By now, I’m no longer sure which is the most embarrassing: me featuring yet another great band from the brilliant, elusive Bad Panda label, or publishing yet another post which begins by apologising for exactly the same thing.
All pop songs should be about two minutes long. There’s really no need for any more than that. Artists toying with the idea of dragging-and-dropping another chorus onto the end of your soon-to-be-released meisterwerk: think carefully.
Not that I’d like to hold Ghostandthesong up as a good example or anything – but here’s a scruffy, scattered pop song only 1m59s in length, and it works pretty much perfectly:
Yelped, buried lyrics; urgent, rattling layers of flailing instruments; Eastern Danger is like a modernised segment plucked from the latter half of the White Album’s more confusing song-clusters.
Form is more important here than melody: the song fits into itself perfectly: it ebbs and flows as it should, begins and stops exactly where you’d like it to.
This is substance over style and sound, and although the grubby noise is enthralling and satisfying, Ghostandthesong will leave you pleased in less prosaic ways that you can’t quite put your finger on, but will love all the same.
Great review. I think you captured the band perfectly.