Hey everybody welcome back to Phantom Power Music.
Review Greetings to my fellow Melo Files.
My lovers of liner notes, you pedalboard pundits, lyrical assassins, you drumbeat derelicts,
you shoe gazing slackers, love all you guys, if you geek out over songwriting like I
do, and production, then this show is for you, this value cast, which enables the listener
to send little tiny bits of bitcoin, otherwise known as Satoshi's, via your podcast app
like Curio Caster or Podverse or Fountain or True Fans, you know that's why we're here,
and all of these artists, you can find all their music in the bitcoin space.
So this show is dedicated to songwriting and production and music and all the things
that musicians love to geek out about.
Now let's be honest, there's really only like two of you that listen to this show.
But it's a lot of fun and it's probably my favorite, my name is Jim Costello I'm your
host, and in this show I really love to just dive into the theory and the composition and
the production behind the songs and the value verse that I like, and I hope you guys
like it too.
So shall we get started?
We are going to listen to a song and then I'm going to break it down and talk to you about
the parts that I like, and today we are starting off with a band out of the UK called
Two Weeks in Nashville, and this uptempo key of BPM110 Bangor called Money Maker.
Are you ready?
Here we go.
[Music]
Wow, how about that, huh? That's a nice track. So let's do a little background on these guys first.
So they are a trio and they are based out of the London area.
It looks like, if you look at their socials, it looks like a drummer and two guitar players,
but obviously they got a bass player in some of their picks as well.
Primarily they are a trio, just based upon their social media,
and it looks like they've got a big album release show coming up April 19th,
Friday April 19th, for an album launch party in London.
They've got a couple of tracks that were in Spotify that have hit 100,000 streams,
so good for them, goodness gracious, they got one that's like over 600,000.
So they're obviously doing a lot of things right, and it's great to see them over here in the value verse.
And I'm willing to bet they'll make more money in Bitcoin than they will off of, you know,
161,000 streams on Spotify for a wall from Wall Street, one of their songs.
Anywho, let me dive into a couple of things that I absolutely love about this track.
First off, I hope you are listening as I have said a million times
with a really good pair of headphones on your iPods, your earbuds, whatever the hell you want to call them.
Sorry, they're really not designed for listening to music.
I really don't care what you have to say about that.
I would strongly encourage you to get a really good pair of cans,
and even better, get yourself some nice monitors as well.
I always listen to it both ways.
The mix on this right off the bat, fantastic, great energy, great mix.
Did you notice how the symbols were panning in your ears?
And I love the mic choice, whatever they used, the mic choice for the high hat, nice, crispy clean.
You can hear all the, all the put downs that the drummer is doing.
Lovely, great job.
A chord progression, obviously in the intro, which they use again in the chorus is pretty much a, as we say in Nashville, 174.
But notice how the bass player goes up on one of those, one of those progressions,
typically the third to give it a nice change.
That is a very nice attention to detail.
Then the song kind of follows a path.
You've got the verse, verse one and verse two are broken up both times by a big ass rock and roll riff.
That kind of reminds me of Blackwater Smoke or the Almond Brothers.
Nice, bluesy riff, very clean, very articulate all the way through, love the drum accents on that.
What really stands out to me about the verse is how they change the feel by going double time
and also stripping down the vibe at the same time.
So, you know, they change the rhythm, but strip down the music so that you can focus on the vocals.
That is a lovely arrangement.
And they do that in both verses, both sections of both verses.
I really enjoy the pre-chorus too.
There's some lovely guitar voicings in the pre-chorus, not just the voicings, but also the tone.
There's a really nice chorus tone, airy, spatial ethereal, which is always the hip word, right?
Getting tired of hearing the word ethereal with respect to music.
But there is a very nice chorus tone on that pre-chorus section that sets it up nicely.
The chorus goes back and pulls from that same progression in the intro, but they have a nice addition of horns buried in the mix.
And then the piano starts to make its way into the chorus as well.
To me, I finally started to hear the piano in the second chorus.
I love to the breakdown that happens right around 2.29, 2 minutes and 29 seconds into the track.
It's a very theatrical bridge.
Let's just call it that.
And I love the guitar tones, but I'm willing to bet.
And I'm not saying this just because I saw it on the Instagram, but I would bet you 100,000 sats that that dude is playing in Gibson.
And it really sounds fantastic.
And I love the tone of the guitar solo.
Then that whole big, big rock chorus that comes back that gets everybody involved.
This is a really great rock production that really reminds me of kind of like 90s rock to be honest with you.
It's kind of like, I mentioned Blackwater Smoking Almond Brothers because there's some Southern blues and Southern horns.
And they're kind of like a Memphis Soul Rock type of thing.
But I love the fact that this was not a 3-minute track, that they went long on it.
And if I had to break down the lyrics, I would say that this is kind of a middle finger to the establishment of the recording industry.
Like if you listen to what he's saying, you should go back and listen to it.
But it's kind of like Sarah Bareilles and her hit song when she said, "I'm not gonna write you a love song."
Right? Sarah's big breakout hit was, "I'm not gonna write you a love song."
And she was told by her record label when she was recording the debut album, "Hey, we don't have a single, we don't have like a lot."
"Why don't you write a love song?" And she's like, "Fuck you guys."
Right? So that's the song that she wrote and it just incidentally was the song that really busted her out.
But that, the lyrics in Money Maker reminded me of that.
If I had to guess, I would say this is their middle finger to the establishment, like somebody in the recording industry, was like, "Hey, you know, you guys could be a great Money Maker for us if you did this, if you did that."
And I think these guys in the band probably said, "Yeah, whatever, once you go pound sand, we're gonna do what the hell we wanna do."
Right?
Lovely track, great energy, great production, this dude's got a perfect voice for this type of thing, and there was a wonderful spatial element to the entire mix that's hard to do when you've got so much going on.
So kudos to these folks in two weeks in Nashville, which is kind of an interesting name for some guys from London.
But as you will discover on their social media, the way they have created their own acronym for it is really smart.
It's really smart.
Good stuff, love that tune.
Alright, let's move on.
Next up, we are going to get on a plane and we are going to travel far south to the city of Lusaka, Zambia.
And we are going to listen to the song "Moments" by an alternative indie folk pop artist whose name is pronounced "Tauya."
He was on the Wednesday, a fan of power music show.
I had this song on the music show on Wednesday and I totally screwed up his name.
And I reached out to him on Instagram, I'm like, "Hey man, how do you pronounce your name?"
And he sent me a voice memo, "God bless him." That's fantastic. So here is "Tauya" in his song "Moments" and then we are going to break it down. Let's check it out.
[Music]
Man, I just feel like I stepped out of a big, warm, audio bathtub.
"Tauya" that is a beautiful track, beautifully constructed, impeccably built.
The first thing that stands out to me is the pattern of intervals that he uses over that phrase that sets up the song.
The pattern is unique. I hadn't heard that type of the pattern in a long time. But not only that, the fact that it's over a four bar phrase and not a two bar phrase.
If you, for those of you who don't know music theory, like go back to the beginning of the song and follow along with the beat and count to 16.
And when you get to 16, you're going to start all over again. That's a four bar phrase. It's four bars of four.
That interval section, that interval pattern that he uses spread out over four bars really drew me in right off the bat.
And the fact that it was four bars and not two kind of gave me a clue as to what he was going to do to build it.
He was really going to take his time and build it smartly. And they did just that.
The high harmonies that you hear in the first verse and predominantly throughout the bulk of the song are really well chosen.
He's doing it in thirds, right?
But he's an octave up. And it's just so wonderfully done, so tender and so sweet.
Very intimate presentation of the lyrics that match perfectly with the sentiment.
The introduction of the percussion and the piano in the pre-chorus is really well done. And it's, once again, it's a nice intimate mix as we head into the chorus.
And I just love the piano playing in the chorus. They, whomever did it, they were using the full spectrum of the instrument.
And displaying great control by not overplaying. Like there's so much space in that, not in the mix per se, but space in the playing, note choice, right?
Think about, think about what Miles Davis told Herbie Hancock, play like you are sitting on your hands.
Just fantastic note choice and restraint and maturity showed by the piano player in this song.
Like I said at the start, it feels just like a big warm audio bath.
The second verse, the pattern on the snare is fantastic and there's just enough additions in the vocals to really build the song.
Like when you're building a song, you don't want to add too much, you just got to add enough. I don't care if it's a song that is as intimate as this or if it is aggressive as moneymaker was to start.
Like when you are throwing extra layers in, you always have to be very careful with how you do it.
And I really enjoyed the nice group vocal at the end that gave you a feeling that these moments that he's singing about aren't just about what one person feels, but what everybody should feel.
And I also got this sense that if it was like a perfect choir type of feel where everybody was in sync and unison and on point, it would just sound too perfect for it.
This kind of like had a, like everybody in the park type of vibe to it.
You know, everybody coming to that realization at the same point, I just adored this whole track. It was so well done from that unique pattern of the four bar phrase to how the whole thing was built.
And to show you, I think how cool music is universally.
I told you at the beginning when I introduced the song, where Tauya is from. But I don't think you can hear where he's from on this song.
Like if you didn't know this song from Adam, you'd be like, man, is that dude in Seattle or is he in Australia or like, where is he from?
Like it just speaks to how beautifully universal music is. And a good song is a good song, man. It just doesn't matter what genre it's in.
But Tauya, this is a beautiful song. I loved the production on it. And I look forward to hearing more of your stuff in the values.
Alright, next up, we are going to listen to Blueprint by Abby Mure. But I'm gonna do something really cool for you guys, because I just got a special track from her.
Just a couple of minutes ago, as I was putting the show together. I'm going to feature the vocals on this. She sent me all of the vocals isolated.
Just so you can hear everything that she's doing in it, because it is so damn good. So you're gonna hear the isolated vocals on top. And I matched up the music underneath it.
But the music is gonna be really quiet, just so you don't necessarily lose your place in the song.
And I want to do this just to really show off not only how hard it is to do great background vocals, but also just to show you what I love about this song, which is Abby's ability to not only just sing a beautiful song, but her command of background vocals is stunning.
And I want you all to have an appreciation for just how hard it is to put great vocals together for any track. For any track.
For those of you who are familiar with the song Leave It by Yes, off of 90125, they actually put out an acapella version of that song as well, because the vocals were so amazing and the production was so stellar.
So as I was kind of piecing this together just a couple of minutes ago, I'm like, damn, that kind of reminds me of what Yes did with 90125 in the single Leave It, which came out in like 84 or 85.
But anyways, so I just adored the song, but Abby's background ability and her vocal ability is stunning. So check this out. This is Blueprint by Abby Muir with the vocals isolated.
[Music]
Coming up Sunday on the Phantom Power Artist Hour is Mr. Jack Femister.
We're gonna go over to Australia and have a nice talk with Jack.
So hope you guys catch us on Sunday for that.
Cool, cool.
Take care guys. Thanks so much for listening.
[Music]