Gristle in my teeth and a (Pocket Full Of Bones reviews)

[crumpart]

VOM VORTON
I wrote a whole bit in my notes about how much I love this yesterday, but forgot to save it. Well done me. I love this. It's 100% in my ballpark and listening to it makes me happy, except for the bit where I keep mishearing "I killed my doppelganger" as "I killed my dog with gangions". I don't think this has anything to do with your delivery of the line, it's just my brain stuck in a hole. And just like when you have a dream where one of your friends does something terrible and you can't help but judge them in real life for it even though they've done nothing wrong, I can feel myself giving you side eye for killing your dog with gangions. You monster.

UJN X REVE
This has a very Tom Waits Cemetary Polka vibe for me, not necessarily in the vocal, but definitely in the pacing and instrumentation. I like it a lot. Everything about it sounds good. I particularly like how the lyrics feel set back from the innstrumental bits. I find myself not really following what the words are, but also not really caring becuase it's just so much fun to listen to.

THIRD CAT
I'm listening to this as I work, and am really enjoying this as background work type music, but there's not anything in it that's grabbing me as something that would make me seek it out specifically. There's absolutely nothing I dislike about it, I'm just not finding it super memorable.

SHRTS
I got distracted for a second and then it was finished! Love the rhyming of skeleton and bones.

PHLEBIA
Love the drum solo. The second time I listened to this I actually thought the ending was a different song, even though I'd already listened to it once before. It feels not quite part of the same thing. I think I just enjoyed the drum solo so much that I wanted it to end on that.

PACO DEL STINKO
I quite enjoy this but it's not super memorable for me. I'm enjoying the instrumentation but there's something about the lyrics that's just not pulling me in. I'm enjoying how the music builds and I really like that fun guitar solo.

THE MAGNETIC LETTERS
I'm in love with everything about this song. It feels like it has a very heavy Love! / Arthur Lee influence and I eat that kind of thing for breakfast. As I said earlier, one of the things I miss most about Australia is Chocolate Big M. I don't know if that's just a Victorian thing or if you have different choc milk in Perth, but chocolate milk everywhere else in the world that I've tried it just isn't refreshing enough. It needs to be Big M. And I know I've just talked a lot about chocolate milk and not your song, but it's making me extraordinarily nostalgic for home. I love the tone of the vocals and I'm wondering how many times you've rhymed "Merle" with "girl" in your life. The cadence of your rhyme scheme there is lovely.

LILY PLUS MARTIN
I really like the play between the two voices in this one. I'm going to go ahead and assume the female voice is Lily and the male voice is Martin. There are a couple of points where Lily's voice drifts off to this beautiful high place and kind of disappears, and Martin's voice goes super low and it's great. I do wish there was a bit more differentiation to the chorus.

LICHEN THROAT
It seems I'm falling in love with all the power pop songs this week. What a shocking surprise. I really enjoyed this one, and my one criticisim is that the vocal timing sounds a little off. Occasionally the phrasing isn't as tight as I'd personally like to make it (there's too many syllables in a few places), but overall it sounds like the whole vocal track has been shifted a little out of time.

KYLE ROGERS
The mix on this feels a little buried, like everything is too much on the same level or in the same spot, and I think it's not grabbing my attention for that reason. I do really like the delivery of the final line.

HEAVYSET LINGO
Every time I listen to this I think, gee, that intro sounds super familiar, and then I realised that it reminds me a lot of one (actually, two) of my husband's songs, so I think you're in the clear. I'd like the vocals to be mixed a bit higher and have a bit more punch, because I find myself not really paying enough attention to them.

GIZO
I didn't click that the tick tock was your indicator. Knowing that now, it's even more genius than I originally thought. It was super nice to hear this from original inception to the end product. Thanks for putting up with that terrible violin that I sent you. I'm glad you put some strings and higher sounds into the mix though, because I think they work really well.

FAR NORTH DAYLIGHT
This has a super nice Lou Reed kind of vibe. It made me stop work to listen more intently, so I think something in the delivery is working well. I think there's slight "offness" in the timing of the lyrics that sounds very deliberate and is a definite plus for this one. Perfect length.

EVIL GRIN
I feel like the vocals in this would benefit from being mixed a bit higher or having some kind of subtle treatment on them so that they have bit more punch. This is pretty enjoyable, but I feel like it's a little run of the mill and probably not something I'd seek out for that reason.

DOUCHE PUPPY
The first line of this pulls me up every time. That means the same thing everywhere right? I really enjoy the chorus on this, but it's probably not something I'd go searching for just in terms of personal preference.

BERKELEY SOCIAL SCENE
I've been very much enjoying all the keyboards on your songs recently. It's making me want to get much better at keys so that I can build entire songs from them. I find myself not really paying much attention to the lyrics, but I'm enjoying this one as background music while I work.

BALANCE LOST
Moar power pop! Thank you! I have zero problem with the phrase "lung butter" because it has the word "butter" in it and I fucking love butter. Love the park bench / sundrenched line in particular. And the woo woo woo ooo ooos before the bridge. The stalactite imagery is also a winner.

HOT PINK HALO
It me! This was an attempt to take something very, very specific and see if I could make it universal enough that the context didn't matter. A few of the comments here lead me to think I hit the right tone there.
Technically, I wanted to try and sing this with my own accent, and do my best to clearly articulate the words. Recording my first few song fights over the past month or so, I noticed a distinct tendency to a) mumble and b) Americanise my accent and I did not like it. The problem with deliberately trying to sing in an Australian accent is that if you go too far it starts to sound like a caricature, and I didn't want that either. I think the what I ended up with sounds mostly like my own actual accent, with a few different pronunciations of "bones" maybe throwing it off. There's also a line in the middle chorus with lots of "w" words and no hard consonants that got lost in the mix I think, so I'll keep working on that articulation. Up until now I've been recording with some very basic equipment. We have some nice mics, but no mic stands, so I've been recording with a Tascam portable recorder with a tiny Sony lapel mic plugged into it. Never fear though, because we've just ordered some new mic stands and another new mic, and I'm really looking forward to the next song fight when I get to use them! Also, I mixed this in Garageband without really knowing too much about what I was doing. I mixed the next fight in Logic though, where I could be much more precise (or as precise as I could be without reading anything about Logic or how audio engineering in general works). I might even watch a video or two before the next fight so that I can begin to vaguely understand anything about what I'm doing and why.

[Merle Fyshwick]

Hi everyone, and many thanks to admin for keeping SongFight going for blow-ins like me; dedication and reliability are qualities that I often wished I possessed. Alas. Thank you for the kind feedback which was more flattering than I expected. When I'm proselytising for SF (whenever the topic of songwriting comes up), I finish with the disclaimer that one can expect some honest but blunt criticism, so it was a relief to be eased back into it so gently. Speaking of warm fuzzy feelings and songwriting, I was reflecting about how 'outsiders', which includes other musicians, find it remarkable that a song can be written and recorded so quickly; it's a skill that's genuinely impressive to a lot of people, and I guess...don't take that for granted.

To reply to Æpplês&vØdkã, thanks for your well-wishes regarding Aidy. I think he's fine for the time being, but doing music and disability stuff has taught me that things can change pretty quickly. I collaborated with a guy (Stevie P.) on a couple of fights, and he died in May unexpectedly. I wish we'd done more fights, but the turnaround was a bit tight.

To crumpart: Ha! I read once that Western Australia has the highest global per capita flavoured milk consumption, and even in other states I find it hard to track down something I like (namely Masters Mocha). I know heaps of Irish musos in Fremantle; it's conceivable they'll get a taste for it here, and start up production when they return to Ireland;)

To Furry Pedro: Art Bomb! I still remember the 'history lesson' I worked into that one;) As far as some background to what might have influenced me melody-wise for Pocket Full Of Bones, I had been playing a crap rendition of Roy Orbison's Mystery Girl album for Aidy that week. Also, I Drove All Night as part of my week-long Roy binge.

[crumpart]

Hot Pink HaloReally like your art for this fight, btw!

Meant to say thanks for the art compliment! Spending 5-10 minutes in photoshop throwing a drawing together feels as simple to me as breathing compared to making a song. I haven't been drawing as much as I should lately so it was super fun to do this.

[Æpplês&vØdkã]

PHLEBIA
Love the drum solo. The second time I listened to this I actually thought the ending was a different song, even though I'd already listened to it once before. It feels not quite part of the same thing. I think I just enjoyed the drum solo so much that I wanted it to end on that.

Complete aside: at 2:06 mid drum solo you can hear my cat Juneau meowing in the background. I didn't catch that until well after I submitted it! As for the coda...yeah it's deliberately an abrupt shift. "Wait, is this the same song?" was precisely the reaction I was aiming for haha.

As an aside, I liked hearing your natural accent a bit more this fight! And great job on the art this round too

[furrypedro]

...I had been playing a crap rendition of Roy Orbison's Mystery Girl album for Aidy that week. Also, I Drove All Night as part of my week-long Roy binge.

Ha, awesome. I'd never actually heard Mystery Girl before but that is a top tune! And for some reason (I blame my friend, Mikey) whenever I think of I Drove All Night I think of the Cyndi Lauper version.

[Merle Fyshwick]

...I had been playing a crap rendition of Roy Orbison's Mystery Girl album for Aidy that week. Also, I Drove All Night as part of my week-long Roy binge.

Ha, awesome. I'd never actually heard Mystery Girl before but that is a top tune! And for some reason (I blame my friend, Mikey) whenever I think of I Drove All Night I think of the Cyndi Lauper version.

Yeah, the Cyndi Lauper version is equally good, and both are waaay better than Celine Dion's. I think the guys that wrote it did so with Roy in mind, and by some chain of events, he ended up doing so just before he died. The lyrics and overall sentiment are somewhat creepy, but that only adds to the charm

[Lunkhead]

Heavyset Lingo wins!

[vowlvom]

Congrats, Heavyset Lingo!

Meanwhile I've gotten 9 votes for three fights in a row, so I'm awarding myself a trophy for consistency. Everybody likes consistency!

[gizo]

Congratulations, Heaveyset Lingo!

And again, thanks to you precious 6!!

[Æpplês&vØdkã]

The newcomer swoops in and deservedly steals the show! Congrats!

And yeah thanks to whoever dug mine

[Lunkhead]

Not to give too much away but ... at least one member of Heavyset Lingo is not a newcomer and is someone who has a very high win percentage.

[HollyFurlone]

Thanks for the feedback, Everybody! While definitely excited and grateful, it was a surprise to see our Heavyset Lingo win; there were so many strong songs in this fight (Balance Lost, you had me at 'lungbutter' and my favorite intro of all the songs)! Heavyset Lingo is my sister (on bass), her wife (on drums) and me (vocals/harmonies and acoustic guitar). 'Pocket Full of Bones' is the only song we've written, played and recorded together so far, so thanks for lighting this fire for us!

(While I followed up with the harmony tracks, the rest of the song was recorded (one take) in their basement around one microphone. We're looking forward to experimenting with other setups.)