Music of December 2018
Another Month, Another writeup. It seems these months are all getting a lot shorter! However, that hasn’t stopped me from listening to more new music and having a good time with it all! I have a slightly less varied selection this month, as i was moving flats, which meant i needed some more comforting tunes than normal to keep me going through
Owner of a Lonely Heart - Yes
Another Yes song to add to the collection. This is, in my opinion, one of Yes’s most pop like songs. It has a nice rock based guitar backing, and some stellar layering to it, with drums that just fit into the mix perfectly. Also the sting Orchestra Hits throughout the song help to keep it interesting enough to listen to, multiple times in a row. The guitar solo in it, Played by Trevor Rabin, is orgasmic, really! He uses a harmonizer to get a nice fifth harmony on every note. Couple this with the panning from left to right, and you have a solo that takes up so much aural real estate, but does so much with it. I really do rate this song very highly. Every part of the song is amazing, and the live version at the rock and roll hall of fame induction is also a great version if you are in the mood for something different!
Little Miss - BoA
Little Miss, is a somewhat boring song i think, if you look at it from a purely first glance point of view. However, i feel there is actually quite a lot of praise that i can give to this song. As most people, my introduction to boa, was the serial experiments lain theme tune, Duvet. I found this song (Little Miss) by listening to their EP, “Tall Snake”. The song itself is a quite depressing little tune with an acoustic guitar fronting the sound. However, the lyrics are nothing short of genius, and the layering in the heavier sections, really give this song some forward momentum, whilst transitioning between feelings of Depression and Anger, and then, to top it all off, like the icing on the cake, the song spontaneously ends on a nice wee Ska-like section that is seriously funky, and for the 10 seconds of it that you hear, leaves you in a total state of disarray about what you had just experienced! Truly a marvelous song
Esskeetit - Lil Pump
This is one of my controversial ones. A lot of people really dislike Lil Pump, and i get it. He isn’t at all conventional by rap or hip hop standards, but i think that is one of the reasons i like him. He genuinely comes across as a really cool dude. Esskeetit is one of those songs that is just super cool to listen to. Everything from the backing vocals yelling “Esskeetit” while lil pump sings the chorus, to the infamous line, “Tiddies on Skype”, this song just goes hard from the opening bass, to the closing lines. I am still trying to work out some of the lyrics, although i can still say that i think the song is one of my favorite in the Hip Hop / Rap area of music
Dancing in the Moonlight - Toploader
This one was the top of my Spotify corporate data mine for my most listened to song of the year, and i think for god reason. Having a song written about a world that is the complete opposite of ours, where people get along and don’t get into fights is quite sad when you realise the perspective of the songwriter. I think Toploaders version of this song has some extra flavour that no-one else’s has. They also capture the optimistic side of the situation i feel, that the world CAN be a place where everyone lives happily in harmony with each other. Even if the original writer of the song thinks that could never happen. Everything about this song has a little bit of funk to it, as well as some groove and bounce, to make it a really danceable pop rock song. The lyrics to this song really do speak to me in a way that most other songs can’t seem to do. I really do hope that someday, we will all live in a world where we all get along and see things and others as level. The bridge section of this song i think is the most memorable and one of the most emotionally jarring sections in the song, where you have some nice keyboards, going into a repeat of the first verse, with the vocals singing in a different mode than normal. That really gets to me, and i hope it gets to you too! :)
Always with me, Always with you - Joe Satriani
Now, this is another song that can tear my heart out and shove it back in, and make it feel whole again. This is an instrumental song by Joe Satriani, the master himself where he changes from B Major to B Minor, and back again. This give a somewhat strange disconnect between the passages of the song, however, it is executed well enough that it doesn’t sound like there are any bad notes, and it makes the minor sections really sound sad, and makes the 2nd major section sound triumphant by comparison. The Chorus of the song is a nice set of motifs based on the phrygian mode of B Major. These lead around B Major before finally resolving nicely on the tonic. The song also has a very suave tapping section in it, which surprisingly fits the song well, and opens the soundscape up before the massively triumphant sounding final major solo before the last chorus. It is truly a journey through the key of B that you will never forget, and that you will probably really enjoy
Well that’s all you will get out of me until i do my recap on the music which i listened to in January of 2019
Keep your realities separate...
lunarised_