Renting Music 2 - Pixies & Chvrches
Part 1 - Introduction and First Batch
Part 2 - Chvrches and The Pixies
Part 3 - Parliment and Metallica
Part 5 - Mustache! and 3 Minute Hero
I don’t know how to write about music so the format of these reviews will vary depending on the mood I’m in and if I go through and try to make it something other than a list format.
Bossanova by The Pixies
- Is she Weird - the chorus feels like an older pop rock song but wrapped in this like… surfer rock/nnnnnew wave? style beat. I am not a versed musical person but this kind of feels Of A Kind with something like Social Distortion?
- Ana - HOLY SHIT THE OPENING OF THIS SONG IS A FLASHBACK! The college radio station I had a show at used this track to back some of the local business ads or like, minidisk bumpers and stuff. Jesus christ. If not this, it sounds eerily similar.
- All Over the World - This album has a lot of like… It sounds like a palm-muted guitar but played ferociously loud, amplified or distorted so it has this really specific flat sound, but it’s a wall of sound punching you.
- Dig for fire - I think one of my cohosts played this track one show. I just remember this name though, don’t remember the track at all.
I feel like I’m listening to a parallel universe Grunge. Like, they saw Grunge developing and went “well we like some of what they’re doing but I don’t like the vibes”
Every Open Eye by Chvrches
- Never Ending Circle - Sure does open with a big blast of sound, starting off setting a tone.
- Leave a Trace - This has some supreme vibes. Does the thing where it swells through a few lines of the verse, before resetting, to the quite levels to do it all over again, before gradually rising to the bridge and chorus. Pop is good, actually.
- Keep You on My Side rules. The chorus fuckin’ kicks ass.
- High Enough to Carry You Over - Whos this blowjob on vocals? booooo, get him off the stage.
- Empty Threat - Yeah woohoo we are so back. I think this band does a lot of little, simple things I like but puts them together competently and in large enough quanities I go “hell yeah” a lot.
- Playing Dead - I wish I had more to say that “This rules”.
- Afterglow - I know the purpose of a song like this is to end the album on a specific note, or provide a break from the intensity of other tracks, but these are tracks I tend to gel with the least, at least most of the time. This didn’t quite hit the “Is this fun to sing” threshold, but it was still a pretty track.
When I first heard about Chvrches, I though it was some sort of metal band. It wasn’t until I popped on their site after seeing them on the library catalogue website that I found out they were electronic pop music.
Fuck it! Bonus rating because it’s an album I bought this year!
Cassette Beasts OST by Joel Baylis
The music rocks and the tracks with vocals are incredible. Wherever We Are Now is this really sweet song about being lost or trapped is more bearable with someone important by your side. The backing organ gives it this real ethereal and melencholic feel, and the vocals by Shelby Harvey are just this mix of reassuring and still like… worried?
Then we jump into something like Cross Your Heart, which is the lyriced song you’ll probably hear the least. For the various battle themes, lyrics only play if you use a powerful technique in the battle, which, you probably won’t need for the regular encounters, which is where Cross Your Heart plays. Even the instrumental version of this track is a really good battle theme. It’s got a great driving guitar and the supporting melodies are just really infectious. The lyriced version was disappointing to me on my first listen, but it grew on me as I put it on a couple more times.
Same Old Story is your major boss theme. It feels like a really determined track, with a really strong vocal performance, lots of power and defiance in it. The lyriced version makes this track in my opinion. The instrumental is fine on its own, but the vocals just elevate it.
Then there’s LIke Chimeras for when you face against what could be compared to “elite” wild encounters. The instrumentation on it is really good, as it builds instrument by instrument until it drops almost all of them when the vocals kick in. This is probably my favorite track on the album, just an excellent harmony between the vocals and instrumentation.
Shot in the Dark is for when you’re fighting other people, and it rules. The verse lyrics here are fine, and actually get better and better as a verse progresses, but the real gem is the chorus. The guitar riff that leads to the back half of each verse is also cool as hell. In the chorus, the vocal tone shift in the middle of each chorus also fucking ROCKS me everytime. It goes from this really punchy feeling to just dropping the bottom out from you and shifting gears drastically. One of my favorite vocal parts of the album for sure.
Then there’s the equivalent of a “gym leader” theme in Face Down. This one is just straight up a fight song. It starts with a punchy guitar riff, and the vocalist just feels like they’re leading a followup attack. Good shit.
The last few vocaled songs Arrow of Time, Your Inception, and Up for the Ride, I can’t comment on too much because I like hearing these songs in context for a game soundtrack, so I’ve avoided listening to these ones too much. The parts I’ve heard are good though. The keyboards in Your Inception remind me of something but I can’t put my finger on it.
SO! We have an updated list after this strong selections. Relistening to Bleed Out made me move it further up as well.
Ranking
Parenthesis indicate position change since last post
- ELO Greatest Hits - ELO (0)
- Cassette Beasts OST - Joel Baylis
- Bleed Out - The Mountain Goats (+2)
- Every Open Eye - Chvrches
- Blood Sugar Sex Magik - Red Hot Chili Peppers (-3)
- Signals - Rush (-2)
- Superunknown - Soundgarden (-2)
- Fragile - Yes (-2)
- Bossanova - The Pixies
- Best of Big Bands - Various Artists (-3)
- Combat Rock - The Clash (-3)
- Aurora Borealis - Cloud Cult (-3)
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