Holy fucking shit. Seven minutes. I think that's not only the longest track so far but also the longest compared to the original. "Once in a While" is what, two, three minutes tops depending on the performance? The deleted scene version from the movie is even less than that.
I'm switching back to play-by-play for this. I don't want to risk listening to it all the way through, hating it, and then having to play it again to liveblog it.
Forty-five seconds of brass. In a punk song. Sweet mother of christ I think I'm in love.
The first verse is really good—the music keeps it simple, and the singer really sells the whole morning and loss angle in a way that—I'll admit it—most renditions I've heard just don't. There's a softness to the guy's voice that just sells you on the fact that he's really damned depressed.
The next verse builds really well, and while I'll admit I didn't like the sort of jerky guitar punctuation early on (why not just use drums?) it really grew on me. The brass slides back in nice and natural, and the music becomes more upbeat as the singer remains soft and sad. It works really well.
Then we hit the third bit and the singer's got serious reverb. I mean, he's got, like, full-on standing-on-a-mountaintop echo going on. Again, it grows on me, but not as much. What helps is that the instrumental track takes the field, even doing the "call" part of a call-and-response with the singer when the epic echo causes him to fall behind the music.
It builds some more and then falls back down to slow and mournful, which is good for the singer because it's becoming readily apparent all this guy can do is mope and echo and he's only good at one.
We hit a bridge of sorts, even though the song could easily have ended when it faded out in the last verse. We're only almost four minutes in. Holy crap. Said bridge is sort of repetitive, but sort of oddly soothing in spite of the occasional cymbal clash out of nowhere. This carries on past the five minute mark. At the sixth it gets a bit louder, and it dawns on me that this isn't a bridge, they've taken two whole minutes to play out the song. I never thought I could hate brass instrumentals as much as I do at this very moment. The music doesn't change, the singing doesn't change. It's...just...GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!
END! END! END! END! *breaks down sobbing*
Oh thank god finally. It fades out.
Do I really need a summation, or can I just tell you to stop listening around 3:45?
Go ahead. Onwards. I just need some time to catch up. To recover.
Comments
