Tag: Runaway Zoo

Saturday Flashback: Runaway Zoo – Youngwildblood

“There’s nothing I want from this song that isn’t already there.”

Tim: Concluding our review of this lot’s Mess Without You on Tuesday, I remarked I wanted to hear more. Well, here’s more – their previous track, from back in May.

Tim: And, to quote that wonderful Saturdays song, I just can’t get enough.

Tom: That’s wasn’t… you know what, their version was better, I can live with it.

Tim: It so was.

Tom: I can also live with this song: that’s one of the best introductions and first verses I’ve heard in a long while.

Tim: Isn’t it? Admittedly, lyrically it could be describe as a bit wanting, but on the other hand that single call and refrain repeated so many times is so effective with the build underneath it up to the thumping, beating chorus. We get so many songs of the “we’re young, we can do anything we want” variety, yet I can’t remember it ever being drilled in so definitively or maturely – a weird description perhaps, especially as I’m not quite sure how I mean it, but it’s one that springs to mind.

Tom: It is a really, really effective build. We’re seeing more and more songs that effectively have two choruses, and this is one of them.

Tim: And returning to that thumping, beating chorus: I like it a lot. It teeters on the edge of the boom-wherp thing–

Tom: “Overcompression” is the term, but yes. It’s close, but not quite enough to hurt. I can live with it.

Tim: Me too, because here the song knows exactly how not to do it badly, and how to make it sound good instead. On Tuesday, I had just one complaint, which wasn’t even really a complaint. Today: I got nothing. There is nothing I want from this song that isn’t already there.

Oh, and also, nothing to do with the music, but at the bottom of the video description: “Youngwildblood by Runaway Zoo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” How often does that happen?

Tom: For anything that isn’t stock music? Very, very rarely.

Runaway Zoo – Mess Without You

“I want more of it. Much more.”

Tim: These guys are a band from Finland, and, well, I’m not sure if “synthrock” is a genre, but if this is anything to go by I’d like it to be please.

Tim: Couple of brief individual notes – I always find it a bit disconcerting when bands split “fine” over two beats as “fuh-ine”, because there’s the initial possibility that the song could go off in a completely different direction.

Tom: I didn’t understand what that sentence meant until I heard that line. Yep, that’s not how my brain completed that line.

Tim: Also the “baby, your” kicking off the chorus brings What Makes You Beautiful to mind immediately, never a bad thing.

Tom: These are both very specific notes, though.

Tim: Yes, so more generally: I love this track, almost every single part of it. The single part I don’t like is that the opening instrumental part of the middle eight, which is absolutely wonderful, doesn’t also appear as a post-chorus earlier in the song as well. Having nothing there makes the song go too quickly, and when I hear that fantastic instrumental part I just want more.

Tom: It’s odd to hear all your comments being specific rather than wide-ranging. For my part: good instrumentation, lovely arpeggios, and — as you said — surprisingly good and joyously old-school middle-eight synths. The rest of it…

Tim: I don’t often say this about a song, but it’s too short. I want more of it. Much more. MORE OF THAT MIDDLE EIGHT.

Tom: …yep. As is so often, the best part is the bit that isn’t like the rest of the song.