Our articles about the LA-based pop band “Lights Over Paris” have attracted a lot of attention. Read the articles below to see why.
Number 1 – The Meteor Shower
In a recent post on my blog Echo Bloom I talked about the speed of work, debating whether, in the end, it was better to be prolific and have that work be of varying quality, or to be a perfectionist, with less output, but higher quality. There are advantages to each technique – but in this space I’m going to attempt the former.
I wrote this piece in two days and recorded it in a few hours. My goal for the piece was to capture a mundane event specifically – let me know what you think.
Number 1 – The Meteor Shower
Packed some sandwiches and grabbed the car keys
Made it early to your house
Getting in the car I saw you’d worn your favorite T-Shirt
Iggy Pop in ’81
The city’s lights were fading twenty miles out
Pulled off near an orange grove
then we got inside our sleeping bags and smoked a little
cursed the clouds and prayed for stars
Tracing constellations with our fingers
Naming new ones for our friends
And we waited on the meteors for several hours
moving closer through the night
The Florida sky that night was made of glory
Angel hair and Christmas trees
but we missed it all, asleep beneath an old magnolia
and woke up covered in its leaves
Comments
I bet I was watching that same meteor shower actually.
I like the way the vocals sound.
And in fact, it matches the weather outside right now
which is rainy and calming.
Great post EB! I thought your article hit a nerve with some of the stuff I’m struggling with too – with music that is. I think you need to just let go and jettison some songs. I don’t think quality has suffered in this particular case either.
Is there any back story to this song that you can share? Any particular reason on the choice of going acoustic?
No real authentic back story – I think in a lot of ways I just miss the South. But not really the South that actually exists – the South of my childhood, which was uncomplicated and beautiful. It’s pretty idealized in my memories, so I think I subconsciously set a lot of my songs there to keep it fresh (even though I haven’t lived there for many years).
Acoustic is just the best way to go for demos – there’s a ton you can do with electronics, but I find that acoustic guitar and voice is the best litmus test for seeing if you’ve got something worth anything. If you can hold someone’s attention without much production, you’ve probably got a good kernel to work with.
I was *really* stoked with the vocal sound – this was my first experiment with double-tracking vocals. It’s stupid easy and you get a really cool sound from it. I’m looking forward to messing around with it a little bit more and using it more for an effect.
ELO here I come!
Great song, Bloom. The vocals sound awesome. Did you just double the vocal track or actually record them multiple times? There’s a song from the ol’ Drastic Measures days where we were accidentally sang out of sync on a verse… turned out pretty cool though
I’ve gotta second Dr. Conspicuous’ question. M Ward gets a similar vocal effect on some of his tracks.. this kind of sound is all the rage right now in indie circles.
But how? Good god.