Tim: Now if I remember rightly you recently didn’t like it when the track title got repeated a lot. Well, good luck with this, the fourth and final release from last year’s album Rush.
Tom: Ooh, it starts well, doesn’t it? Almost New Wave-y synths on there, which is a good thing with modern pop production.
Tim: I like this, sort of. Really, actually, and right from the first few notes, because everything that’s there is great. It’s just what’s not there that’s the problem – there’s a continuing sense of build, right up to the first half of each chorus, and then it suddenly drops down, to pretty much nothing. Now that’s not really a problem – we hear anti-climaxes all the time, and I can generally cope.
Tom: That said, the first half of each chorus is lovely – almost a climax in themselves.
Tim: True, I suppose, but here that’s just not good enough. You see, here we have those three underlying notes, repeating. To me, they sound like the ticking of a bomb hidden somewhere in a car. You can’t see the timer, so you don’t know when it’ll happen, but you know it’ll explode. Even when (perhaps especially when) there’s just the very calm ‘just want to be with you’ over them, those notes could go off at any time. And you know they will go off. The song will go from ‘good’ to ‘immense’, because of that inevitable explosion. There’s just no way it can’t. Except, it doesn’t. And I think that’s a bit rubbish.
Tom: I think we need a new category on this blog: “Musical Blueballs”.
Tim: Hmm. Can’t quite see that getting picked up by mainstream music journalists, but it’ll do for us.