Word: songfulness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Daughter,” explodes to a mad, kaleidoscopic organ climax as the stranded sailors rape an islander (“I’ll take no gold, miss / I’ll take no silver / I’ll take your sweet lips”). Then the song flows into “You’ll Not Feel the Drowning,” a soft, dark acoustic denouement...
...Island” is mirrored by the penultimate song, “The Crane Wife 1 & 2,” the first two parts of the suite concluded by the opening song. With a restrained sound, “The Crane Wife” gradually builds from acoustic strumming to full band crescendo. The story itself is, like most on the album, a tragic saga about kindness, greed, and misfortune...
...whiff of saltpeter hangs over “When the War Came,” The Decemberists’ most overtly political song. They bring out their heavy guitars and sound almost like a mainstream rock band—except for lyrics like “We made our huts of avaram / We’d not betray the sole Ledum...
...probes the depths of “Dividing Day,” a Guettel masterpiece from his recent Broadway musical, “The Light in the Piazza,” adding anger to the melancholy of Tony-winner Victoria Clark’s original interpretation. The song features jazz pianist Fred Hersch, who balances harmonic tension and melodic release, an appropriately unsettling touch to a song that chronicles a loveless marriage: “I can see the winter in your eyes, telling me, / ‘Go now, we did it, you curtsied, I bowed. / We are together...
...Every song on “Build a Bridge” resonates with the vocal intensity poured into “Dividing Day.” Unfortunately, some of the pop songwriters represented on the album don’t provide McDonald with material as emotionally rich as Guettel does, making her inspired recreations of John Mayer’s facile “My Stupid Mouth” and Neil Young’s boring “My Heart” seem vapid in comparison...