Shadows, I'll add your reviews later if I have time to get around to them, sorry I didn't have time right now. This has been an insane week for me--the last 7 days have included having an offer accepted on our first house (edit to clarify: we are buying our first house), having a client audit at work, discovering my driver's license expired 2 months ago and having to go renew it, and having a hopefully minor but probably expensive and unpleasant medical issue come up today! And we'll be out of town camping this weekend, so time is short. Here are my reviews of the active competitors' songs, in ranking order.
Frankie Big Face - I like the crunchy electric guitars on this one, and I think the hard panning call and response stuff is cool. This sounds considerably better in headphones to me than on the little speaker on my desk, where the vocals sounded suuuuper hot in the mix and the drums were really quiet and the whole thing just sounded kind of rough. I like the dynamic shifts in this song--in particular, where the vocals drop down from the multitracked versions to a solo track with the higher melodic bass stuff happening, it suddenly sounds pleasingly vulnerable. The a cappella bit is nicely arranged and has a real purpose in the song--didn’t feel like it was shoehorned in there for the sake of the challenge. It’s a nice arrangement in general; the backing vocals add a lot but don’t draw attention to themselves, and I like the rhythmic interplay between vox/guitars/drums/bass in the second verse. I also really like your lyrical take on the song. When we assigned this title, I figured it would be hard with a title like that to make a song that both stands on its own and is serious--making it the team name is the perfect way to do that. Lots of cute but subtle wordplay around the stakes, bursting into flames, etc. without ever losing that desperate, small-town Springsteen vibe. I think the lyrics are generally really good, but I wasn’t hugely into the gated community verse--”inbred immunity” just felt a bit clunky to me. The melodies are catchy--I love the “feel alive” bit of the prechorus, and the chorus itself.
Jon Eric - This was ultra-dorky but catchy, bouncy, and enjoyable, and was lyrically much more of the type of song I expected to emerge from this prompt than Frankie’s--nothing wrong with that, but it was a little less interesting to me as a lyrical take. I love obscure monsters as much as the next girl (probably more, actually) and I was pleased to have to click through in your lyrics to find out what a cadejo was--I don’t get to learn about a new monster every day. Although Ben recommended a podcast to me with hundreds of episodes that’s all about different monsters, so I guess if I listened to that more regularly, I probably could. Anyway, I digress. I like the harmonica, the mix seems a bit rough but not to the point where it particularly bothered me, the a cappella stuff fits in perfectly style-wise in this song and it’s just a lot of goofy fun. Musically, it feels like a pastiche, it’s not super interesting to me, but it does what it set out to do just fine. (By the way, you asked in the LP about the bit at the end, I definitely could not make out that “Puttin’ on the Ritz” part without looking at the lyrics and listening for it specifically.) I don’t think you entirely sold me on the lyrical idea; the big list of random misunderstood monsters doesn’t have a lot of repeat listening value for me, and the part linked directly to the title seemed weak… this is nitpicky, but I don’t quite get what you’re going for with the vampires, and if you’d asked me what this was called I would have guessed “A Million Monsters.”
Moss Palace - Ooh, yes, those lovely ethereal vocals, so pretty. The guitars, and the mix for this song as a whole, seem a bit dull and muted to me in comparison with your previous tracks. This song also felt long to me--I found myself wanting more dynamics and more editing, despite liking each of the individual parts--the choruses seem like they are trying to pick up into a loud part but the energy barely feels like it lifts there. Probably some tweaks to mix and arrangement would fix that easily, though. I like the chorus melody a lot. The lyrics have a good, musical flow and a nice dark mood; I was most taken with the chorus lyrics, the others work but no phrases really stand out to me. The a cappella parts didn’t feel super well integrated into the overall flow of the song to me; beautifully performed, they just sound lovely, but I found myself missing the instruments, and where it goes back to the song, the transition into the full instrumentation seemed kind of uninspired... no big crescendo, no big dynamic contrast. Anyway, I feel like I’m complaining a lot about individual things, but I ranked this second after Frankie’s, so don’t take it as me not liking this song, it's good!
Max Bombast - Love the intro, that doorbell into the a cappella instantly hooks you. Love the layers of vocals in the arrangement. The lyrics are goofy and cute, though a bit at odds with your vocal delivery, which sounds essentially as intense as ever... I think pulling it back a tad except for emphasis, or letting the intensity grow throughout, might work better with the lyrical content. I saw Vom’s comment about the first line ending in the middle of a sentence, which actually didn’t bother me since when you’re singing it you do proceed smoothly, but there were a few little phrasing things that bothered me--the fact that you’re rhyming “you” with the filler word “to” and putting it on a strong beat, the emphasis on the word “invite” bugged me (should be “IN-vite” for the noun). The little dropout on “no, they’re not offensive” was a cute touch. It’s a nice song and very tightly performed, but I didn’t feel like it drew me back for repeat listens as much as the ones I placed higher.
Cavedwellers - I didn’t get a chance to shadow for this round, but I had this whole idea about writing a kind of love letter to San Francisco via a framing story about my college roommate going LARPing with this Vampire: The Masquerade group. You put a lot of the same kind of lyrical ideas and ultra-specific city-love into this song that I was hoping for, so I was happy to see all those little details and characters popping up here. I was entertained by the Chinatown nod despite the pronunciation issue mo mentioned (as an aside, I highly recommend
Mr. Vampire to anyone who likes slapstick Chinese vampire kung fu movies. Who doesn’t?!) I like the rhymes and sounds of your words in general, but some of the actual phrases sounded really awkward to me--loved the cloves/prose/rose stuff, hated the Google goggles and the clunky fanged philosopher lines. The backing vocals in the chorus are cool, love that high harmony part! (It seems a bit flat in a few places, though...) The a cappella part works nicely in context. I agree with Glenn’s notes about the solos, the guitar solo in particular didn’t seem like it had a real purpose, and they felt too long to me. I really didn’t like the sax honking away constantly, I found it intensely distracting and I think it would have been much more effective deployed in only key parts of the song. Maybe if you turned the level down a bit, but I felt like it really drew attention to itself in the mix. I like the melody and chord progression in the chorus, it has a good groove.
Mandibles - This song definitely feels like you had a lot of fun building up that vocal arrangement, and I liked the retro-pop feel of it. Unfortunately, I like the feel and mood of the song more than its execution--the whole thing feels very messy to me, and in a vocal-centric challenge (and coming from professional singers) that seems like a fairly big flaw. For example, the lead vocal was pretty flat in the “time for some fun/gonna get out and bask in the sun” part around 1:10 and the Instagram bit around 02:07, and in general the backing vocals felt like they could have used some editing in terms of the arrangement--seemed like a lot just constantly going on, with multiple voices in the same frequency range, and the layers of vocals didn’t always seem like they blended well, partly due to some pitchy spots in the backing vox as well. The a cappella stuff worked fine in context but didn’t blow me away. Truth’s lead vocal sounds really great, though, by far my favorite part of the song, great backing vox there as well. I like that old timey rock ‘n’ roll guitar, sounds sweet. I liked your lyrical idea in general, but the cutesy Amazon/Instagram references really rubbed me the wrong way--they felt too precious and self-conscious. The mix sounded off to me in the full band parts, I think maybe lead vocals and guitar are mixed a bit too loud.
Glow Worm - Fantastically melancholy and catchy. For me, the biggest flaw in this song is the challenge, unfortunately--the “na na na” parts feel cliched to me, and also seemed jammed into the song without really fitting into the feel of the rest of the song... just out of place. I really enjoyed the rest of it--so much feeling in your vocal, good space in the verses, nice concrete images in the lyrics like the cigarette and steering wheel lines, and the “we built an empire” hook makes the whole thing feel desperate and epic. Although I really loved some of them, the lyrics didn’t entirely work for me--that “oh no” seemed cheesy and just felt like a lazy rhyme, and “we were by the water” was a bit of a weird line to me; felt like you were just trying to explain how the title fits in, without it feeling like a natural fit otherwise. I didn’t love the distortion in the choruses Vom mentioned and I tend to agree with mo about the subs feeling oppressive after a while, also. They do make an impact at first though! And I like the subtle squeaky seagull-like synths seesawing around under the verses.
see-man-ski - This is really bold and brave, and I admire your decision to go all a cappella. The little whoops and howls in the chorus arrangement are incredibly fun. The execution kind of sank this for me--it didn’t feel quite tight enough to carry a 100% vocals-driven song, it seemed to have the same intensity level throughout the whole thing without any big shift between verse and chorus or through the song, and the song itself didn’t feel very compelling as a whole aside from the idea of doing it all a cappella. The pause + “...ires” (ers?) echo at the end didn’t really work for me; it felt very unnatural. The lyrics are really cute--I loved some of the lines like “don’t cross your t’s” and “for a brief moment it felt kind of nice”--clever but subtle comparison to the social distancing issues. Very creative, very ambitious and charming.
