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- 😄 jo hill / off the 45
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i’ve decided to combine my love of talking about music and it being the end of the year in the discord server, what’s your favourites for this year? hop in and let’s talk about it!
we have an absolute masterclass this week in grabbing the lil hairs on the back of my neck and giving em a lil shimmy. i have an absolute love for artists who are able to really get themselves across in their vocal performance. i think it’s a really tricky thing to land and land well. it’s a balancing act for sure, a little too much in the direction of fry and atonality and you lose it utterly, but too far in the direction of total tonality and making everything perfect and in my opinion you lose an element of the humanity of singing which i think is one of the most human thing a person can do. i mean that genuinely too like singing has been around for pretty much as long as there have been humans and being able to translate emotions into music is so powerful, adn this weeks song does it with style. meet jo hill and their song off the 45.
so as i said earlier, the vocals in this are absolutely killer, just top tier and i love them. the slight vocal fry, the way the performance escalates and deescalates, the sheer amount of personality, it’s all just so good. the lyrics need a lil examining then and what do we find? an absolute banger. this has the feelings and trappings of a post breakup song, but don’t let that fool you, this has a bit more going on here when you give it a careful read.
let’s dive into the musicality of this for a second next, because there’s some decent stuff on the go. from the heavy crunchy guitar tones to the massive drums, it’s a very straight forward affair delivered with competency and both barrels. i bet this would sound absolutely killer live and i’d love to find out if i’m right.
i’ve been thinking about it for a little while and i can’t really think of anything. i guess it’s that the instrumentation is largely perfunctory, but that’s not really a dig like sometimes that’s grand and that’s that. maybe what i don’t like most of all is there’s nothing hooky or grabby for you to latch on to musically speaking. i’m saying that with the chorus hook firmly in my brain btw so it’s a very milquetoast complaint isn’t it.
when i was stuck inside in lockdown like everyone else i found this music video filmed not far from my hometown and i swear down it was so sad and depressing but cathartic and freeing knowing the place i grew up still exists and is as beautiful as ever and i’m not gonna live i chased that feeling for ages. i felt it hard listening to this and that rules.
there is a fair bit of indie out there that this could fit in, although it is a fair bit more poppy. that said, in my opinion it fits a bit closer to a band i haven’t listened to for years but i used to adore specifically because of the vocal ability of the singer. that band is letlive., they’re broken up now after their last album kinda bombed, but they were so, so, so good, if way heavier and totally different. anyway, it’s not about that focus on the vocals you’re welcome.
yes of course you should are you kidding me, this artist rules and they are i can confidently say, going to pop tf off. i will be waiting on the sidelines happy to watch it all happen, and i reckon you will too.
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more i’ve been listening to
this is simultaneously incredibly funny and incredibly hard. yellowcard comeback era very much in the here and now, god bless.
two remixes in one issue? why not! you can’t stop me, or you can if you want to but they’ll still be here now ain’t that the kicker. anyway, cool remix, real vaporwavey.
courting are really cooking god damn, what a good band and what a banger of a song.
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