This week, we have quite the assortment of singles to talk about, as the onslaught of music is giving us not just a lot of options, but a wide variety as well.
Creeper - Midnight
We're only a year removed from "Sex, Death, & The Infinite Void", and now Creeper is going to give us an EP of songs that didn't fit the theme and story of that record. The first taste of that is this song, which continues that record's penchant for borrowing from the past. We heard bits of "Bat Out Of Hell" before, among other, and this song opens with a piano figure that is a dead ringer (pun intended) for "Because The Night". Springsteen fits the previous album's timeline, so I don't know why this wouldn't have made the cut, since it's also really good. I know I criticize some for pulling too much from the past while I'm giving Creeper a pass, and really it just comes down to them doing it better.
Laurenne/Louhimo – Bitch Fire/The Reckoning
The pairing of two great voices on a heavier project, the two singles present incredibly different takes on what the album might be. "Bitch Fire" is a horrible mess of shrieking vocals without a melody, while "The Reckoning" is a solid melodic heavy song, albeit with a slightly muffled production. Neither song truly highlights the amazing vocals they are capable of, and that's the saddest part. This record should be a treat, even if the songs aren't the greatest, but it seems we aren't going to get them sounding their best.
Volbeat – Wait a Minute My Girl
Putting out a two-song single for the summer, Volbeat is underwhelming us again. They have a long history of being hit-and-miss, and once again this single is a miss. It's a short burst of Volbeat's metal meets 50s rock mixture, but it has neither the crushing riff nor the groovy melody their best songs have always contained. It's just sort of there, and if you're only releasing one song (or two), that's not enough. A single needs to make a deep impact in just three minutes, and I didn't feel that here.
The Neal Morse Band - Do It All Again
Coming off the Transatlantic album I still can't figure out, we're now getting the third straight double album from Neal Morse's other prog band. The first single out is entirely standard Neal Morse, but that's what we want. It has the warmth and the melody, while still playing around musically. The verse melody is very similar to something off the "?" album, but the main hook is the reason Neal is my favorite prog musician. The only flaw is the same one I've had about every Neal Morse Band album, but I'll talk about that, I'm sure, when the album comes out.
Jules & The Howl ft Deffo – Bring Me Your Tears
Jules has been busy, with these songs coming quickly one after the other, which certainly keeps the momentum going. This time, she teams up with Deffo for a song that is a slow, dramatic ballad. I still get a hint of a jazzy tone in Jules' melody, but the song is a raw and searing bit of schadenfreude. There's that hit song "I Hope She Cheats", which is a poorly written revenge fantasy that doesn't feel satisfying at all. The message here is more subtle, but it's the vocal performance that tells you everything you need to know. There are bristles of spite you can hear, and they rise with the swelling production to hit you again and again, like a wave slowly eroding the walls we put up around ourselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment