8. Balance
I'm mogging again today so excuse the initial formatting.
Originally when I made my list of 53 and ranked them this was much
lower, probably somewhere around 22. It made the leap over a lot of
good songs, and that's saying something. All it took was a couple of
listens to Joshua acoustic demo and I was hooked again.
This song is the conclusion of 12 Brothers. It provides the resolution
with great emotional impact. When Joshua sings "and now I know / now I
know / that we can be broth-er-er-ers," I don't know that there's a
more powerful single line. I get chills just thinking about it and
every time I hear it.
I love the acoustic sound that Joshua has going in the demo. My
preference would probably be to keep it like that. On the flip side
this is a song that just hasn't been played much so I'm not sure how
it would even sound with a full band. Certainly, though, if we go with
a few acoustic songs to provide variety and clarity of tone (and I
strongly suggest we do that) then this would be a prime candidate.
The only thing that bugs me still is the metaphors. "you want a ship /
to weather the storm" and "you want a ballot / to carry reform." I
think they're both good metaphors but the whole album has a metaphor
related to business so that feels more natural. In the past I had
worked up some alternatives but I'm not sure that we ever fully tested
them out.
And I have to say that Joshua deserves credit for this song even more
than usual since he wrote the music without any input from me, not
even a melody. He also tweaked the lyrics to his liking.
4 comments:
Good pick. Still confusing for me to have the 12 Bros. songs mixed in, but whatever.
12 Bros. as a whole is really a very emotional album. The music was highly emotionally driven. Balance is the top when it comes to this, it was all feeling. It's for that reason that the metaphor doesn't bother me so much. I think you'd zap some life out of it if you switched it to "you wanted a tax shelter/to weather the storm".
You have to watch which version of the demo you listen to. There's some really bad screeching in the first one, I think.
12 Brothers. You can't ignore the best stuff that we have. Do we really need to go over this again? If ever there will be a TMINM album it will include 12 Brothers material.
Metaphor. Here's how I rationalize it: the business stuff isn't really a metaphor. In the story it's intended to be the facts, the basis, the surrounding scenery. So if the line is about business it ceases to be a metaphor and becomes documented history. In this context it is appropriate to provide a metaphor, and dare I say it's refreshing since it provides us a break from all the business talk. However, we never really set the scene in this last song. That's what the alternate lines would do. Anyway, I think the best alternate was "you want a loan / to get out of the red / when i could offer you / no more debt." That's decent. I almost would propose that we would use that in the first instance, then "weather the storm" in the second instance, and drop "ballot to carry reform" altogether. That would make good sense to me. Try it and tell me how it works out. Feel free to tweak it if need be.
Demo. I didn't realize there was anything but the single demo. You may need to repost this so that I can make sure I have the right one. The version I have is pretty screeching but in a good way.
I think we do need to go over it again. I am firmly committed to releasing both a TMINM standard album and a 12 Bros. album (whether it be a TMINM EP or a side project). The 12 Bros. material is too good, it doesn't need to be lumped in with the rest. It would only diminish its value. Plus, it would mean we would need to sacrifice some worthy TMINM songs to make room for them. Heck, if given proper attention Schoolyard could stand on its own as well. We never really tried with that one. I think anything after the initial batch of 39 was given enough thought lyrically that it could stand on its own.
Where's OWY (or is it Y,W,O?) in all this?
I'm not sure I can passionately sing "You want a loan"? I'm not sure it's in me.
After 8 comes 7, in case you couldn't figure it out...
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