We’re halfway through another year. It’s amazing how quickly the time goes by. I haven’t had as much time to listen to new music as I usually do. And when I don’t get to listen to as much as usual, I feel like something is missing in my life. The joy of discovery is what makes happiness possible. Discovery for me comes in several forms. The best is being out on the trails hiking and taking pictures. Preferably with as little people around as possible. There’s music in the mountains, forests and seashores. You just have to listen closely to hear it. When you get tuned in to it, it becomes obvious and overwhelming in the best possible way. I feel a weight lifted from me and a constant flow of inspiration. I honestly wish I could be in those places most of the year. Unfortunately, that’s not reality (I am jealous of people who do get to live that way). Music has always presented me with the same inspiration. Listening, writing and recording can take you to a special place. If I could choose a perfect life it would be living in a place where I could be in nature during the day (and I would need to have my wife by my side – everything is better when we’re together) then head in to the studio at night to create. One can always dream. So let’s share some new music for this month. Inspiration is just around the next bend.
First Up: Fruit Bats – ‘Holy Rose’
There are songs that, for me, combine the points I was discussing in this month’s intro. Songs that you could listen to out on a trail, or sitting on a rock over looking the ocean. I’ve listened to James Taylor hiking in redwood forests (use earbuds friends – trail etiquette). There are different ways to listen to a song. I like discussing the instrumental and recording aspects of songs, what makes them work. Sometimes you take a song as a whole and discuss the feelings it elicits when you’re listening to it. This song would be perfect over looking the ocean at sunset. I live near the east coast, but the northern California coast is something special for me. This song lyrically puts you in that place – “Holy Rose of California”. Musically the song starts out simple. Guitar arpeggios in the right side of the mix. Vocals right down the middle – wonderfully emotive vocals with just the right amount of reverb. Drums enter the mix and they are kept very simple. The mix really keeps you centered on the lyrics. Fuzz laden guitar enters the mix on the left side to keep a good stereo feel and the drums drop back deeper. Listen carefully and you can hear the high harmony vocal in the right side of the mix. There’s a short fuzzy lead added. The mix then fills out. The guitar arpeggios in the right almost sound like keyboards and the thicker fuzz guitar stays in the left. The mix continues to put the vocals out front. They are multi layered which makes them more prominent and highlights the lyrics. The reverb added thickens the overall sound while adding a dream like feel. When you get to the mid point of the song keyboards are added. This piece by piece addition keeps the emotional feel of the song growing. Little additions like shakers keep expanding that feel. The song builds to a keyboard fade out at the end.
Next Up: The Lickerish Quartet – ‘New Days’
This is a beautifully put together song. As with any song we’re talking about, it wouldn’t be in the Grapevine if I didn’t love the tune itself. But one of the first things I would comment on is how great the recording is. All the parts are clean, crisp, well placed in the stereo field and easily distinguished as separate parts. That style would not necessarily be the best for every song. And that’s what makes a recording great. Finding exactly the right recording style to fit the song itself. Some songs work better if they’re rough and even a bit muddy. Sometimes you want the instruments to blend together, or have parts more buried in the mix. The trick is deciding what style of recording best presents the song. In the case of ‘New Days’, the crisp separation is perfect. Start with the drums underpinning the song. The snare has that great snap that I’m fond of. But the rest of the kit has the same type of crisp snap to it. You can hear the top end slap of the kick drum and the same type of slap with the toms. No single part of the kit overwhelms the other parts. You also hear the bass guitar very clearly. It underpins the guitar chords while still having some nice scale runs throughout. They keep the guitar sound pretty clean with just a little bit of grit added. The guitar parts go from layered arpeggios to strummed chords with nice harmonics thrown in. The guitar placement helps expand the stereo feel. The vocals are upfront and crisp so you can pick up the lyrics. You can hear some nice doubling of the vocals to make them fuller. There’s some atmospheric keyboard effects added. The song is 5:41 long, so the band sets up the arrangement to feel like a story. A song of this length could become boring if the arrangement weren’t put together correctly, so there’s quiet parts that lead back to original themes throughout. I really enjoyed listening to a song this well written, recorded and produced.
Finally: Soft Shoulder – ‘Raw Time’
For our last selection we’re going to go in a totally opposite direction. ‘Raw Time’ is a great name for this tune. It floats somewhere between punk and post punk noise rock. The sonics and recording technique are the antithesis of our first two selections. The main force driving the song is a distorted bass line that is far up front in the mix. The drums are recorded in an interesting manner. What you’ll mostly hear is the hi hat keeping time in the left channel. The rest of the kit is there but placed much farther down in the mix. Throughout the song we hear guitars and possibly keyboards creating a swirling background canvas of distorted noise. The guitars occasionally pick up and are moved to the front of the mix at certain parts of the song. They increase in volume and take over from the vocals at around the 2:00 mark and continue that way until around 2:30. The vocals in the song are also very distorted and are as much (if not more) about the sonics they add as the lyrics being sung. There is an interesting mix decision I noticed where the vocals are sometimes heavier in the right channel and at other times seem to be more in the center of the mix. The stereo mix placement has a lot of interesting decisions. The distorted bass remains in the center making it the sonic centerpiece of the song. The hi hat and drums lean more to the left hand side. Guitars that appear are also panned left and right. These mixing decisions are very important to the songs overall feel. The result is a fun blast of noisy distortion.
Retro: Black Sabbath – ‘Sweet Leaf’
I’ve always enjoyed what I find as the fun contradiction of this song. Black Sabbath has always been associated with ‘doom and gloom’ sonics and songs. This song enjoys the usual crushing guitar, drums and bass riffs that highlight a lot of their songs. It also sports Ozzy’s usual hard pushing vocals. But if you listen to the lyrics of the song, it’s about the happy joys of smoking weed with Ozzy proclaiming “I love you” to the magic bud. It has everything you’d want in a Sabbath song – a crushing main riff, speeding bass, doom drums as well as a middle break that almost works as a different song. It’s a typical Sabbath mix from that era of their existence where all the instruments have a prominent place though out the song. The song is from their 1971 album ‘Master Of Reality’. I believe that both the guitar and bass were down tuned for this album. At this stage of their career that had pretty much blueprinted their signature sound. So, doom, gloom and joy in one song. As Ozzy says in the tune, “Come on now. Try it Out”.
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