Orthogonal reviews

[Billy's Little Trip]

A heartfelt congratulations to BLT and Caravan Ray, who have managed to crap up their 472nd formerly-useful thread with stupid bullshit that gets in the way of what the thread was about.

Thanks. It seems like our work is never done.

Bloody'ell roight.

...you're the blue one.

[Jim of Seattle]

Update: I thought Ray's songs were easy to review, and they are, but of course now my gall durn stupid job is keeping me busy. Tomorrow I'm DETERMINED to finish them. Then it's on to Sockpuppet...

[AJOwens]

Overall impression
. . .Who you really are seems to be getting obscured by all the stylistic trappings. . .
. . . Most often my impression was that you’re doing just fine, and the biggest issue is not How Good You Are – the biggest problem lies in How Good You Think You Are, and also Who You Are. . .

(general advice)
. . . Leap and the net shall appear. Do something that makes you nervous. Yell. Record drunk. Let go. . .

(technical advice)
you sing too close to the mic and too quietly

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They Meet

Reason-on or rhyme? I could never make out what you’re saying there!
It takes too long to get to the accompaniments. I said your voice is fine and it is, but only the very best singers can stand to be heard completely naked for as long as you’re asking us to. I see what you’re doing structurally, and I’m on board, but the layering on of new sounds takes too long, and so I get impatient. Another solution would be to have more evocative lyrics that told a story we were really into, but since you aren’t doing that, I get impatient. I like the concept for the story, and the whole allegorical business, but the lyrics lack specific imagery. And you jump around tenses, sometimes past, sometimes present – it’s confusing and I start spacing out. The climax of the drama seems to come at around 2:30-2:40, but listen at how “climactic” it really is. It should be HUGE there. Maybe singing an octave up, more instruments, etc.
The bell is too hot, and therefore irritating, and it’s close to the center of the mix, right where the lead vocal is, so it’s like I’m getting poked in the eye every time. You don’t seem to do much reverb in your songs, (and when you do it’s a stylistic rather than sonic choice) and here would be a good place for it. Pan that bell off to the side a bit and add a bunch of reverb to give the whole song some epic Celtic space.

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"Reason none nor rhyme" is the line. This is about meetings. Three workers meet in some godforsaken place to build a railroad. Three sledgehammers meet three spikes, ringing out, and the three sounds that ring out are slightly out of synchronization, but meet near the end of the song. The workers are singing about world leaders meeting at Davos or somewhere (I don't remember the actual event) to try to fix economic problems brought about by their own short-sightedness in borrowing blindly against the future, recklessly exploiting resources, and generally building great works on a foundation of sand. But to the workers toiling in the hot sun, the leaders are inexperienced in the realities of life, and "their troubles are only begun."
I agree that this is too starkly arranged and develops too slowly. It was my first submission, and I was just happy to get a multi-track recording done. Everyone heard the hammer-on-spike as a bell, and nobody seemed to get "work song" out of it.
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Nothing Is Everything

Cool concept. Kind of a Tomorrow Never Knows thing going on as far as I can tell. It can be taken further. Like They Meet, this could use some reverb, so more aggressive panning, a big-ness. And sing out, for crying out loud. At 2:48 you could have tried not to go falsetto. That would have been exciting. I like the little bit of vocal effect you put on it, but there could be more. A second voice with heavy phasing on it, for example. And I like the pizz string run, but it’s a little transparent that it’s a keyboard because you rush the beat and the note velocities aren’t smooth enough; simple fix, big payoff. I’m not one for over-quantizing, and perhaps that was your thinking here too, but the non-quantized notes are better off sounding like string players plucking off beat rather than a keyboardist striking keys off beat, which is what this sounds like.
Regarding the big-ness, you could benefit from compression on most of your tracks. It’s hard to do right, and I still massively suck at it myself, but if you just compare back and forth between a compressed and un-compressed mix you’ll hear a big difference.
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A Tomorrow-Never-Knows, guru-esque thing was what I was going for (although the pizzicato run was lifted from Strawberry Fields Forever). Being offbeat was not my intention, but I didn't even notice it until someone else mentioned it, so maybe my playing was off.
I routinely compress a mixed song slightly before submitting it, just to give it the same apparent loudness as most other entries. But I seldom compress an individual track except to fix seriously erratic recording levels (which can happen with my vocal takes). I guess I should read up on what compression is really for. As for the vocal effect, it was a chorus pedal, and afterwards I had second thoughts about using it because it seemed to make my singing even pitchier.

Sometimes It’s Hard to Keep Yourself Moving

Your vocals consistently rush the beat in this song! Arrgghh! It’s so consistent that you could almost just drag the entire vocal track back a smidge and you’d be right on beat. And a song like this is all about the beat, so that slip-up is costing you dearly. How This Song Can Go Further: That snare at 2 and 4 is too weak. It should really pop, and the kick should have a lot more power. I think you’re going for heavy funky, but it isn’t really heavy or funky yet. Another thing working against you is all the clever words. It makes the song feel a bit cerebral, which is in conflict with the down and dirty vibe I’m sensing. Here’s a great example of stepping back from the mic, having a beer and letting go. I can hear you reading the lyrics, I want it to sound more spontaneous.
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No one has commented on the timing problem before. Maybe I was having latency problems with my early studio.
The drums repeat a simple pattern throughout. I may have used Reason Adapted's 808-like sequencer to set it up. I had neither the experience nor the inclination to build anything fancy.
This is about a soldier, and by extension an army and a nation, pressing on despite crippling doubt. The chorus incorporates a hesitating stutter. For the verse, as I mentioned, the music slides chromatically downward, getting slower and making less progress until it almost stops, at which point there is a violent jerking or slapping to wake up. The lyrics are supposed to have a desperate, ranting quality. I tried to use rap-like internal rhyming to build urgency.

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Made to Be Played

Tee hee. The stage itself isn’t made to be played; that last line makes no sense, just sayin’. Otherwise, it should have been required that this be the first song people listened to in that fight. Funny intro to the whole fight, in which case the line could be “randomly arrayed”!
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Someone did say they were going to use this as the intro to their recording of the fight. "Randomly arrayed" is good, I wish I'd thought of it.
"Since it launched in 1996, The T Break Stage has been the place to catch the very best in Scotland’s grassroots music at T in the Park. Each year Tennent’s Lager invite unsigned Scottish bands and artists to send in their demo’s and the panel of industry judges select 16 bands to play the stage." (http://www.tinthepark.com/content/default.asp?page=s3_7)
"Playing a stage" is not used commonly as such (one can play Carnegie Hall or the Filmore), but you can find instances, like the quote above or the headline at http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/0 ... y-the.html.
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Your New Dress

Stepping back from the mic would have solved a mix problem here, which is that there’s so much fighting in the low end between your voice and the bass guitar notes. Stepping back will reduce all those low vocal frequencies. And some EQ is necessary on the guitar so that low A doesn’t take over like it does. (There’s a useful and simple free plug-in from a company called Voxengo called Span that shows you the frequency spectrum of whatever you’re piping through it. I use it on basses and kicks and stuff to see what frequencies have all the energy.) This song is pretty nice and pretty interesting. I keep hearing Beatle references in these songs, maybe that’s just me, but of course I’m reminded of White Album ballads here. Lay down Blackbird next to this and you’ll totally hear what I mean about the low frequencies. That’s killing you. Visions of a girl spinning around in a dress “light and airy” needs to be musically evoked!! This took 3 listens before I musically “figured it out”, since it goes on and on without repeating. I don’t mind that at all, but I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to make that work more to your advantage. Changing up the arrangement midway through might be nice. Start with the low frequency problem and see where that gets you, I suppose. Lines like “Life is so off the rack” stick out badly. I know you’re going with the clothing references, but I don’t know that that gets you anything. It’s pretty as it is without the added cleverosity.
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This was a live recording using two mics. To reduce the background noise fom my PC, I was in the next room, connected to my equipment by long cords. At the time my studio was so primitive that I had no input EQ, and no real-time processing EQ. To adjust a frequency band, I would have had to open the WAV from one of the mics in a different editor and iteratively tweak, process, and listen. (That mic would have been picking up some of my singing as well.) These days, with a better studio, I have a standard EQ curve set up for my main mic. I hope it's helping! But I will look up the plugin, it sounds useful.
I knew "off the rack" would stick out, but I didn't know quite why. It supported the song's main idea in every dimension, so I said to hell with the torpedoes and left it in. But what sticks out is a distraction, no matter how fine it might be, and I probably should have reflected more on that. Why would being :"too clever" make something stick out? The insincerity of it, perhaps. Maybe that's part of the problem you're helping me to see.

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Cost of Living

I can practically hear you playing around with synth patches, discovering how accurate that organ sounds, and realizing you can just lay down these slow chords and it sounds like church. But man, this is as boring as it was back when I had to endure it in actual church. What exactly was the point of this? Because you could?
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Actually, I just punched up "Church Organ" on my Yamaha 60-key job from Radio Shack (voice number 12, I think), and started composing. Someone in the discussions said it didn't sound like a real church organ.
I'd decided to set a hymn posted to the lyrics forum, and yes, because I could. Did a damn fine job too, if may say so, catching the emotional ebb and flow of anguish and joy. But I didn't have the cheek to sing the words -- this was a lyric burglary, after all. I just played the melody in the fashion of a Bach chorale, using a reed organ sound (number 14, probably). Sorry you didn't enjoy it. My parents didn't drag me to church, so I don't have those associations.
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Crush

Of course the second version is much improved, so I’ll just talk about that version. This is catchy and has a nice poppy vibe. Maybe you could try it about a fourth higher? The verses might be too low in your register to have the necessary pep. Of course, the chorus is way high, so you might need to do some kind of clever key change to make it all work. My old wheeze about stepping back and letting go with the vocals plays into all this too. Assuming you keep everything the same, the vocals in the chorus sound really choked. I know it’s high for you, so you need to turn that into a plus by rocking out a bit. Anyway, the new version has a great feel, especially with that staccato bass playing. “Pile of mush” needs to go, it’s too obviously in there to rhyme and feels unnatural. “Puerile crush” is almost as painful, but I can live with it.
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Nobody liked those phrases. I do have this habit of writing lines here and there that stick out oddly. I tell myself they're original, but others tell me they're distracting. I will reflect.
This track is one of my least favourites, even improved. The melody ranges too far, and the arrangement doesn't come together.

Keep All Your Promises

Really hard to get through, frankly, one of my least favorites. I hear the pseudo-gospel anthemic thing, but the vocal style problem kills it. In this case there’s too much low-end in the vocal track, from being too close to the mic. Composition-wise it feels way too precious. “Broken toys of childhood” is such a cliché, and then comparing them to your dreams is piling more cliché on top of it. You’re treading on thin ice as it is with the whole reflective retrospective introspective perspective act, and the only way I’m going to go there with you is if I feel it’s really honest, but this feels a little like you’re pretending to be this way. Better to focus on a specific image or two and let me connect the dots rather than make grand summarizing statements like “just ignore the pain”. What pain are you talking about? Clue me in and I’ll come along if I can relate. You say “All that you held dear”, better to actually tell us something you hold dear. Pick a single broken toy, so to speak. The lyrics are just way too generalized.
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My wife and daughter gave me an electronic drum kit that Christmas, and I wanted to try it out. A tragic power ballad was called for, and then this title came along. You're right, the words don't explain themselves very well. Actually they're quite personal. Like many aspects of my songs, they're cryptic and obscure, but in this case it's a matter of hiding.

Please Stop

I really don’t understand this song at all. It sounds like you muted the lead vocal and submitted it that way. I can’t tell if I’m supposed to be able to make out the voices. I hear “Star Trek”, but that’s about it. If I am or I’m not supposed to make that out is not the point; the problem is I don’t know whether I should or not. This problem stems from the fact that I have no idea why this piece exists. The music part is like something I might hear on hold on the phone, though that part is nicely recorded with fine separation between the instruments. Then this fuzzy voice comes in and says “please stop”, but things don’t stop, at least not every time. Huh? Hey, I’m all for surrealism and intentionally confusing the audience, but I guess I’m not sure I’m supposed to be confused. It’s just a seemingly unrelated layering of things that doesn’t add up to any kind of whole. Very strange, and I come away just sort of puzzled, but not moved.
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This is about repetition to the point of nausea. My daughter and I are reading the names of shows they play endlessly on cable channels. The entire song is built on one four-chord midi loop, which I change up by removing or shifting parts in an editor. The "over and over" vocals rise gradually through repeated opportunistic inversions. The sax and guitar are just grooving on what happens. This experiment with "changing things up" came out of ideas from a previous songfight. My wife seemed to like this one.

Robot Ninja Zombie Bear

This one has a lot of promise. I assume you know the Flaming Lips’ “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”. This reminds me of that for obvious reasons. First off, I like the basic songwriting. You have painted good imagery with “the grave of a Japanese cartoon” and “follow the tendrils of the living moon”. The chorus is tuneful and memorable. Big problem is that you’re relying much too heavily on tired Japanese musical stereotypes. Hate to say it, but I was also reminded of “Me Japanese Girl I Love You”, a god-awful embarrassing Bacharach song. The pentatonic scale and pseudo shakuhachi are corny corny corny corny. Again, you seem so bent on mimicking a style that your own musical voice is obscured. Can you evoke the setting in some fresher way? Vocally, this is a better performance than many, though you still occasionally get stuck in your quiet “crooning” thing. (The lead vocal is mixed too low, btw.) I wish the arrangement had some more inventiveness, reflecting the dichotomy between the aokigahara forest and some underground industrial complex. You kind of set up the musical groove and never explore it. Instrumentally, what we hear in the first 30 seconds is pretty much all we ever get. Still, I like this one.
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Not familiar with the Flaming Lips, must check it out. Glad you like it, it's one of my favourites too, though I'm not happy with the repetitiveness.

What Kind of Love Are You Looking For

So as I listen to this I’m thinking about eclecticism. What makes an eclectic collection work or not? Why is listening to different styles of music back to back usually not satisfying? When it is, why is it? (Part of the reason I’m asking this is because, obviously, your body of songs is quite eclectic. Also, though, it’s because so is mine.)

So if someone decides to write a song outside his “mother tongue”, it’s probably not going to sound exactly like the real thing, because it’s not a style that’s completely under his skin. On the surface he can copy what he’s hearing, but there’s something missing. If you look that song deep in the eyes, there’s a blankness where the song’s soul should be. If on the other hand, the songwriter is merely inspired by a style, but isn’t necessarily trying to copy it, the song might be a success, but the original inspirational style may not even be recognizable by the end of the writing process. (Famously, McCartney did this in trying to write a Motown hit with “Got to Get You Into My Life”. A fantastic song, but certainly not Motown.) Ultimately, whatever a songwriter is setting out to do, their first order of business should be honesty. And by honesty I don’t mean simply writing lyrics about things near and dear to your heart, (though that might be part of it), I mean making artistic choices based on that ineffable inner well that is the source of great music, rather than some external scholarly assessment of the “correct” note.

If in this song you were simply in love with 80’s dance pop and were driven to “sing along” by writing one yourself, that would be one thing. But here (and in many of your songs which borrow from another style), it feels like you decided to write a specific style, then made more or less calculated composition decisions based on that self-imposed rule. So when I look deep into the eyes of the song there’s nothing there. But there IS something there in countless “real” 80’s dance pop songs. Because I think what I’m really listening for when I hear music is the voice of the artist behind it, regardless of what kind of music they’re playing. So if, while writing this song, you had a moment where you thought “I wish the tune would go like THIS here, but an 80’s dance pop song wouldn’t do that”, that’s your muse trying to get your attention. That’s the inner well. To hell with 80’s dance pop – your idea is more honest.

Why do I think that? Because almost every one of your “genre” songs is trying to be smack dab right on the genre. It’s not a James Owens song influenced by style X, it wants to be EXACTLY style X. I would way rather listen to James Owens do his own thing and hear influences of those styles. (“This is kind of an 80’s pop thing, but it still sounds like a James Owens song.”) All those styles are already crowded with terrific examples from past years. I don’t need to hear another one. Unless you’re making something new out of it. Which in most cases here, it doesn’t sound like you are.

OK, this song does the 80’s dance pop thing. Is that your heart’s desire musically, or was this an exercise in writing an 80’s dance pop song? Frankly, I’m not so interested in your exercises. I want to hear what you sound like. That said, this is fine. I’d bring the drums up some and take any reverb off them. Vocally, here’s a problem I’m hearing: Go to the song and listen to the word “new” at 0:15. You trail off that note with a croony vibrato that is out of character for the style, and I think kind of drains the life out of the song. In the next line you do it on “meaning” and “screw”. You do it over and over. Solid lyric craft and tuneful enough songwriting. I don’t hate this at all. I just went off on this tangent since it turned out this is the song that finally inspired me to talk about eclecticism in general. Lastly, same problem here as with the Zombie Bear – about 15 seconds in and I’ve pretty much heard everything I’m going to hear instrumentally. Not like you need to go crazy, but a little sonic detail to hold interest goes a long way.

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Another one that suffers from repetition, you're right. I intended this explicitly as a genre song. Often with Songfight, the title suggests a particular mood or social attitude. This title, "What kind of love," said eighties dance tune with dark references to forbidden practices. But at no point did I say, "I hear it this way, but the genre goes that way." I'm not even thinking of it like that. For me it's, "How can I make this change build harmonic or rhythmic suspense within the patterns of the genre?" What I write is always what I hear -- if I'm doing it right. But I guess by treating it as a technical exercise, I must be stripping it of passion.

Jewel of India

This style of music suits your deep bass so nicely. You wrote a song for your own voice, and you sound so much more comfortable here, and so I am too. Too much low end in the vocal, step back from the mic a few inches or EQ it out. (Have I mentioned that before?) Lyrically you usually take some care in syllabic placement and all that lyric technique and it pays off in this case. This isn’t a criticism, but I’m confused by “sail northwest by Canada”. So… where was this letter posted and where exactly are they going? I don’t really care, but sailing NW by Canada in the Pacific means you’re going to Alaska, but sailing NW by Canada in the Atlantic means you’ll run into, well… Canada. Who cares though, I was just curious, maybe you thought the line just sounded good (which it does). Good enough for me. This paints such a clear image, it’s a pleasure to listen to. I want to imagine the singer also playing an instrument, as they do in those types of songs. I’d bring up the drum and turn down the drones and give the voice and drum a similar reverb space and pan them in the same location so they sound like they’re in the same room. That’s a minor quibble though, this song works good. Didn’t need the Within You Without You turn at the end. I’m expecting to hear “When I’m 64” now.
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This one surprised me in the voting. I didn't think it was that strong an entry musically, but I guess people must have liked the story. Actually I dropped it a few notes below my comfort range because the Yamaha accordion patch sounded best in D. So when you're in England and you want to get to India, and the geography of the globe is still sketchy, you might consider the Northwest Passage over the top of Canada. We get drilled in it in this part of the world. Musically, of course, I was trying to find common ground between the northern sea shanty and the sounds of India.

Look at the Sky

Another real low point for me. Comes across pompous in its clichéd generalities. More Beatle-y bits heard too, that Lennon-esque melisma at 1:04 is too on-the-nose. But ok, if you’re going to try to pull off this thing, here’s a case where you really need to be singing out with reverb to supply the size I think your arrangement is wanting. But those lyrics describing the sky… What does it mean indeed. I don’t feel any true inspiration from you in this song. I’m reminded of Spinal Tap a bit. Again, sounds like an exercise in trying to write a song about the sky. I like your chord changes, and the lead guitar is effective. Sorry James, I kind of can’t stand this song.
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I'd just discovered what I'd call the "Batman" change, for example from Am to Fm, where the tonic goes down a semitone and the fifth goes up a semitone. Cloaked in great and terrifying string sections, it's in every big special effects movie ever made since 1990. I was milking it for what it could do.

I’m Eating a Wasp (Part 1)

This sounds like it’s Please Stop (Part 2). I’m really into this for about 45 seconds. Cool sonic idea, with the voices and the wasp sounds and all. But James…. The song is over after the first minute. Nothing else happens. That’s it. The Monty Python-y cookie statements seem to make it like a comic song, and I want to punch that git by the end of the song, but the wasp belies the comic idea. This has the same problem as Please Stop in that I don’t understand what you’re going for. And you don’t go anywhere. Why did you stop at 2:27? Why isn’t this song 1 minute long? Or 3? Or 180? Where it chooses to stop feels totally arbitrary because there’s no sense of shape or form. If it’s supposed to be a kind of minimalist sonic soundscape, it’s not nearly long enough to achieve that effect. Fine idea, but that’s all this is unfortunately. Also, that low frequency bumping thing clips the recording, which doesn’t sound like it’s on purpose, so it’s distracting.
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Ok, fair enough, it's an art statement. You had to be there. It's based on a complete audio newsclip, and a newspaper story which when read aloud came to almost exactly the same length. That governs when it ends. The newspaper story, current at the time of the fight, concerned a boy in England who had almost eaten a wasp embedded in a Jammy Dodger (a dollop of jam set in fig-newton pastry). The audio clip, also current, followed a reporter along the street as she tried to get an interview from a disgraced Alberta public official, who was flicking her off with "I'm eating a cookie!" It's probably still on YouTube. You can hear the buzz of wasps swarming around the sweet cookies, and the sounds of a factory hammering our Jammy Dodgers. (Not actually; they don't make them around here.) The last sound is the wasp getting squashed. I record these details for posterity.

Vest Factory

This one is promising. You pull off a cool psychedelic surreal effect, and the breathy flute was a good choice. Hitting the 2nd on that B chord is too on-the-nose for that 60’s style. Another too-obvious Beatle borrow. As with many of your more conventional pop songs, you could make good use of backup harmonies. When you get to “Get yourself to…a vest factory” it’s a nice catchy moment you could underline with a little more energy in the arrangement. The whole song is a silly idea that I’m done with at 2:45. Don’t need that last verse, I’d just play out with the chorus at that point. And again, once the arrangement starts, that’s all it ever does. Add some instrumental surprises to keep my ear from getting bored. Lead vocal is mixed too low. I wonder if this song would rock a bit more if you removed one of those guitars (and of course didn’t keep the remaining one panned so hard). Worth a try. Fun one.
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Thanks, my wife liked this one, so I knew I was onto something approachable. Again, I agree it's long and repetitive. Othes suggested "changing it up" ( a lesson I'd already forgotten).

Cloud-Cuckoo Land

Feels very demo-y. The clever opening line is a great starting place, and then you repeat it with a nice little change in the tune (which probably didn’t need to be so hard to sing), but then the tune dwizzles around, trying to find its direction, and I can tell you don’t really know where you’re going, and then the song sort of stops. That’s why it feels demo-y, you have some good ideas but nothing is developed. This sounds like it took you about 20 minutes to put together start to finish. And the reverb you put on the guitar is distracting because it’s so panned and there’s none on the vocal. Reverb is supposed to make everything blend, but in this case it makes it blend less.
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This was a stupid attempt to pick on early Joni Mitchell. Someone should have restrained me. (LINER NOTES: At about the same time, I was writing a ditty for an office project my wife was spearheading. She and her colleagues had written a clever lyric about the benefits of saving photocopy paper that referenced "Both Sides Now." Maybe I 'll attach it here.)

Who Said I’m Dead

My favorite of the 21 songs. Mind you, it’s just another JO genre grab, but like Jewel of India, you sound comfortable. And the lyrics are funny and clever. I really wish it didn’t sound SO MUCH like Johnny Cash and more like James Owens, but you’ve heard me tell you this a dozen times already, I know. And your low voice fits what you wrote for it. Needs a punch line to take it all the way home though. The whole song feels like a charming setup, and repeating the first verse at the end is disappointing. Minor thoughts: Remove the word “evil” at 0:28, sounds better as “You don’t have to be a mastermind”. It throws off the rhythm and doesn’t add meaning anyway. And I’d pay good money if I could have come up with that great 7-11 line. Way to go.
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My big hit, but with a tune like that, how can you go wrong? I disagree completely about "evil," I think it's wry. I was trying to be Johnny Cash;someone in the pre-fight was hoping for it. (LINER NOTES: For no particular reason, a few lines in the first verse reference "A Day in the Life.")

Where You Can Go

After the first verse I saw what you were up to, and rather than thinking it was a clever fun thing, I kind of thought “oh no”, because having heard everything else by you up to this point I knew you would be nowhere to be seen. This exercise is about how many SF titles you can squeeze into a lyric. But knowing that was your game also clued me in that you didn’t have any other reason to choose the words other than this little puzzle. It’s all about the cleverness of the titles. Musically it’s not very inventive, and the titles strung together don’t hold any external meaning. You’d never have written them otherwise.
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Sometimes I just want to record in my studio, and I have to come up with lyrics first, so this time I just grabbed a bunch of titles and tried to fit them together into something half-coherent. That was part of the fun. But it just annoyed everybody, and to those who said they'd once thought of doing something like this, I advised against following through. The music is very "me" though. I was a Procol Harum fan. Sorry you don't find it inventive.

Pestilence, Carcass and Death at Skoochies

I really want to love this one. But I kept listening over and over to figure it out. The lyrics are so oblique, as is a common style for you, that it’s like a Jeopardy answer. I have lots of clues to what you’re talking about, but you never come out and say it. I keep thinking that if I get a piece of something I can latch onto that the whole thing will suddenly make sense. That happened with “They Meet”, where it took me a while to figure out what you’re talking about. (And with They Really Are you had to tell me.) With this one it seems like there’s something, but there are so many lyric “huh?” moments that I finally gave up.

I like the idea of a lyric that’s merely a list of fragments without being complete sentences or thoughts. Reminds me of “Casimir Pulaski Day” by Sufjan Stevens, whose lyric is also a string of random images. The difference is that he clues us in early on what it’s about, and it’s genuinely sad, and so we have an easy time connecting the dots and a big emotional payoff when we do. You waste too much time being coy with it so the emotional payoff might never come. (Also instructive is much of The Decemberists’ album Picaresque, because they use these old sea shanty styles to tell touching stories.)
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Geez, I didn't think it was that hard to follow. It's a scrapbook of evidence documenting some bizarre, not completely explained event. Chronologically there was a meteor, a trucker carrying a butchered boar had a weird experience, the boar was for a wedding reception where everybody died of something mysterious, there was some kind of cover-up, a chemist died in a suspicious car crash. It was probably the Government. This shows more of my penchant for obscurity.

Seven Days

Ha. Believe it or not, this is one of your most completely realized songs. Works beginning to end. Your vocal and the lowest frequencies of the instrument are stepping on each other some, but notching out the lowest frequencies of your vocal should fix that. I know it’s short and simple, but you nailed it.
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The idea came to me about two days before the Songfight was due. Luckily it was inherently simple. I dumbed the words and music down to the level of those comic-book ads I'm sure you remember, and got it in a few live takes. The ukelele part starts with one-finger chords, moves to two-finger chords, and concludes on three-finger chords. Do I overthink my songs?

Wrapping ‘er up

. . . no genre grabs allowed. . .

My latest entry, I Blame You Entirely, will come as a disappointment to you. In this case I did not start out trying to sound like a certain British art rocker. I wrote a song that sounded good to me, and satisfied some technical requirements for interest and suspense, if not, in this case, novelty. Then I arranged it more or less as I heared it in my head. The problem is not always that I'm exploiting genre. Sometimes it's that I can't shake genre.
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Technically, sing out more, step back from the mic, watch collisions in the low frequencies with instruments, make use of reverb and compression to bind your sound together. Your discussion in the PM about your equipment made it sound like you thought maybe you didn’t have the best gear, but I honestly never heard anything that I could chock up to cheap equipment. If anything, I’d spend money on better synth patches, that’s hurting you a lot. But if you chose 3-4 instruments to stick to, those could just be ones that sound good. (When I did a lot of quirky jazzy standards about 5-10 years ago, I never put brass in them, even though it would have been appropriate, simply because my brass patches were so bad.)
--------------

Thanks in particular for the technical advice. I love writing songs, but I'm here at least in part to get better at recording.

PLUG: Having just instaled a new (to me) Mackie board, I cannot sing enough the praises of a good pre-amp stage. I've used the Mackie on the past two songs, and I think you can hear the difference. The LZ3's or whatever they are in my model deliver a presence that up to now has eluded me. I think this comes from their wide, low-distortion frequency range and incredibly low noise.

[Jim of Seattle]

Caravan Ray Reviews

I suck because this took so long and was the easiest to review and I don't have any pithy sum-upparies to give you. Since I know you're already pretty far along in thinking through these owing to the fact that you're putting together an album, I kind of thought my input was more of the "in or out of the album" variety. So here goes. This was great to listen to. Let me know when the album's done - I'd love to hear it. Is it a DIY project or are you going through a label or what?

Waiting Takes Time

I listened to the SF entry first and then went to band camp. I gotta say, all the things running through my head after the first version are exactly what you did too. I was thinking “speed it up, chop a minute off, better vocal recording. I also like that you let your Aussie freak accent fly. Perhaps the lead vocal is a tad too hot, but otherwise, stick a fork in that one. Great job.

Better Than Before

Listening to the original, I was thinking it was pretty ready to go except it needed a better mix and better drums. You thought the same thing, and the new version is better. But now that I hear the new version, there’s still room for improvement I think. The drums can still be bigger and better. This song needs to rock more. The arrangement is right on the money, but the execution is still a little tinny. Also, that guitar in the right speaker sounds like it’s waiting for you to let it go a bit. How about giving it a cool solo turn during the Hey Ladies part? It’s kind of a letdown that those groovy guitars never get to do anything but keep rhythm. The concept for the lyrics is of course hilarious, and the song works as it is, but hey, it also happens to be really cool as music, and you might want to spend a few days forgetting about the lyric content and just play up the coolness of it. Another idea is to vary up the vocal performance on the chorus. It’s good, but you sing it exactly the same through the whole song. Perhaps try syncopating it or changing it up once or twice, just to keep it interesting. Video is great too.

We Have the Technology

To me this song is right now 95% potential. Meaning, I can see why you might have picked it for the album, but it has a long way to go. I get what you’re going for I think, and I even think I know how you were trying to get there. But it doesn’t add up yet. The sonic atmosphere is pretty cold right now – metallic. First there’s that harmonic in the right speaker that’s pretty annoying, and the reverb you put on the vocal is also chilly. The whole mix is all metallic and fuzz, with nothing warm going on. That riff going on in the guitar could be doubled in (or completely moved to) a funky bass. And the drums need to be a lot gruntier. I don’t know if you play them live or use midi drums, but right now they sound like a metronome essentially and don’t add to the groove too much. This song can be super funky and blues-y. Sounds like you were trying to dirty it up, which is a good instinct for the song, but you aren’t there yet. Might want to try a little faster. Not a lot I don’t think, but it might be a bit plodding now. (Also, your vocal keeps rushing the beat which makes me think YOU think it’s too slow.) Unlike the first two songs, the lyrics aren’t funny enough to carry the day, and this song wins or loses based on the groove. At “Oh yeah…”, I like that you introduced the new voice, but that moment could be bigger. If I were doing it I would double that vocal and pan it hard left and right like you did, but I wouldn’t think it was right yet at the point it’s at now. It could sound more “chorus”-y, if that makes any sense. And getting back to the warmth thing, a nice organ pad could be cool. Especially, I want to hear it on “We got you we got me”. The lead vocal is good as it is, but I don’t like the effect you put on it, it could use some heavy compression, and since you rush the beat a lot you might want to just re-record it.

The Thing Most Easily Forgotten

Hmmm…. You really have a skill for catchy pop hooks. All these songs are cool, musically. Where the rubber hits the road is how you want to calibrate the balance between pure musical enjoyment and appreciation of the clever lyrics. I don’t know that this is really a “Problem” to be solved, but it’s something to be aware of. If you’re inconsistent, then I might hear a few funny lyrics-y songs in a row, and then you give me one that’s more of a groove song and it will just sound like the lyrics are less clever. Or vice versa, if it’s all groove, then suddenly a clever lyric might break that spell. I hear this all the time from bands like Barenaked Ladies, Fountains of Wayne, They Might Be Giants, Presidents of the USA. They jump back and forth between amusing lyric and musical groove, and it’s jarring to me. Of course, those are all very successful bands, so maybe it’s not a problem at all. You’ve certainly managed to walk the tightrope thus far.

This one needs a lyric re-think though. The punch line happens at the end of the first verse, and there’s nowhere else to go. Also, I was along for the ride up to the not remembering the name, then my first reaction was “What? Really?” I don’t believe you. It sounds like a joke idea for a song, but not very realistic. And it becomes an unreliable narrator song instead. If you embrace the unreliable narrator, it could be a better story. But I don’t hear you playing a character here, you just sound like you. And I don’t buy it. I like this song a lot musically, and the lyrics are good for what they are, but the whole idea of the song doesn’t work for me, so I wouldn’t continue working on this one unless that problem is solved.

Sleep Tight

Here’s exactly what I was talking about in the last song. If I’m hearing funny irreverence all the time, and then this song comes up, I keep expecting it to eventually get amusing, and it’s not until the end that I think “Oh, that was legit”. My next thought is going to be “OK, remember to skip this one next time I hear this album”. Why? Because if I’m putting on the album, it’s because I want to hear the kind of music I associate with you, which this isn’t.

I might not understand the function this song is going to serve on the album. I could see it maybe working as the last song. This seems to be whole sub-genre of pop/rock music, the lullaby characterized by slowly descending bass pattern. Blondie’s “Sound-a-Sleep” is a lot like this to me. I say leave it off.

I Know My Rights

OK, keeper. But it needs a lot of redoing. It’s a basic sonic issue that’s easily remedied. The lead vocal sounds too much like the fuzz guitar. Since the vocal treatment is great, I would remove the fuzz guitar and replace it with some rounder tones. They just compete too much and give the whole song an unpleasant sound. Yeah I know the song is supposed to be unpleasant because of the subject matter, but the vocals and the lyrics get you all the way there without it also sounding actually unpleasant. Everything else about this song is working for me. I like the structure, I like the arrangement in general, it’s a great song. I said this about another song above, and that’s that this song is cool, and I hope it will be even cooler when the simple sonic problems are fixed.

Pink Skirt

Terrific. Ironically, this is the quietest recording I’ve heard from your list yet, and it should be the loudest… My biggest improvement here, despite making it a lot louder, would be to make the lyrics much clearer to understand. When everything drops out at the end I can finally make them out, but until then I had no idea, so the gimmick of the song was lost. Love the percussion, love the arrangement, love the vocals. Hate the recording.

Tomato

This one’s pretty close to being ready I think. The vocals don’t seem to blend with the band very well. Too quiet, too soft. But I like everything about this one. Phar Lap is a very obscure Aussie reference, I had to look it up. Not a lot to say about this one, partly because it’s good and partly because it doesn’t spark my imagination much. Bigger, tighter vocals, maybe some harmonies.

Chance

OK, this is just WAY too close to the source material. You might get sued. OK, you probably wouldn’t get sued, but it’s so close that I can’t help but compare, and the original is such a part of the lexicon that you are going to be compared unfavorably by all those who know the original so well. I’d cut this one out entirely. It’s just too plagiaristic.

Clip Art

I don’t really understand this song. I mean, I don’t understand what you’re saying. I got “A man is not a camel” and all the spoken bits, but the accent or something was just too thick and I couldn’t make any of it out. It’s good, so I have no complaints, but your lyrics are usually a big part of the draw for me, so when I can’t catch them it’s frustrating. So my first reaction would be to make the lyrics easier for us Yanks to understand.

[Jim of Seattle]

I'd just discovered what I'd call the "Batman" change, for example from Am to Fm, where the tonic goes down a semitone and the fifth goes up a semitone. Cloaked in great and terrifying string sections, it's in every big special effects movie ever made since 1990. I was milking it for what it could do.

I've never heard that change called that, but I can see why. I was in love with that change for a few weeks many years ago. I made the Fm an Fm9, which I thought made it really pretty and reminded me of Stevie Wonder for some reason.

[fluffy]

Oh, if you're doing a compare-and-contrast with Song Fight and Bandcamp versiosn of things, when you do mine remember there's http://music.sockpuppet.us/ for the final versions (including lots of pre-Sockpuppet stuff).

[Caravan Ray]

Thank Jim. that is very valuable. Especially in that so many of your comments match my thoughts exactly. That is a good sign - I think.

I will respond in more detail later


But one comment I have to ask you to clarify:

Chance

OK, this is just WAY too close to the source material. You might get sued. OK, you probably wouldn’t get sued, but it’s so close that I can’t help but compare, and the original is such a part of the lexicon that you are going to be compared unfavorably by all those who know the original so well. I’d cut this one out entirely. It’s just too plagiaristic.

I actually have no idea what you are talking about!! That song didn't have any "source material" as far as I recall.

I have no doubt it may sound like something else - it is hardly original sounding - but I do plead genuine ignorance. Let me know what you are thinking of (and save me from potential embarrassment).

[Jim of Seattle]

"Sunshine Superman" by Donovan. But it's really only the groove and the key and the changes. The vocal part is enough different that you could probably just accompany it differently and no one would ever know.

[Jim of Seattle]

Oh, if you're doing a compare-and-contrast with Song Fight and Bandcamp versiosn of things, when you do mine remember there's http://music.sockpuppet.us/ for the final versions (including lots of pre-Sockpuppet stuff).

OK, so do you want me to do the songfight list and then compare where there's also a Love & Monsters version in existence?

[fluffy]

Or foodsexsleep, yeah. They're all Song Fight or SF-related songs.

[Caravan Ray]

Caravan Ray Reviews

We Have the Technology

To me this song is right now 95% potential. Meaning, I can see why you might have picked it for the album, but it has a long way to go. I get what you’re going for I think, and I even think I know how you were trying to get there. But it doesn’t add up yet. The sonic atmosphere is pretty cold right now – metallic. First there’s that harmonic in the right speaker that’s pretty annoying, and the reverb you put on the vocal is also chilly. The whole mix is all metallic and fuzz, with nothing warm going on. That riff going on in the guitar could be doubled in (or completely moved to) a funky bass. And the drums need to be a lot gruntier. I don’t know if you play them live or use midi drums, but right now they sound like a metronome essentially and don’t add to the groove too much. This song can be super funky and blues-y. Sounds like you were trying to dirty it up, which is a good instinct for the song, but you aren’t there yet. Might want to try a little faster. Not a lot I don’t think, but it might be a bit plodding now. (Also, your vocal keeps rushing the beat which makes me think YOU think it’s too slow.) Unlike the first two songs, the lyrics aren’t funny enough to carry the day, and this song wins or loses based on the groove. At “Oh yeah…”, I like that you introduced the new voice, but that moment could be bigger. If I were doing it I would double that vocal and pan it hard left and right like you did, but I wouldn’t think it was right yet at the point it’s at now. It could sound more “chorus”-y, if that makes any sense. And getting back to the warmth thing, a nice organ pad could be cool. Especially, I want to hear it on “We got you we got me”. The lead vocal is good as it is, but I don’t like the effect you put on it, it could use some heavy compression, and since you rush the beat a lot you might want to just re-record it.

I was about 90% through re-recording this - until I read your comment:

Might want to try a little faster. Not a lot I don’t think, but it might be a bit plodding now. (Also, your vocal keeps rushing the beat which makes me think YOU think it’s too slow.)

I was recording it slightly slower. Going for a "grind" sort of feel - with Velvet Underground meets Jesus and Mary Chain guitars.

All of your comments were spot on. The original was appalling - but I always thought the "It aint rocket science baby" bit made a cool hook. THis is a hooky song - if recorded better.

Anyway - thanks to your input - I cranked it from 112 bpm to 135 bpm - just to see what would happen (the original was 120 bpm)...... The result is a more psycadelic 60's rave feel. I like it.

Thanks Jim.

Look out for your royalties cheque in the mail*









(*when hell freezes over)

[fluffy]

Or foodsexsleep, yeah. They're all Song Fight or SF-related songs.

I mean, do what you want to do, of course. I don't want to be all demanding about how you spend your free time here. Just saying, it's there if you're interested in a compare and contrast.

[Jim of Seattle]

Look out for your royalties cheque in the mail*

Tee hee -- "cheque". That's so foreign.

Seriously, I would love to hear that thing sped up. Anytime you feel like popping over a demo, I'd be excited to hear it.

[Jim of Seattle]

Or foodsexsleep, yeah. They're all Song Fight or SF-related songs.

I mean, do what you want to do, of course. I don't want to be all demanding about how you spend your free time here. Just saying, it's there if you're interested in a compare and contrast.

So it turns out I have less vacation saved up for the year than I thought, so I have to quote-unquote "work" the week of the 17th, at least the first part. And since the rest of the civilized world will be holidaying, I'll probably have oodles of time to listen to this.

[HeuristicsInc]

I like this thread. The orthogonal thing is very cool. For some reason the stupid filter at work thinks this thread is about "Sex". So I have to read it at home.
-bill

[fluffy]

probably because I made mention of my album which has nothing to do with two of the three words in the title.

[Jim of Seattle]

Sockpuppet reviews coming soon, I'm guessing mid next week. No one in the queue for after that, volunteers welcome.

[glennny]

I'm really enjoying reading these!
Berkeley Social Scene has so much material, so I have a couple of thoughts on what you might want to review
1) Maybe just the ones with videos, and you could review the video as well
2) our 2011 FAWM album "Suntory Time" (under the name Zinkline).

Would you be interested in either of those? In either case I should set you up with links and personnel listings on each track.

[Jim of Seattle]

I'd love to review Berkeley Social Scene! You could set me up with links, why not just the ones you really want to get reviewed? I could do the album, or the video ones, or you could pick and choose. Let me know. I'm probably not going to do any more until after I'm back at work on January 2, since I do this while working, since it's mostly really slow here. and I really should be finishing the video for my album over the holidays anyway. But definitely would love to.

[Jim of Seattle]

OK, I had told myself today for finishing Sockpuppet reviews, but they aren't quite done yet. Tomorrow morning I hope to wrap them up.

[fluffy]

You can use the cheap paper for that. I don't mind.

[Jim of Seattle]

Sockpuppet reviews

(Where there exists an album version of the song, that’s what I’m reviewing, otherwise not, obviously.)

Thanks for letting me review these! I always learn so much by doing it this way. This was a lot of fun to review. It took a long time because I was trying to figure out how best to work with the things that need fixing. Your work is somewhat unusual in that instead of being great at everything or sucking at everything, you’re great at some things and suck and some things. Fortunately as it gets later in your “career”, things get a ton better, and your last 3-4 “real” songs are top flight Song Fight.

Overall impression. On the plus side, you have a great way with percussion tracks. Lots going on and interesting and avoids clichés. Your songwriting is also good. You know when you hit upon a hook and build your song around that. Most of your songs could be covered very effectively, and that’s saying a lot, since most songfighters I would say that is not the case. You also have a good ear for how much to change things up, enough to keep us interested, not too much though. Enviable skill, it’s hard to maintain that balance, but it’s critical. Your instincts there are really top drawer. So good on ya there.

And now, the paragraph of negatives. The biggest problem is the lead vocal. You have an instantly recognizable singing voice, but not in a good way. It is, well, somewhat effeminate, especially in the higher register, and your performances are not particularly artful. Yes, you’re singing more or less the correct notes in the correct places, but there’s no sense you’re getting into the spirit of the thing at all. It’s like you’re singing a demo for someone else to record the vocal. I suspect you’re aware of this shortcoming, as your later songs are improved in that regard. But in case those were anomalies, there are things you can do to make the vocals better:

1) Sing on the beat. Many of your songs have so much attention paid to the percussion track, so you’re clearly savvy with rhythm. Yet your vocals are so consistently ahead of the beat, it kills the groove. I’ve said this to other people I reviewed – when your vocals are ahead of the beat, even by a little bit, it makes it sound like YOU think the song is too slow, and so WE also start to think that. Your vocals need to be rhythmically dead-on in the groove, otherwise all your hard word with the beats is for naught.
2) Use more background vocals. Get some songfighters or friends to sing harmony. God knows your songs are full of catchy moments where some added vocal presence would punch them up. It’s a huge opportunity to make the copious good bits in your songs stand out. You have some, and it usually makes a big impact. More would be good.
3) Sing with more confidence, or even adopt a character when singing. Right now there’s a whiny quality that I find very unpleasant. Your singing is all up in your throat. Sing more from the torso. And when you push harder that wobbliness on sustained notes should improve. Along that same train of thought…
4) …Sing lower. Write songs that occupy your lower vocal register, where a lot of the whininess won’t be as noticeable. You do that some, and it’s almost always better.
5) Double-track – You probably already know the benefits of that, because occasionally I heard it. In this case, it will allow you more freedom in expressiveness in your vocals, because minor fluffs are covered up by the other track

Regarding lyrics, you have two annoying habits you need to lose. One is the stringing of rhymes, such as in Bad Cat, Isle Dauphine and They Meet (which I realize was a quickie, but still…), and a few other places. It sounds like the next rhyme is more important than the content of the lyric, and that’s bad. Anybody can play that game, so it’s not that interesting to listen to. I want to hear what you have to say, not a list of phrases that happen to end in the same syllable.

But most importantly, you really need to pay more attention to syllabic stress. This ties in with the comment about singing on beat. Your groove will flow a lot more groovically if the lyric respects the rhythms of the song. This is a constant problem for you. You need to pay a lot more attention to that. If I could make you change just one thing about your work, it would be this. It’s killing you. Yes, it’s harder work. I’m fond of repeating something an instructor told me once, and that I try to always follow: There will always be trade-offs between good lyric imagery and good lyric craft. In those instances, ALWAYS opt for the craft. No one will know what cool image you left out, but if the syllables don’t flow right, nothing about it will work.

For god’s sake, invest in some better beatmaking software! You’re all over with creative percussion tracks, and they’re being wasted on the cheapy synthy sounds you’re stuck with. In your later tracks you’ve switched to a traditional band instead of the electronics, so maybe I’m too late with that comment. But you can do the beat thing very well, I hope you don’t lose that skill.

So in the song reviews below, I’ll point out examples of the above stuff, but suffice to say they are pretty consistent problems, as well as pretty consistent good things.


BAD CAT

This is pretty dumb, as I’m sure you know. Hopefully things will get better. Lyrics are something an 8-year-old could make up at recess, and if your response is that you already know that and the silliness is part of the idea of the song, my answer is that it’s not cute and doesn’t work.

ALL TAN

I like the grungy garage sound for the main part of the song, but the shouting of the colors sounds like a cheerleading cheer and gays the song up to an unpleasant degree.

TW3RP

“Reap what you sow” – there’s a line that should be sung out, not whined.
“To achieve immortality” – It’s immorTALity, not immortaliTEE. That lyric should not have made the cut.
It’s “IN the NAME of BEing FREE”, not “in THE name OF beING free” – This stuff matters a ton. Change the lyric

BABY BE QUIET

I love the instrumental tracks, and the songwriting is neat as well. Good instinct to blur the vocals the way you did, but you seem particularly off-pitch, it definitely needs harmonies to match the pad-like feel of the arrangement. This could be super cool with that. It doesn’t work at the end when it gets all frantic with the drums. The distortion is unwelcome given the vibe you’ve established. Don’t think that gets you anything at all. Overall, pretty cool. Needs a completely different vocal performance.

NIGHT TERRORS

I started by listening to the original version of this and laughed at the out of tune uke. I then skipped over to the album version to see if you changed that, and was extremely pleased to hear that you left it out of tune. I love that.
CLOCKwork, not clockWORK
meCHANical TURK, not MECHanICal turk
Listen how nice it sounds on “serotonin overload/somewhere in your frontal lobe”. It chugs right along. All your lyrics need to obey stresses like that. And these kinds of big scientific word songs only work if the lyrics are tight as a drum.

AND COUNTING

Shame you only got one vote for this one, I think it’s pretty much a success. Hate to say it, but the lack of vocals and lyrics makes what you’re really good at stand out. I like the instinct of adding some more “acoustic” sounds in there with all the electronic stuff. The long buzzy sounds are a neat surprise and keep my attention, and it was also good that you balanced the short percussive things with the long whistles and the buzzy things. This isn’t really a “song” of course, just a groove, but it’s really nice. I suspect a whole album of this kind of instrumental business would be quite good.

EVERYBODY CALM DOWN

Hmmm. I wonder why you chose this to include on an album. The G and C chords are awfully plain, and you never stray from that. Perhaps the idea was to be calming? With nothing much going on harmonically, there needs to be something else to keep me from tuning out, but there really isn’t. So the song gets pretty boring pretty quickly. Here’s an example where you anticipate the beat in the vocals, on “Everything will be alright” at 0:45. The guitar does it too at different places. Really this is a fine song though, just needs a tighter performance and more interesting arrangement. Which you’re very obviously capable of doing.

SORRY TO INFORM YOU

Of course since you won with this one and got a bunch more votes, you know this one works. Not a coincidence that you tried something completely different with the vocals. It doesn’t make any sense to me why a robot would be singing these lyrics, but whatever, it’s a nice change-up.

But here’s a great example of a potential lyric improvement: “Miss Marshall’s hair”. It’s MARSHall, not marshALL. You could have chosen any name for the teacher! You should pick one that fits with the syllabic stress of the tune. “Miss McClure’s hair”, or even “Miss O’Reilly’s hair”. No excuse there, you just missed it. (Also, the robot voice is a little hard to understand sometimes, and having proper stresses would help.)

Lots of attention to detail in the arrangement, I like that you introduce new sounds at specific points, and I like where you added the backup robot vocal. Nice one.

THEY MEET

This was a silly song at a party so I’m not going to get all reviewer-y on it. Sounds like it was a good time had by all.

SOMETIMES IT’S HARD TO KEEP YOURSELF MOVING

I like this one. I don’t think the percussion track is right for the song. Too much activity. Good instinct to add the harmony part in the vocal. This is a pretty conventional pop-sounding tune, perhaps a more conventional approach would have done the song better. Rhythm guitar, more laid back drums, that sort of thing. But it’s nice. Again with the lyric syllabic stress problems. Use the band you employed in your 2012 songs, maybe.

DOUBLE TAKE

The cello is great of course. It rushes the beat though! As does your vocal. Arrgghh!!! Stop that! It kills your groove. All told, this is really successful. Pretty much completely works for me. I’m really starting to appreciate your understanding not to let things get stale, by adding new instruments and textures. This one is particularly fun in that way. Maybe panning the percussion sounds a bunch would add some space, as they sound all squished in the center while this big sound is going all around it. Interesting that you bring the reverb in and out on different parts of the vocal. Wouldn’t have been my choice, but maybe that’s fine. This is a favorite.

HELLO MY OLD HEART

I think I can tell the live effect is faked. The laughs come in odd places. That gets distracting. They laugh at things that aren’t that funny. Not much else to say about this one. Syllabic badness all around, especially noticeable in a song that’s so much about lyrics. Not a favorite.

HARDLY A MOMENT

Even in this short song there are syllabic problems.

YOU BELIEVED IT YOURSELF

Another decent songwriting effort. The arrangement is SO electronic that it’s difficult to get into it. This song needs something organic. It’s very dry. I would love to have heard a solo of something performed live, or maybe a grunty bass or something, to lend it a little humanity. I almost wonder if you intentionally left it this way as a sort of comment on the character singing the song, that he’s too disconnected from his emotions so no wonder she’s going out on him. But I don’t think that’s what you’re doing. Anyway, because it’s so sterile, it feels too long. The solo and final verse are asking more of me than I’m willing to give. Good song, too sterile, too long.

AFTER HOURS

Hmm. I was interested in the repeated phrase because I kept wondering if you were trying to sing a G# against the E chord on “door”, which would have been correct, and pretty cool. Funny kid’s song.

LOOKING AT THE SEA

Maybe it’s me, but I don’t get this. If she finds the sea she won’t come back? So then isn’t it ok if she just looks at the sea? And if she is looking at it, doesn’t that mean she’s already found it? Do you mean “please don’t look FOR the sea”? That would make sense. I’m confused.

ISLE DAUPHINE

This is a mess. First off, it never knows if it’s in 4 or 3. Most of the time it’s in a sort of unintentional 7/8. Completely impossible to groove with. I can hear some beleaguered bass player in the right speaker trying to figure it out by keeping up, but they don’t know the beat either. The solo is just the tune. It’s all a shame because it’s in your lower register for the most part so the vocal performance is actually sort of nice. Sounds like it was a live recording, and the sonic space is a welcome change from some of the dryer songs here. I’m finding myself more interested in your acoustic songs musically, though you sound like you’re trying a lot harder on the computer-y ones.

RUTHLESS LATELY

Hey, it’s an actual band! Good job. Lower register singing is the way to go for you. Your voice is really quite pleasant to listen to down low. Try to stay on beat (whole band) and fix the lyric syllables. Also your vocal clips a bit, and adding some reverb to the vocals would be nice. If I were the producer on this song I’d pan the vocals as well, and make you sing every line over and over until you were in tune. Nice arrangement, nice keeping things different and changing. This sounds like a demo, which of course it is given the time constraints. The real version of the song will be great.

BETTER THAN BEFORE

Oh man, this one is miles above most of your songs. Your consistent good things are all here, and most of your bad things are missing. You’ve employed a nice instinct for keeping the arrangement interesting, and the songwriting is pretty. The love the chord progression switching between major and minor like that. And cool idea holding out the cello until later, and the chimes even later. And then when the cello gets all spiccato, that’s super effective. In this case the band is good and tight, and everything blends really nicely. While I’m not crazy about the lead vocal, it’s better than most by a lot. When you really put your mind to it you can do well. And this one even has some emotional heft. Very nice! Another favorite.

STRICTLY SPEAKING

Another party song. Can’t even really hear you. Another good time had by all, by the sound of it, but unlistenable if you weren’t there.

NO BRAKES

Sheesh, it’s like you retroactively listened to all my whining on here, because a lot of the things I’ve been complaining about seem to have been fixed. This is another real winner. You were robbed by only getting 4 votes. The songwriting skills you demonstrated all along are being supported by better vocals and better lyrics and better recordings, with less reliance on tacky electronic pulses. I can barely tell this is the same guy. The vocals on this are the best of the entire collection. You stay away from whining, doubled them, and seems like you worked extra hard to stay on pitch on the sustained notes, which you do in most (not all) cases. You rush the beat less (but still do occasionally do). Pays off. Ironically, you have less attention to detail in the arrangement, which kind of stays the same all the way through. Not that this song really suffers from it, but I know it’s a skill in your quiver you chose not to employ in this instance. Very nice.