So my reviews from last week are still sitting there half-written, but I went ahead and finished writing some for this week's songs instead, even though I've listened to them less than last week's ones. I mentioned this somewhere else, but I thought there were lots of excellent lyrics in this fight.
Berkeley Social Scene: I love the bass on this track. The vocals are a bit pitchy and abrasive, especially when they first come in; I get taken aback every time they kick in at the beginning of the song... although they do seem to settle in a bit and they definitely work better once it gets to the chorus, in an Offspring kind of way, lots of attitude. I like the instrumental performance (aside from the little timing hiccup at 1:55), great energy and groove and arrangement... the effect of the echoey, spacey guitars in the breakdown over the otherwise crunchy texture is lovely. Good structure and dynamics.
Brown Word and the Big Whine: I really like your lyrics and all the apocalyptic imagery. I can't really make them out in the mix very well (they seem loud, but muddy), but you've touched on that already, and I definitely sympathize with the whole issue of running out of time and getting ear fatigue. This is not really my favorite genre, so I'm probably not going to have the most helpful feedback on the whole, but I will say I like the extended guitar outro stuff and if it were up to me, I think I would exaggerate that aspect of this song... it would be cool to hear this song slowed down on the whole and made a bit heavier/dirgier.
Evil Grin: I love the sound of this song--the arrangement, performances, mix are all just really lovely. I think it's maybe my favorite Evil Grin song to date. That first dropout to just smoky vox and piano with the build back up to drums + guitar is really effective, and I think in general it's just really tastefully done, no excess noodling or theatrics, tastefully deployed harmonies and guitar textures. There are some moments of the "so alive" vocals that sound a little unnaturally tuned to me... might just be hearing things, though. The vocal climb to that last, high "desperately need you now" with a slightly thinner timbre has a lot of emotional impact--I love the way this ends. The lyrics are simple, but they work for me (although I didn't love the way "better" was emphasized at about 30 seconds in). Anyway, it hit the spot musically for me this week, one of my favorites of this fight as I mentioned before!
Glenn Case: I like 90's Alt Rock Glenn! This is a good one. I'm always a sucker for fuzzy guitars plus sweet vocal harmonies. What tuning did you end up using? Cool melody/progression, nice lead guitar lines, and I really dig the vocal pause + riff. I didn't watch all 2 hours of your "making of" video but I did skip around... it's fun to see the whole process done by someone who knows what they're doing. (I can't imagine how boring it would be to watch a video of me doing takes and then going back and redoing them and changing my mind.) That ending is a bit too abrupt for me but I like all the rest of it.
Glennny: There are some moments of this song I quite like, like the repeating little riff in 5 around 1:22 is really cool, and the slide guitar accents. But on the whole, it's too chaotic for me, it just never feels like it coalesces properly into a whole; it seems like it just kind of wanders around between ideas a lot. Which, I mean, I think you probably know by now how I feel about prog so I'm just never going to quite be the target audience for this type of thing. The vocals are a bit rough, and also mixed a bit too loud perhaps... I think if you're going to play around with a really complex arrangement and rhythm, everything should really be tight, and in certain parts, like the chorus, the vocal sounds off both pitch and rhythm-wise and I find it distracting.
Hot Pink Halo: Ooh, a protest song. I really love the folk-rock sound of this when you get everything crashing in during the full build-up parts; the held violin notes against the guitar and the drums are great. In theory, I like the ebb and flow of the arrangement, but in practice, it feels a bit weak in the beginning when you have less going on. Maybe some lower-volume textural stuff layered over the beginning would help support the sparse parts better? (I do like the ending just how it is, same with the other periodic dropouts.) I really like all the fire imagery and wordplay in the lyrics, but I think the rhyme scheme is a little opaque since the rhymes are so far apart, and the chorus doesn't rhyme at all, so at points it sounds more like talking than like lyrics that musically flow... although maybe it's better that way so it doesn't sound too simplistic and cutesy? I don't know! Anyway, my condolences about your homeland's government, and I'm glad you at least got a rage-filled song out of the whole situation. Ours sucks too, but at least our entire country's not on literal fire.
Ken's Super Duper Band 'n Stuff: This is great, another one of my favorites for this week's fight! Yeah, it's very REM, nothing wrong with that in my book (actually, thinking about it, it also kind of reminds me of this Teenage Fanclub song called "Dark Clouds" and not just because of the opening lines. Maybe I was also thinking about Teenage Fanclub because of "Star Sign" and the black cat lyric.) Great harmonies! And I really like the melodies in general. Arrangement-wise, I like the sound of the song, but those incessant, unvarying acoustic guitar strums are kind of a LOT. I like the creepy, evocative verse lyrics (although shouldn't that be "you and me"? And the line "a secret soon exposing" feels awkward... you know, I probably wouldn't bother saying anything except that I know you work in the English department at my alma mater, haha. Although I didn't major in English, so in theory I'm a descriptivist and shouldn't care. Apparently not in practice.) Anyway, bottom line, I really enjoyed this, sorry for rambling so much about stuff that isn't actually your song.
Medavox: This is quite charming and I like your lyrics a lot, although this probably would have benefitted from some editing--it feels really long. I understand you had something different to say in all the verses, and the "wrong" stuff in the setup leads to the meat of the song in the last verse, but maybe omitting a chorus, making one of the verses a bridge instead, or making some of the choruses shorter would work, because as it is I'm ready for it to be done by about 2/3 of the way through. Although I'm sympathetic to the last verse, those lyrics are my least favorite part of the song... they feel a bit blunt and heavy-handed, tell-not-show. The first part of the chorus feels borrowed from something familiar, but I can't quite figure out what song it is and it's driving me crazy. "No Woman No Cry" maybe? I don't think the vocals had to be layered all the way through... they're not tightly doubled, which gives the song a shouty, enthusiastic-amateur singalong vibe, but personally, I think that would have been best reserved for the choruses and stuff like "here comes the ground!" because it loses impact when you're doing it pretty much the whole way through. There are various little production details I like that do help with sustaining interest, like the stop/starts, the dancey bass, and the synth lines that come in and out.
miscellaneous owl: It me! I was going back and forth about whether to post about this or not, but I guess I might as well in case anyone's wondering why I'm oversharing all of a sudden--I'm turning 40 in April and wanted to write a memoir-ish album about my life at 5-year intervals and release it by then. I don't know if I'll actually manage it or what quality it's going to end up being or how I can release it without upsetting my family in various ways, but anyway it's a project I am slowly working on, and next month is February Album Writing Month, so I've already committed to writing a lot of music and not sleeping for the next month... anyway, here's song #1 or possibly #2 and I feel pretty good about it (sorry, medavox, Age 5 can't go in the middle of the album), True Story about when I was 5 years old and my dad accidentally dislocated my elbow and my parents got divorced. The verses are in D, the choruses are in E, I wasn't sure at first how to get back down into D, but ended up just repeating the same ii V IV I progression at the end of the chorus one step down as a transition and I really liked how it ended up with the switch from that E major (I) in the chorus to E minor (ii) in the verse. Was this a proper thing to do theory-wise? I have no idea, but it pleased me so I thought I'd say something about it even though I'm sure nobody cares.
Paco del Stinko: Great storytelling in this track--I really liked the second "bless the cars" verse in particular and that "your own father" backing vocal. The lyrics go well with your slightly unsettling melody and chord progression and I like where the drums kick in. The dueling/harmonized guitar/keyboard solo part is really delicious. This all feels pretty chill and understated, which I think is funny since the subject matter is disturbing but the music sounds pretty serene for a Paco song. Smooth as butter performance and production, as usual.
Phlebia: I always appreciate how much effort you put into your lyrics despite them being processed to the point of incomprehensibility most of the time. I really like the line about "how our fears manifest ourselves" and the verse about our glowing magic rectangles (and I also just noticed we both used "dislocate" this time around, funny since we did the same with "tenuous" in "The Password Is"!) Musically (both melodically and rhythmically), this one reminds me pretty heavily of your track for "Try Me". Good dark vibes, relentless drums (good call on the lo-fi drum sounds, I think, they fit nicely), ominous chanting, unsettling synths... great, moody music for my coven to perform rites to, but tbh since I don't have a boundless appetite for darkwave, I would probably like it better if I felt like I hadn't heard something very similar before.
P.S. I wasn't even mentioned in your wife's reviews, so this isn't me taking personal issue with the scores, but I have to confess I felt kind of bad about her "reviews" even though the concept was funny. I mean, I'm used to pretty quick and petty value judgments here (pot! kettle! etc!), but since there was not really any specific feedback about what she did or didn't like, it just felt a bit like "here's an objective measurement of how bad your song was, goodbye." Tell your wife to write everyone a compliment sandwich or something next time, heh.
Pigfarmer Jr: OK, so is this song about a dog? If so, kudos for some nice, subtle, well-executed lyrics that passed me by the first time, but your comment about the Budweiser commercial made me take another look. I like that shimmery guitar and the arrangement in general, although I think a few of the production specifics are a bit weird this time around--the drums and vocals sound kind of distorted and the lead guitar feels a bit too loud/too busy in parts; it feels like slightly too much melodic stuff happening at once when it hits the last verse and you have lead guitar, arpeggiated guitar, arpeggiated piano, and vocals all happening at once. Still, I think I underappreciated this on my first couple of listens and I hope it is about a dog because I feel like that would give it so much extra depth and I also think it would be great to have alongside the song about cats. p.s. your lyrics thread post is titled "Checkered Past"
ShoehornTC: I really like the warmth of your voice, and you seem to always have really nice, bouncy, feel-good tunes. Well, actually, I guess (like my song this week) this isn't really feel-good if you listen closely, but the music makes me feel warm and good, anyway. I think it's wonderfully performed, arranged, and mixed, although the lyrics don't really interest me as much as some of your past entries. In a song with only 3 2-line verses, personally, I don't think I would have used up one of them rhyming "soul" with "soul" (I'm assuming "never trust a sole" wasn't really intended to be about a fish or a shoe, but please correct me if I'm wrong...) I really liked your understated guitar solo/instrumental break--nothing in there is flashy at all, but I thought it served the song perfectly and fit in really nicely.
Travels With Brindle: I think I should submit a G&U song one of these weeks in solidarity just because so many people seem to hate them, hahaha. Your voice is sweet and sounds lovely with the uke. That being said, I definitely think this would benefit from tracking vox and ukulele separately and getting the performances perfect. There are some pitchy spots in the vocal, and if all you have going on is the vocal and the ukulele, it's hard not to focus on the vocal sounding a little buried and getting noticeably out of tune here and there. I also would love to see your lyrics posted. I really liked them, assuming I've heard them all right--great celestial metaphors and heartbreaking storytelling. One of the things I personally struggle with on ukulele is getting any effective dynamics in there since it has very little dynamic range as an instrument, so I think either you have to lean into and accept that or maybe add some different picking/strumming patterns, pauses, phrases, etc. It might benefit from a bit more of the latter.
Vom Vorton: Excellent return to Songfighting! This was another of my favorites this week. I love your arrangement and the tones you picked, that particular kind of lo-fi combo of guitar/keys/drums in the intro just makes me feel warm yet kind of sad inside and that looping guitar figure is lovely. I really like the lyrics as well, all the verse imagery is so pleasingly mysterious and disturbing--the sparrows, the eternal car park (the onions?) Catchy, melancholy vocal melody and I really like the harmonized solo. This feels shorter than 3:10 to me, so I don't think it overstays its welcome, although the ending felt a bit too abrupt (it might have been cool to end by fading the instruments back out to end on the same repeating guitar riff it starts on?)
WreckdoM: As I mentioned upthread, I really got a kick out of the CATS lyrics for this one, hahaha. (Not sure I get the infected leg bit, did I miss something?) I wish you'd posted them in the lyrics thread so I could refer back to them more easily. Unfortunately, I got tired of the arrangement very quickly, the theremin-ish synth is a LOT to have constantly going on throughout the whole thing and the buzzing one that comes in later isn't really any better. (Is this a meta-commentary on "cheesy 80's synths to pulverize [my] mind"?) The effects on the vocals could maybe be OK but I think I'd like to see a bit more dynamic movement in the instrumental (meaning, maybe change up the beat and/or sometimes drop out some instruments, not just add more and more stuff as you go along) in order to have this kind of spoken word novelty-song vocal thing work--I don't feel like the instrumental could stand on its own in terms of musical interest. I guess it's a pretty good reflection of the general unsettling, horrifying feeling of watching the movie, though.
