7 August 2007
Hello my baby, hello my darlin’ hello my rag time gal…
Posted by Toner under: music .
I’ve been noticing a trend in music lately. Not exactly disturbing, yet, but definitely full of potential to become so. The trend I’m talking about is the big, over-produced, over orchestrated number that seems to be appearing on nearly every album these days.
Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was very cool when The Beatles started bringing in strings and what not, but now it seems everyone has to have at least one song worthy of Sgt. Peppers on their album. And I’m probably being totally hypocritical because Spilt Milk by Jellyfish is probably one of my all time favorite albums and it is just chock-full bells and whistles (literally as well as figuratively– there’s really quite a lot of bells and whistles), but I think with Jellyfish it’s not so, um, “schlocky.”
Lets take The Killers new album for example… I mean, there’s some stuff on there that is almost “Meatloafian” in it’s excess, the same with bands like Silverchair, (which practically has some numbers that wouldn’t be out of place in a Vaudeville review), Panic! at the Disco and My Chemical Romance, whose “Black Parade” might as well just have Wagner’s Ride of the Valkeyries playing along with it. What would be another track when you already have 800 or so?
It’s great to see a lot of these bands mature, and become better songwriters and what not, (scoring a big production number is no easy task, let me tell ya.. and pulling it off live is even harder) but, I guess there’s also something to be said for stripped down simple arrangements, which really is, in my humble opinion, the core of rock music– ya know the typical garage band line-up, guitar, bass and drums with maybe a little Hammond b3 thrown in for seasoning– and it’d be ashame if that went away.
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