Will Adams: I consider myself the hard opposite of a film buff - maybe three trips to the theater a year at most - so maybe that’s why “Movies” doesn’t resonate with me as much as I know it could. It grabs the attention, it shows off with confidence, it’s got a gorgeous outer shell - but its emotional hooks are awkward and imprecise. My conflicting feelings here aren’t helped by the presentation: lush, engaging harmonies that float in a sea of uninspired reverb. It’s poignant in that dreaming-of-the-impossible way, and so the tonal shift into a rousing, triumphant second half doesn’t click with me after the absolutely killer line where we imagine “making love to a counterfeit,” a totally straightforward expression of desire is too uncomplicated to cap things off in a satisfying way. Tim de Reuse: “The meaning of life doesn’t seem to shine like that screen,” and yet there’s never a desire expressed to break away from a cinematic life a subject so holy that the word “movies” itself belongs over a Plagal cadence, like it’s the end of a prayer. It doesn’t need to be as life-affirming as No Shape pretty things can just be pretty.
Still, sub- No Shape is still above most other records, and “The meaning of life doesn’t seem to shine like that screen” is a killer line. “Movies” just meanders, breaks into Owen Pallett territory, then meanders a bit more forcefully. It’s hard to shake the feeling that if I wanted to listen to No Shape, I would listen to No Shape – there’s the same dense soundscape, but none of the tight songwriting that defined Mike Hadreas’s masterpiece. Obviously, she’s not talking about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, she’s talking about the classic definition (despite the weird line about a “box office hit”), though the song feels about as long as Infinity War.
WORLD FOR TWO MEANING SONG KING CALAWAY MOVIE
Hannah Jocelyn: This song is a lot funnier if you imagine Weyes Blood is just extremely hyped for a movie like Avengers: Endgame. Evoking Bryan Ferry in his deluxe and delightful condo of glass in “In Every Dream Home a Heartache,” Mering catches the light from the klieg lights, astonished to be caught playing a part as all good actresses are. Then the “real” strings frame Natalie Mering.
I love the way it opens like something from a mid-1980s episode of Hearts of Space, I love the Kronos Quartet-esque string breakdown, I love Natalie Mering’s vocals, which sound to me like a sweeter Aimee Mann, and I love the way it eventually ascends into heaven like Cristal Connors at the end of “Goddess.” A highlight from Weyes Blood’s fourth album, Titanic Rising, this is damned near perfection.Īlfred Soto: I can’t deny the essential camp of “Movies” - an act that flirts with the tonal commitment of Weyes Blood courts ridicule when this unwavering vocal combines with the synthed-up arpeggio. Some you never will and some, maybe, you’ll hear just one song, maybe through a group writing effort that you love and keep up with partly precisely because you think getting exposed to things you might not have wandered into yourself is valuable, and that sudden moment of discovery is one of the best feelings in the world to you, and you have to excuse yourself from the room (literally or figuratively) because you now have to run home and listen to everything else that artist has made because you need to see whether any of it hits you as intensely as this song does. And of course every year even if you listen to hundreds of new song and albums there are people you won’t get to, and some of them you never will and that’s fine, even if in some other time and place they might have changed your life just as profoundly and joyfully as some of the stuff you did happen to have time for has changed your life. Ian Mathers: Sometimes you’ve been hearing about an artist for a while, maybe even years never a friend recommending them to you directly, maybe, but enough free-floating praise that there’s a nagging feeling you should probably check them out (if one of those moments hits you at just the wrong turn and/or you’re naturally stubborn, this feeling might even be part of why you haven’t gotten around to it yet). Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment.I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES.Email (song suggestions/writer enquiries).