Final Concert Review

Ok, this was due about a month ago, apologies.

1. Faster from the Sun (Josh & Rosalind): Of all the vocal combinations that have arisen out of our two semesters together, this may be my favorite. Others sound good, but rarely does the whole equal more than the sum of the parts, as it truly does here. Rosalind, you just barely missed the first hiccupy phrasal ending, but nailed every one after that; and you helped keep Josh’s usually arrhythmic singing in line, which was an interesting change from his usual delivery. This is a great little number because it seems so simple – there are so many songs about leaving, about going home, and yet who can say what this one’s really about? Is “Mama” actually the singer’s mother? If so, why isn’t home where she is? There’s no bitterness about the departure, just mournful apology, which is exceedingly rare in a song about leaving somebody, regardless of who they are. And what about these bullets? A mystery. But the singer seems very sure of himself – making strong affirmative statements (“I know”), if somewhat vague and possibly allegorical, and repeating the same verse pattern – until the very end, where the lyrics take a turn for the vulnerable, unsure, and expectant (“Someday, maybe…” and “I know I, well, I hope to see you round”). Also, the distribution of the harmonica interludes – H, 1, 2, 3, H, 4, H – is somewhat surprising, almost as if the last verse is an afterthought or an epilogue. Oh, yeah, and I like it a lot. (I have a bad habit of writing about the song itself rather than about my reaction to it... apologies in advance)

2. Good St. George (Roman): I really hope you’re still using this tuning . I also hope you’re working on your enunciation (which, after listening to these recordings, I realize I need to do as well), because I know there are some great lines in here that I can’t quite understand – is that “This illness won’t last long”? and “I’d lie, but I don’t need a god”? and “Found a cure/ don’t work on me”? Post the lyrics to your blog, please! And I’m not very familiar with the legend either – and as I understand it, there are multiple and conflicting versions, as with any legend – but I don’t think that’s really relevant, because this song is definitely strong enough to stand on its own; and what's more, the song has multiple and conflicting voices, so it all works out. I love how there are lots of different parts but, perhaps due in part to the strong tonality of the tuning, and the fact that every part except the dissonant bridge repeats at least once, it feels totally unified, even in spite of the shifting perspectives (from 1^st to 3^rd person, etc)… I wonder how this song would sound if it had a part written from the POV of the dragon. I also really like how the strumming pattern varies from the first “verse” (is it a verse? I have no logical or consistent basis for calling it a “verse,” except that melodically to me it sounds like a verse. The bit after “I’ll pray to send you on.”) to the second – check out “Alive with the Glory of Love” (or you might prefer the acoustic version), which uses the same strumming pattern, and pretty much anything else off “…Is a Real Boy”, especially “Admit It!!!” Can’t really think of anything else to say except congratulations, and perhaps spend a little more time on the “Faith in all/ Faith in me” part, in which, as I recall, you said you were improvising some of the lyrics – it works fine as it stands, but I think that you, like me, do best when you spend a nearly-obsessive amount of time with your words. In any case I’m glad you’ve gained enough distance from your infamous relationship to write songs like this, which are clearly written in your musical/lyrical voice (“can’t fuck around”, etc.), and yet are universal enough to stand alone and create a genuinely dramatic, dynamic, level stage on which artist and audience can share in agency, appreciation, and ambiguity.

3. Wild Thing (Julie & Jeremy): Hands down, this song wins the prize for most impressive use of one guitar and one voice (not to mention for most tasteful use of dynamic contrast). Jeremy, the progression is unbeatable, especially that major chord on “things”; and after that entrancing finger-picking pattern, the change to strumming supplies a powerful sense of arrival and finality, which fits perfectly with “I’ll be here to stay.” Julie, I don’t know how you managed to sing this well with your cold, but damn. I guess the fuzzy headiness adds to the dark-and-dreamy aspect. It’s also really impressive that you found such a haunting and distinctive melody hidden in these dense, colorful chords. The minor 2nds are perfect – you have a way of sliding between semitones that makes them sound eerily close to each other, which makes the space between the two pitches seems miniscule although it is actually a broad and richly textured tonal field (but I don’t know how legitimate it is to speak of “pitches” these days – sometimes I feel like your singing style, with its impressive range and tense embellishments and superb control, might be best suited for Harry Partch’s songs, which I suppose have pitches, but not necessarily the same pitches most people think of when they hear the word “pitches”). I don’t know who is responsible for the lyrics, but it is interesting that in your version, Max remains King of the Wild Things, instead of returning home and finishing his supper…

4. They Took the Kids Away (Jeremy): OH MY GOD IT'S IN 11/8. Maybe that's why this song always gives me the creeps. Or because you stole Julie's eerie minor 2nds on “visions” near the end. Or because the lyrics are really quite chilling (this coming from someone who has neither seen The Hurt Locker nor been in a warzone... but still, the lyrics are super scary and sad). The perspective of the character (I assume) from the movie makes the lyrics seem even more immediate and heartrending, and as always your uncanny ability to lose yourself in the intensity of the performance is an inspiration. As I recall from our work together on “Astral Companion”, you like “songs that build”, and the one-TWO-three-FOUR!-five arc of this song is a great example – it’s almost like taking song-long crescendo of “Wild Thing” a step further by reprising the initial “calm before the storm,” including the first line of the lyrics.

5. It Rains in His Heart (Butch & Katherine & Parker & Ben): A really fascinating song with lots of clever and effective doubling – the back-and-forth from 3/4 to 6/8, the second voice that appears in the bridge, and of course the whole trope of translation – although I must say, it’s hard to beat this version. The stuttering, stumbling shift to 6/8 (between the 2^nd chorus and the bridge) is exactly how I imagine a drunken boat would sound, lost in (or rather framed by) the “song of the rain”. It’s interesting that this song has a somewhat similar structure to another tune in this concert inspired by precipitation – namely, “Fjord” – but that neither of these two songs is a proper arch (i.e. ABCDCBA) as ought to be implied by 1) the line Des noyés descendaient dormir, à reculons! in Le Bateau Ivre, and 2) the water cycle references in “Fjord”. Subverting those kinds of expectations is always fun. Maybe there’s something about the co-writing process that lends itself to songs that vary dramatically in the bridge, then recapitulate the original themes afterwards, especially with the counterpoint of an additional voice. I still can’t believe this is the first time you two have sung together onstage! It sounds too good for that to be true; in fact, I may have spoken too soon about the unique synergy of Josh’s and Rosalind’s voices. I’m not enough of a synesthete to identify which of you is blue and which is yellow (l’éveil jaune et bleu des phosphores chanteurs), but hopefully someone can figure it out. In any case, the doubling also appears (and foreshadows its later development) in the verses, where each quatrain of the lyrics moves from a relatively faithful translation of Rimbaud’s poem to an adapted, freely-translated couplet, as the guitar sneaks back and forth between simple and complex meters. Very cool. Parker, your guitar work added a lot of texture, especially the little raindrops, and that chord you play in the bridge after “sleep”. Ben, your line in the chorus has not left my head since December 6; I only wish I could hear a little more of the bass through the rest of the song, but maybe it got lost in the mix – or maybe the part blends in so seamlessly that I can’t even hear it out. And to be honest, as much as I would have loved to play along, I agree, it sounds better without the djembe, which would have cluttered and confused the time shifts and violated the purity of the dual-guitar aesthetic.

6. The Ballad of Seamus Taylor (Ben & Rosalind): Obviously a lot of fun to write and to play. The trading-off singing structure achieves a hilarious balance between two lyrical tendencies, Ben’s seriocomically morbid and Rosalind’s wistfully whimsical. Schonwald, you totally tamed that tongue-twister, “He longed for the silk [swill? swoon? something else?] of swirling salt seas”; and Ben, ditto on “The west wind is wailing away”. Basically anyone who writes a song with a lot of alliteration will get a glowing review from me.

7. Pink Pills (Ben & Butch): Well, you finally did it. Congratulations, Ben, on writing a song whose lyrics are impenetrably opaque. Even the sample in the bridge (is that from your cave piece?), which by all rights should illuminate the song from the inside out, is pretty much inaudible, except as a vague series of mumbles and bumps. The first line always makes me think of beavers, I guess because of the word “pelt” (although before I read your blog I thought it was “belt”, which seems like it should change the meaning pretty dramatically, but then again, maybe not. This song brings up pretty big questions about whether a song has to be about anything, or whether music can be about anything – because if the lyrics are incomprehensible, the only source of emotional resonance is the music, which is of course minor in tonality and evocative perhaps of a certain genre of music that is associated with mournfulness and bitterness and anxiety; but the music in turn is colored by the words [like “bright” and “pale” and “green”, although none of these really helps generate a stable basis of meaning], which form a kind of shifting field of meaning with no center or direction. Nevertheless, words like “automatic” and “machine” and “wound” seem to convey a moribund postmodern ennui). And that last line – “There’s a t-shirt in the water” – could be about something as tame as laundry or as grim as a drowning. The syncopated bassline under “big green/ cauterize that wound” kicks some serious ass, as do both of Butch’s solos – those parts are “minor” in key only.

8. Easygoing Easy Gone (Parker & Julie & Ben & me): Why isn’t it #1 yet? Julie, you totally pulled off the teenybopper trick (and Parker, your lyrics, as usual, are so funny that I can’t help thinking they might be just a little bit serious). Ben, thanks for helping find that synth sound, which I hope wasn’t too annoying for the audience, although in a way I think that was kind of the point (although I probably could have backed off in the bridge a little bit… usually when I don’t know what to play, I sort of give up and throw out so many notes that no one notices how irrelevant they all are.) But it was actually fun and challenging to decide how best to accompany this song [especially when I couldn’t hear myself! Have you ever tried playing along without being able to hear yourself? It’s a lot of fun, I highly recommend it], which is harmonically simple but demanding of a lush and convincing arrangement. And of course, every pop song needs a hook, which I did my best to help with, hopefully striking a decent balance between supporting the vocals and filling the gaps between them. It’s easy to get carried away with that portamento, though. I’m not sure how that warp-speed noise got in the end, maybe thanks to Butch’s brilliant mixing or Ben’s tricked-out mini Korg, but it’s pretty ace.

9. Coathanger (Ben & Ben's Computer): I always liked “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea”, but this song makes me want to spend a little more quality time with “On Avery Island”. For some reason we have turned out very few riff-centric songs, and while I wouldn’t necessarily call this song riff-centric, it certainly has more distinctive melodic musical passages than many of our other songs. I think it’s very fashionable these days to avoid “the riff”, which seems almost antiquated (and irrelevant, as the quantity and quality of guitarists increases, as the divisions between rock and jazz grow less distinct, as the average listener grows distant from actual musical competency and from the 12-tone scale), perhaps out of fear that all the good riffs have already been used, or the fear that there is no such thing as a good riff, or perhaps out of the ease (and trendiness) of using automated arpeggiators instead of intentionally crafting a melodic figure. In any case, the point is Ben isn’t afraid of the Big Bad Riff, and with good reason: his are distinctive without being self-consciously poppy or hopelessly esoteric; they’re organic without being sloppy or noodly; they’re syncopated without feeling stilted or artificial or intentionally anti-pop. In short, they get the job done, and on top of that they sound like they’re damn fun to play. I like how it does the opposite of “Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone” by going from “cheerful” to “evil” instead of the other way around. And those “void”s at the end are truly something else. And I hope they didn’t take your appendix out with a coathanger.

10. Fish and Lobster (Rosalind): I guess I haven’t studied the source photograph very carefully, but most fish do in fact have heads. Also for some reason it’s really cute when you change tempo and start tapping your foot in 3-3-2s. And a little bit ironic that when you’re singing “you can sing on every note and word with me” you’re singing some pretty tough stuff, so I doubt too many people, let alone fish or lobsters, could really sing along nearly as well as you do. But I guess that’s what they get since they never let poor Rosalind join in any reindeer games. The subtonic on “FOR one thing” (and “IN their aqua PLAYing pen”?) is really sneaky and fun, especially as the 9 of the relative minor when the piano comes in; and those chromatic changes in the piano definitely add to the spirit of whimsy. You should use more chromatic changes. I think this may be my only advice for your music ever. Ooh, and changes like the ones in the bridge in “He”. Is the keyboard supposed to be the chessboard you built instead? And for the record (lol?), you were totally on when you re-played the note at the beginning. Ok, sorry this review is so disjointed and random and fragmentary. I’ve been writing these things on and off for like two weeks straight.

11. Fjord (Parker & me): I couldn’t be happier. Parker, this may be the best I’ve ever heard you sing. And that solo would make Syd Barrett jealous. Every time I sit down to write a song now, I think about how natural it felt to write this… basically what I’m trying to say is that we should write more songs together. As far as the “not really an arch” structure, I think it’s appropriate, given the water cycle references, it returns somewhat unexpectedly to where it starts only after completing a full circuit (from the bike ride along the edge of the fjord, falling into the tidepools of temptation, swimming to the archipelagos and the aurora, then being sucked up into the weird evaporating ascent/descent of Bridge pt. 1, to the rumbling storm of Bridge pt. 2, cascading back down in Bridge pt. 3 under the original chord changes to the start, but of course it’s a separate start, a da capo with a difference). With so much going on, especially in the A-section reprise at the end, it sounds surprisingly uncluttered, so thanks to Butch (and whoever designed Grant) for that. And I lied a little bit: I could be happier, maybe if we spent a little more time with the drum sounds to make them sound less digital and to pick the samples that would work best in the hall. Also I think I was too preoccupied with how cool it would be to switch back and forth from the Bechstein to the keyboard that I forgot to play a good solo. It might have been decent if I threw in a big fat glissando at the end. But hopefully Parker’s guitar pickup shift is a good enough distraction that nobody noticed (thanks Ben for that advice!). And I’ve never been totally sure about that line “and rape the archipelagos” – maybe just because my mom grew up on an archipelago that was effectively raped by the Dutch. But apart from that, this song is definitely one of my favorite things that came out of this semester.

12. Neverland (Me and Jeremy): Apart from cranking up the tempo before the second verse (to a speed at which, as I soon discovered, I couldn’t really fit all the words in), I think this went fairly well, certainly miles better than when I first played it in class. It could maybe use a drum set. Jeremy, your playing was great (I especially like the volume swells in the choruses, and the variation in the melody fill between the 2^nd and 3^rd verses, and the funky scale stuff @ “rhythm or melody/ passion or jealousy/ meaning or memory”, and pretty much every note you play after that is exactly what I would have imagined if I were as good a guitarist as you); I only wish I could hear the guitar more in the mix. Butch mentioned that the d#min7 (or I guess it’s more of a d#min9) in the minor part of the verse (“All because one cold September morning” etc) was not a particularly clean harmonic move – that’s also the point at which the key signature changes from more-or-less F#Mixolydian to kinda-sorta C#Ionian – so I wonder how that ended up sounding, especially with the guitar filling it out, because I am certainly not in a position to judge. I also wonder if the whole outro section (“If I had just one day to crawl out of the darkness”) is insufficiently unified with the rest of the song, which has a very straightforward, very repetitious structure, compared to the outro which is basically a mini-through-composed ditty. Of course “It hasn’t been white in winter for awhile” isn’t really true anymore, as of last December. Also, what is that clapping sound after “Could we send a rocket to the moon?”

13. Hotline (Again?!?!) (Roman & Ian): Props for starting with “It doesn’t matter anyway/ I’ve said more than I meant to say.” Is the spoken bit “part of the song”, or particular to this performance? Either way I like it, especially the “odd desire to fail,” which is reminiscent of Milan Kundera’s definition of vertigo as “something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.” Like in “Good St. George,” it is often unclear who is talking, whom the pronouns refer to – is Mr. Hotline singing? How could he – he’s dead! Or Roman (@ the first line, “I have seen the shit of earth”; and again @ the last stanza, “I won’t miss him…/ I still loved him…/ I’m just like him. Tell, do I deserve the same?”)? Or are these some of the “townsfolk”? Either way it’s ambiguous, and I dig it. (Perhaps a better question is, who is the “you” in “you don’t look much better/ …you look slightly deader”?) In fact I think I have decided this semester that a judicious juxtaposition of first- and third-person songwriting (with perhaps a pinch of second here and there, if only because the syllable “you” is eminently singable) is generally preferable to all-first-person (because nobody really gives a shit about anybody else's feelings) or all-third (because songwriting is inherently personal, and because it’s fun to write songs “in character”, which are technically first-person but obviously in aren’t the singer’s voice). Before you sent me the lyrics, I assumed “to God. A bug” was “to God above”… lolz. The “bug” thing is definitely unexpected, and continues the whole “I’m writing Kafka” motif from Hotline Pt I., as well as the dehumanization of Mr. Hotline. It’s also really impressive how you found so many great melodies to go over the same chords (and changing the time signature and adding the 7^th-beat “hiccup”, a la "All You Need Is Love" [even if you don't listen to the Beatles] probably didn't hurt)… so phenomenal work, you definitely succeeded in making it a totally different song from Pt. I. As far as “Glad he won’t disgrace us with his eyes”, which you missed in the performance but included in your “corrected” lyrics, I think the “fuck” in the next line is actually more effective without the half-line before it, especially because immediately after that you head straight into another section. And “lost to pretty girls” – I almost want this line to change, if only because up to this point, there has only been one passing reference to sexuality (“he’ll never see the dark of life again/ Never see another highway light, another tree or pretty woman’s thigh”) , and thus the whole song has a really dark and amorphous quality of being about punishment and loss and pain and queasiness and retribution, while completely avoiding what the source of that pain or loss might be (except in Pt. I of course), so throwing in “lost to pretty girls” right before the end feels almost like a concession, especially because 1) it’s lyrically inconsistent with the rest of the song, and 2) it’s phonetically inconsistent with the rest of the stanza (i.e. it doesn’t rhyme whereas everything else in that melodic pattern rhymes in couplets). But I think you already know my attitude towards songs about ex-lovers. But maybe it’s just been too long since I’ve had a good ex-lover to write a song about. Whoa, it got personal for a second. Ok. Point is I like the song a lot.

14. Worry Away (Julie, Katherine, Rosalind, Sara, Parker & Ben): As you wrote in your blog, your emulation of “In the Waiting Line”'s structural elements is spot on, down to the repetition of the first couplet of the chorus at the end of the chorus. But the instrumentation (thanks to Parker and Ben's gritty, groovy counterpoint) and your tasteful vocal ornamentation are sufficiently distinctive to make your song unique. I love the “take me to higher ground” at the end of the first verse – you go to higher ground, but then the vocals cut out, leaving the listener in expectant suspense, waiting for the next phrase. And “til somebody drops” proves my earlier point about the minor 2nds. Parker, you have a knack for throwing in chordal accents after crucial lyrical lines, here as in “It Rains in His Heart.” The Zero 7 song plays extensively with the “waiting” aspect (i.e. repetitious chord progression, ambient sounds, lyrical content), but the singer sometimes changes it up, especially rhythmically, as in “ticking clock/ everyone stop”, in which the vocal rhythm changes from a floaty, spaced-out, syncopated rhythm (somewhere between a 3-3-2 and quarter-note triplets) to stilted straight eighths. You play with listeners' rhythmic expectations in a similar way with lines like “All the while the hours slip away” (with “away” sneaking in just before the bar line, breaking the strong pattern of quarter-note offbeats; thus the words “slip away” just like the hours) and of course that line “My love is unlimited,/ but time is prohibiting me/ from seeing all that there is to see” which combines a spectacular melody, a couple of tricky multisyllabic/interlocking rhymes, and some very clever enjambment across barlines.

15. O Holy Night (Josh & Butch): Beautiful work, both of you. Although I do wish there had been just a pinch of klezmer clarinet action... I'm sure there was klezmer music on the night Jesus was born. Josh, it's a good thing you didn't forget the words, otherwise we might have had to do this.

16. All Ye Shackled Men (Everyone): Some of us started off counting the snaps on 1 and 3, and then they gradually phased to 2 and 4 before Josh's vocals came in. Pretty cool, even if it was essentially serendipitous. On the whole this sounds good in spite of minimal rehearsal, and it's certainly come a long way since Josh's original solo guitar version with hushed vocals, by way of out-of-tune-organ-plus-screaming-lessons. Josh, I'm honored to have been a small part of the writing process, even if the only similarity between our jamming and the final product is the key signature. Somebody stomped solo after the first four measures, which I assume was a goof-up (although assuming usually makes an ass out of me), but it actually works nicely to foreshadow the bigger stomp after measure 8. If we'd had more time to rehearse, it would probably have been nice to have more harmonies going; as it was, a handful of us were improvising, but it could definitely be tighter. My only other criticism is that you dropped my favorite verse.