Word: songfulness
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...Walkabout” is one such song, a collaboration with musician Noah Lennox aka Animal Collective’s Panda Bear. From start to finish, “Walkabout” is four minutes of musical genius. Led by drums, carried by a buoyant rhythm, backed up with a pronounced electronic riff, and topped off with a serenade of jolly vocals, it’s a track to be reckoned with. “What did you want to see? What did you want to be when you grew up?” Lennox asks repeatedly during the song?...
George Martin, the Beatles’ producer, once said of George Harrison that he was “always there yet somewhat elusive.” The same could be said of Scott Kannberg.Kannberg was Pavement’s everpresent enigma, writing a couple of songs per album but without a readily discernible style or persona. His songs tended to be impenetrable as well; even his moniker, Spiral Stairs, was adopted in order to give the band an air of mystery. Spiral Stairs was always secondary to Stephen Malkmus, the chief songwriter and public face, but as the 1990s wore...
...California Zephyr,” a song about traveling on a Western railway, opens the album, and uses simple, sunny guitar and Ben Gibbard’s lighthearted vocals to set the expansive, American West scene. A rambling, pleasantly repetitive tune, “Zephyr” conveys a good sense of movement, as one can almost imagine peacefully sitting on the eponymous train, humming this tune as fields and hills stretch by. The chorus—“I’m transcontinental / 3,000 miles from home / I’m on the California Zephyr / watching America...
Certain other tracks likewise skillfully utilize vocal talents: the deeper, twangier timbre of Jay Farrar enhances songs like “Low Life Kingdom.” The song, which details the depths of Kerouac’s alcohol- and madness-induced depression, puts Farrar’s gritty, alt-country manner to good use. When he wails “I’m gonna die in full despair / and wake up where the atmosphere / is dearer and maybe closer to heaven,” one senses the raw desperation of a man on the edge of sanity...
...high vocals and a lovely, purposeful piano. Disappointingly, though, these rich, heavy piano chords fail to lead into anything more than mere pseudo-romantic whining. With lyrics like “We’re gonna get married / we’re gonna fly away,” the song evidently aspires to be a sweeping ballad of young love, but winds up just sounding more like an anthem of teen angst...