Chords: |A Dm |A Dm |F G |A |
A major: |I iv |I iv |bVI bVII |I |
Uncharacteristically, the intro comes roaring out of the gate. We hear nearly the full complement of instruments immediately — guitars, bass, drums, piano, glockenspiel, trumpet, trombone, and vocal harmonies.
The intro is disorienting both rhythmically and harmonically, especially in hindsight once the verse comes in. It’s almost entirely made of quarter note triplets, which, without any other kind of rhythmic reference point, provides a feeling of being in 3 instead of 4.
Despite the repeated use of the major tonic chord, all the other chords here are borrowed from the parallel minor key. The progression bears some resemblance to the intro/verse progression of Lady Madonna — the D chord is major in that one, but note the same bVI → bVII → I movement.
Key: A Major
Meter: 4/4
Form: Intro | Verse | Refrain | Intro | Verse | Refrain | Bridge | Verse (instrumental) | Refrain | Outro
Appears on: Labyrinths, track 2
General Points of Interest
Form: This song contains four distinct sections. The verse is relatively long, encompassing two sub-sections of 10-bars each. Compare the instrumental intro section to similar intro figures in Julia, Summer’s Ending, The Garden of Forking Paths, and The Ballad of Cherry Hill. As in The Garden of Forking Paths, the intro here also returns in modified form as the outro. The last time the verse appears, it’s presented as an instrumental solo, as in February Third.
Melody and harmony: Some 15 distinct chords appear in this song. The sense of key is slightly ambiguous at first due to the use of mode mixture — that is, a combination of chords drawn from the parallel keys of A major and A minor — in the intro. The verse and refrain firmly establish the key of A major, until the bridge follows up on the intro by seeming to modulate to the key of C major (the relative key to A minor); however, the modulation never fully takes hold, and we’re soon back home to A major after a bit of a detour at the end of the bridge.
The melody covers a wide range — an octave plus a perfect fourth — although most of the song is slightly more contained, with the highest note coming in only at the end of the final refrain.
Arrangement: A standard rock arrangement of acoustic and electric and guitars, bass, and drums, with the additions of violin, trumpet, piano, and glockenspiel. The lead vocal is single-tracked throughout, with a harmony vocal in the refrain and portions of the verse. The vocals switch to a call and response style for the bridge.
Check it out — our friend Danette took some nice photos of the World Cafe show.
Which brings us to the next installment of “Know Your Arch Enemy.” Today, we’ll learn the answer to the question burning in the minds of so many fans — what’s going through Lem’s head as he sits on stage, knocking out those grooves that we all know and love? Come inside for the answer. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to the first edition of “Know Your Arch Enemy.” I’m your host, Steve Goldberg.
Did you know: in Patrick’s first e-mail to the band, dated November 3rd, 2008, he described his main influences as “Elvis Costello, The Police, REM, They Might Be Giants, Moxy Fruvous, Magnetic Fields, The Decemberists, The Shins, etc, etc.”
This has been an edition of “Know Your Arch Enemy.”
Posted
on August 17, 2010, 3:18 am,
by Steve,
under Notes On.
One of the ideas I had for this space was to start writing some musical analyses of my own songs, and maybe of other people’s songs, in the style of Alan W. Pollack. Pollack is a musicologist who, between 1999 and 2000, wrote analyses of every song in The Beatles’ canon and published them all on the internet. Pollack’s notes on The Beatles taught me a lot about the nuances of songwriting and recording pop music. I return to them frequently and still manage to learn interesting tidbits each time.
The first song I decided to write about is Shutterbug from Labyrinths. I’ll start things off by posting the chords and lyrics: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted
on August 15, 2010, 4:56 pm,
by Steve,
under Uncategorized.
Welcome to the new stevegoldbergmusic.com, where the only limit… is yourself.
Big thanks to Kenneth for helping me get this up and running.
I’ve got lots of stuff planned for this space, but for starters, if you look at the photostream sidebar to the right, you’ll see some photos from the Labyrinths recording sessions that I had never gotten around to posting.
And finally, here’s a nugget from the archives — a 3-part vocal arrangement of the lead-off track from our first album, The Road. I think I wrote this out prior to our first tour in 2007.
Posted
on March 14, 2010, 11:10 pm,
by Steve,
under Uncategorized.
First, a quick roundup of some of the things that folks have been kind enough to say about us lately.
You Ain’t No Picasso says “The “Labyrinths” EP sounds like the Lucksmiths covering Bishop Allen with Beulah’s horn section helping out in the background.”
Quick Before it Melts says “it solidifies Goldberg’s reputation as a great songwriter.”
Fingertips says “a wistful-cheerful blast of horn-peppered indie pop… he comes across as a more extroverted version of Sufjan Stevens.”
The Philly City Paper says that at our Johnny Brenda’s show “things got pretty bikini-beachy.”
We’ve also got two all-ages shows coming up in the next few weeks at new-to-us venues. Check out the details on the shows page.
Posted
on February 22, 2010, 5:17 pm,
by Steve,
under Uncategorized.
Thanks to everybody who came out to Johnny Brenda’s. We had a great time and we hope you did, too. Fortunately we were able to save some of our performance for posterity. Here’s the first clip — this was taken in the green room before the show. We were practicing the harmonies for our new Beatles cover. More to come!
