Bad singing of good melodies, good singing wasted on bad.
Owl City "Fireflies": The minute-and-a-half of awful toy plinkiness at the start turns my stomach, the fake little-boy breathiness gets irritating real fast, the lyrics are dying trees that thud as they fall, but nonetheless the guy constructed a really good tune. RELUCTANT, BORDERLINE TICK.
Glee Cast "Don't Stop Believin'": Haven't seen the show. Can imagine that in context this club-footed, earnest, mediocre track could be moving, a personal triumph for the characters, and I like but don't love the original (sorta Springsteen run through the washer's slow-agony cycle, not that the Boss himself was such a swift delight). This isn't awful but it's not within miles of a tick. NO TICK.
Plan B "Stay Too Long": Even by garage-rock standards this guy can't sing, and his strained upper register is simply a nuisance. Fortunately for a lot of this he drops the singing in favor of rhythmic talk, and the Kinks+SoulOrgan sound is good bread-and-butter 1966. Makes me smile. TICK.
OneRepublic "All The Right Moves": Yikes, Ryan Tedder gets to be the week's first competent singer. As expected, the drumming's more flexible than you normally get from rock-oriented pop. But the sub-whistlable melody compensates by being unexpectedly dull. NO TICK.
JLS "One Shot": Fine light generic singing within a dramatic arrangement, real good for delivering a good tune, but this one's just ho-hum, and not particularly hummable. NO TICK.
Biffy Clyro "Many Of Horror": Thought the title "Many Of Horror" was one of Kat's puns. Wouldn't call the track a wet blanket, exactly. A dry blanket, more like. NO TICK.
Vampire Weekend "Cousins": People talk about these guys a lot, but nothing anyone said pro or con inspired me to listen. So here we are, bit for the very first time (or second, anyway; did hear an earlier track). If the year were 1977 and someone had said "White terror atop black funk" I might have got interested. Of course, that's Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer." For this one, "off-hand glide atop artificially hectic Afro-funk" might or might not do it. Would help if the words "slyly authoritative" could someday sneak in front of the phrase "off-hand glide," with the phrase "like Ray Davies'" appended to "glide." As it is, this is half-sweet but weak, and weakness is no virtue in itself. GOING THROUGH THE MOTIONS OF BEING TENTATIVELY INTERESTED IN THESE GUYS BORDERLINE TICK.
no subject
Owl City "Fireflies": The minute-and-a-half of awful toy plinkiness at the start turns my stomach, the fake little-boy breathiness gets irritating real fast, the lyrics are dying trees that thud as they fall, but nonetheless the guy constructed a really good tune. RELUCTANT, BORDERLINE TICK.
Glee Cast "Don't Stop Believin'": Haven't seen the show. Can imagine that in context this club-footed, earnest, mediocre track could be moving, a personal triumph for the characters, and I like but don't love the original (sorta Springsteen run through the washer's slow-agony cycle, not that the Boss himself was such a swift delight). This isn't awful but it's not within miles of a tick. NO TICK.
Plan B "Stay Too Long": Even by garage-rock standards this guy can't sing, and his strained upper register is simply a nuisance. Fortunately for a lot of this he drops the singing in favor of rhythmic talk, and the Kinks+SoulOrgan sound is good bread-and-butter 1966. Makes me smile. TICK.
OneRepublic "All The Right Moves": Yikes, Ryan Tedder gets to be the week's first competent singer. As expected, the drumming's more flexible than you normally get from rock-oriented pop. But the sub-whistlable melody compensates by being unexpectedly dull. NO TICK.
JLS "One Shot": Fine light generic singing within a dramatic arrangement, real good for delivering a good tune, but this one's just ho-hum, and not particularly hummable. NO TICK.
Biffy Clyro "Many Of Horror": Thought the title "Many Of Horror" was one of Kat's puns. Wouldn't call the track a wet blanket, exactly. A dry blanket, more like. NO TICK.
Vampire Weekend "Cousins": People talk about these guys a lot, but nothing anyone said pro or con inspired me to listen. So here we are, bit for the very first time (or second, anyway; did hear an earlier track). If the year were 1977 and someone had said "White terror atop black funk" I might have got interested. Of course, that's Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer." For this one, "off-hand glide atop artificially hectic Afro-funk" might or might not do it. Would help if the words "slyly authoritative" could someday sneak in front of the phrase "off-hand glide," with the phrase "like Ray Davies'" appended to "glide." As it is, this is half-sweet but weak, and weakness is no virtue in itself. GOING THROUGH THE MOTIONS OF BEING TENTATIVELY INTERESTED IN THESE GUYS BORDERLINE TICK.