on that guitarish thing in my right ear is really nice (I think that might be the same thing Vom mentioned). I liked the chorus melody… this does have a lot of execution issues with the vocals throughout, but I know what you were going for with the chorus, I think I do anyway, and I approve, it just needs a bit of polish and practice. I think the verse melody could probably use a bit more variation. I like the lyrical concept, although I think it needs more of an emotional core instead of the kind of Wikipedia dump of stuff from his life… the mass murder of his whole family and the multiple fires at Taliesin were terrifying and devastating, and these lyrics kind of just drop those events in there as a cool aside in the first verse and move on to his leaky roofs.
Mandibles - I love the banjo! I feel like I say that on every song that includes it, but yeah, it’s great. The riff reminds me heavily of some Sufjan Stevens song but I can’t think of which one (anyway, the impression fades once the vocals come in.) I really liked the bit where Cybronica/Estaphonia first come in as well. Once they split off into different parts on either end, I think it suffers a little from something I think I mentioned in one of my previous reviews, where your voices don’t all blend very well because it essentially sounds like 3 lead singers, where your timbres call attention to themselves, so I find myself sort of distracted by the backing vocals without hearing the song as a whole. This might be a mix issue, too… the backing vocals are panned so hard to either side. But I liked how understated the instrumental arrangement was, really lovely.
Miscellaneous Owl - Like with all my other shadows, I wish I’d given myself a little more time to do this, it could really use a proper outro and maybe a bridge or something and some more variation in the arrangement as it goes along, and of course I would have liked to play around with the tones and the mix a bit more. I’m also not happy with the way I delivered “cone on my neck,” my rhythm was off, but I had to go with basically my first take of everything. I think what I have going on in the verse is the drums in 4/4, the bassline in 3/4, and the guitars/music box synths/vocals in 6/8, and I cribbed the idea from “Touch and Go” of the skittery verse resolving to the more straight-ahead chorus. There are a few tweaks I want to make but overall I’m pleased with the lyrics for the amount of time I spent on them, sometimes there’s something to be said for just writing as fast as possible. (Although sometimes it doesn’t really work out.) I don’t typically go music-first and words-later unless I’m collaborating, I usually write both as I go along, but in this case I built up the verse track first and then figured out afterwards what lyrics would work in there.
see-man-ski - I really liked your approach to the challenge--where the riffs start to interlock around 30 seconds in is so immensely clean and satisfying, one of my favorite applications of the challenge this time around. Happy birthday btw, way to try out your new mic! I was taken by surprise by the acoustic break, and for me I think it would have worked better if it was tonally closer to the rest of the mix--it feels so quiet and dry relative to the rest, it feels really disconnected, but I kinda like the idea in theory. I liked the “last night, I felt something crawling out…” lines a lot, how creepy, and I enjoyed the phrasing there.
The Serviettes - This pace and vibe really suit your voice, the crooning sounds particularly great in the beginning, I think there are a few slightly flat bits later on but I like the delivery regardless. The bass felt super loud and kind of jarring to me when it first came in, but I got used to it, and I love the tumble of bells. I think the strings give it a cool trip-hop kind of vibe. Depressing lyrics! Depressing is good. But “fucked up” sounds sort of out of place to me with the otherwise kind of atmospheric and dramatic feel of the song.
Vom Vorton - Great sonic palette--that detuned synth sounds so good, and the polyrhythm gives it this cool lurching, disoriented feel that goes along well with the synth and spacey guitar. But it never sounds too weird, you keep a pulsing rhythm throughout that keeps the listener grounded. I can’t help but hear the end part as slower and then faster even though you said it was not changing tempo-wise, just the pace of notes and which were being emphasized. The lyrics are fun, the only line I didn’t really like was “you are on the home stretch,” which kind of reminded me of “yet he has carte blanche,” the phrasing is kind of similar and in both cases I wanted to hear a strong rhyme right there.