Time to have a go at some reviews! I normally listen to the songs a few times then review. This time I've listened once through, and am going to listen to each one again now as I write. I starred a lot of these songs in my podcast app on the first listen, so good fight everyone!
Amby Moho:
The beats on this are immediately really interesting. I think all the little detail sounds are working really well to create a compelling atmosphere. The combination of the processing on the vocals (which I'm enjoying sonically) and all the detail sounds are distracting me from what the lyrics actually are, but that very much seems like it's a deliberate choice. I didn't give this a star on my first listen, but probably should have because I really like it.
Berkeley Social Scene:
I think the crunch of the guitar that's in the background combined with the tone of that keyboard/synth line is a cool contrast. There's a monotone quality to the singing on this that I think some people might find a bit samey, but I think it beds in well with all the other sounds, and I like the little touches of harmony here and there. The mix is very schmick. Good job. I know the song was supposed to end at 3:22, but I actually really love the accidental false ending and didn't originally realise it wasn't supposed to be there. Sometimes a mistake is definitely a mistake, but in my life as a visual artist, I try to deliberately work in room for "mistakes" in the process as I've found the flexibility that approach brings (particularly to printmaking, which is my main visual art medium) really refreshing and beneficial.
Brown Word and the Big Whine:
The opening to this is really lush, and the instrument choices are very cool. Love me some horns. I think you could try processing or placing the vocals a little more confidently, as the way they're sitting now is fighting a bit with the instrumentation. The call and response between the vocal lines and the horns is fun. I find myself not paying much attention to the lyrics, and the only line that's sticking in my brain is "what's better than everything", purely because it's repeated so many times.
CazaroTaro:
This one stood out to me because I just covered a song called "Motor Scooter" for @chumpy in the Gift of Song. I love your repetition of the last word in each verse line; it works very well with the style of the song and the staccato style vocal delivery. This is a super fun song and another of those that should have probably got a star on the first listen. One note on articulation: I keep mishearing the first line as "I just fucked a motor scooter" which, um, changes everything.
Evil Grin:
Very clearly an Evil Grin song from the very opening notes. I really like the line "I'm a puddle, just walk on through"; it's very evocative. If it was me mixing, I'd try and process the voices with a little more confidence: both of the vocal lines are really lovely together and I'd make them more of an upfront feature. The lyrics are based on an emotion, so I want to be able to hear that coming through in the vocal performances more clearly.
Gaping Maw:
Very cool sounding bass; it's simple but still gives off a great vibe. The change of pace is very nicely timed, and feels good after all that repetition of the same line. You've somehow managed to trick me into not realising that this song is five minutes long, so well done! The organs and such are all tops, and I'm a real sucker for handclaps. I think the mixing of the vocals in the second part of the song is more successful than the first part. And we've just changed again! "And we can do this forever" is the perfect line to come in there, and I love the stacking of rhyme on rhyme on rhyme on rhyme on rhyme on rhyme. Good job!
The Gross Tones:
Your songs always start off very cool sounding, but the vocal delivery consistently errs on the side of being flat and lifeless. If you can work on improving your tone and injecting a little more soul and emotion to the singing, your songs as a whole will be much better. I realise that's a touch rich coming from me, a person who is very definitely not the greatest singer in the world, but... <shrugemoji>
Hot Pink Halo:
Speaking of me, it's me! Thanks for all the reviews so far. Amanda, I particularly appreciated your reviews of the lyrics without having listened to the songs. As someone for whom the lyrics are important, and what I consider to be the high point of my process, I appreciate it! I'd be interested to hear what you have to say after actually listening.
This song was written, recorded and mixed in a day after the deadline had already passed and I realised I still had a short window of opportunity to get something in. For a brief history of my musical past: I grew up in a house where playing music was the norm, but being the fifth of six kids (I sometimes refer to myself as the "fifth and forgotten child"...), I never had any kind of lessons outside of regular school music classes. My oldest sister had organ lessons and played at church, so we had an organ in the house along with a lot of sheet music, which was regular reading for me. For example, my primary relationship to the Beatles was through a giant anthology of sheet music that had drawings by John Lennon scattered throughout (my favourite was a picture he'd drawn of Sexy Sadie, who was in the nude, and either putting on or taking off a second nude skin suit). We also had a nylon string guitar at some point, which, with so many kids around, I didn't get to play that much. When I left home at 18 and simultaneously embarked on an Ani DiFranco binge, I taught myself to read tab and learned a bunch of her songs on guitar. By this time I'd met Toshiro, so again, there were a lot of instruments around and he was making music, but I didn't really play them that much. After a while I stopped playing again and didn't pick the guitar up until exactly a year ago, when I bought my own cheap guitar and started making a concerted attempt to learn again. Then a few month later @gizo and I started songfighting and thanks to this place my playing has improved pretty rapidly, if I do say so myself. That's the long story of why my timing isn't so great, and it's something I'm aware of and always trying to improve. Usually I go through and either re-record again and again, and/or correct any glaring errors using flex in Logic, but this time I chose not to do any of that, partially because I was already past the deadline, and partially because I was comfortable with a more human approach coming through on this particular song.
I wrote this coming off my first two weeks in self-isolation originally imposed by travel. When the pandemic broke out, we were 17445km from home, visiting Australia for a month for the first time since leaving three years ago (not counting my week long fleeting trip last year when my mum was sick). As the news was breaking, we were staying in various friends houses, and overall spent about 60 hours in planes and airports. When we finally got home, there was that two weeks of "do I have it? what about now? what if I have it? do I have it?", during which time self-isolation was handed down to everyone, not just those of us who'd travelled internationally. We're headed into week four of our isolation now, and spring is well and truly breaking outside. When we originally left Ireland, the weather was absolutely foul, as winter had its last hurrah, and we flew into the end of Australian summer as they headed into autumn. We came back to my tulips about to open, and blossoms on the verge all around us. We're not allowed to go further than 2km unless we need groceries or for essential work, but we do get to walk in that 2km radius bubble, and seeing all the trees and hedges come to life has been a bittersweet delight. We live in an estate smack bang in the middle of a rural farming community, and it's super humid here, so the smell of the blossoms, ivy and gorse combined with cattle farming aromas really envelop you in an overwhelming way at times. One of the subtler symptoms I've read about Covid-19 is that it takes your sense of smell away, so I wanted to write this song about that discordance that exists between enjoying this beautiful spring weather while knowing that there are so many people suffering and dying from this, and also using that indicator of scent to reassure myself that I'm ok for now.
I deliberately kept the lyrics diffuse enough that they can be enjoyed on a non-pandemic level, but I also deliberately reworked them to be double-edged, with quite a few references to violence and death. Are there technical things I'd change: yeah. Am I happy with the song as a whole: also yeah.
James Owens:
I always like this call and response lead vocal / backing vocal vibe. It seems like such a simple thing to do on the surface, but for all my trying I haven't figured out how to do it successfully yet. I'm enjoying the general sound of this. The lyrics don't pull me in; I'm not sure if it's the writing, melody or my automatic reaction to avoid anything that appears to reference the dickhead in charge of the USA. I think it was a good move to open with that hook line.
The Lowest Bitter:
The fade in is a nice touch. I'm not sure if I'd follow all the lyrics if I hadn't read them prior to listening to the song. Knowing what it's about though, I think that the mix and delivery is pretty spot on. The layering of the different lyric lines is really effective. I'm also a long term propranolol user, and have always enjoyed its name. I refer to it mentally as my trololololol drug. I was prescribed it for a different purpose, but I do suffer from anxiety and when I found out that what I was taking doubled as anti-anxiety medication, I was pretty happy. It's much harder and more expensive for me to find the dosage I take in Ireland (usually I end up taking multiple 10mg tablets each day from blister packs I can't recycle, that could go to people on that dose instead), so when I was home in Australia a few weeks ago my doctor wrote me a ginormous prescription and I was able to bring home two years worth of pills in my actual dosage for a fraction of the price I pay here. Hooray for stockpiling propranolol!
Mandibles:
I love this. The male voice is wonderful, and I think it works really well with the female backing vocals. The mix on the vocals is really well balanced. The minimal instrumentation was a really solid choice to complement the singing.
The Pannacotta Army:
The Pannacotta Army is a delightful band name. Fucken handclaps yeah! There's some lovely little bits of instrumentation in the mix. I really like the arpeggiated guitar chords, the little synthy twiddling and bits of piano in there. This is one of those songs where I'm too busy listening to all the fun bits in the mix to pay any attention to what the actual words are, so I'm not really grabbed by it on a lyrical front, but performance wise I think it's great.
Phlebia:
This is super fun. There are a couple of little adjustments I'd make to the lyrics to help with flow (for example, I'd change "I grab my shovel" to "Grabbed my shovel"). You're slowly winning me over to this style of music, and this thoroughly enjoyable and I like it. Perfect length.
Pigfarmer Jr:
Again, I can immediately tell that this a Pigfarmer song. Stylistically has a little of the Matthew Sweet 'Girlfriend' album vibe about it, which is something I always encourage. I can't imagine that you've not heard that album, but if you haven't, I highly recommend having a listen to some of the arrangements on it. Also have a listen to 'In Reverse', which is his Beach Boys 'Pet Sounds' influenced album.
PJ&A:
I'd love to hear a version of this where you're spitting out the lyrics in a really gravelly, over-wrought way. As it is, it's still enjoyable, but it would be interesting to hear it done in a really punky, full-on, high energy style. The way the melody goes down at the end of the chorus is a good choice, and that's reiterated in the way the song ends.
Seaweed Delete:
This is super cute. The delivery on "these are the things that are better than everything" is just lovely. Seaweed Delete is also an excellent band name.
ShoehornTC:
This ticks all my boxes. The doubling/harmony is working really well for the song, and I'm also really enjoying some of the grammatically incorrect lyric stylings (eg, "and a song is just magically wrote"); they mirror the story of the song really well.
Vom Vorton:
That's an interesting beat sound in the background; very 'hammer on the inside of the skull caused by hangover'. The gentle delivery of the lyrics and the guitar playing are a nice counterpoint for the theme of feeling like absolute rubbish. It's been a while, but I can very much identify with these words.
