The next one under the microscope here is chosen because basically it's a single, and I've been intrigued since Machine announced it. Being short, it will also enable me to get to someone else's work today, so let's give it a go. I have no supporting information on it (Machine, if you want to supply any background you think might help?) so we'll have to dive straight into it and see what we get.
Goodbye, good riddance --- Machine --- 2014 (Bandcamp release)
As I say, this is a single, so just two tracks, and it comes from one of our newest members, who has been making quite a name for himself here. Well, there's a beautiful soft acoustic guitar to get us underway, and it reminds me of the Eagles or Bob Seger at their best. The vocal, when it comes in has a touch of Young about it (Neil, not Paul!) or one of those trendy indie bands. It seems to be a song of leaving your hometown behind, and not being particularly sad about it. Nice bit of whistling there and some improvisational vocalise. I like the fact that there's no real chorus, just the
da-da-da-da-dum-da. Kind of a folk feel about the song. Singing is very good. And I mean very: this is almost professional grade, and if I assume Machine is also playing the guitar, this is incredibly impressive stuff. I've been trying to listen to one of the lines in the lyric, but I can't quite make it out. It's either
”The suburban kids lay out their open wounds/ So let's get out the meals and make them feel better” --- which would I guess be a reference to homelessness and something akin to George Michael's line in “Praying for time” ---
”Charity is a coat we wear twice a year” --- or the line could switch “meals” for “needles”, which then makes it much more literal, and possibly a reference to drugs? Well I'm sure he'll let us know which it is, but either way this is pretty stunning stuff.
It's unmistakably a sad song, a lot of regret and even bitter anger, but there's a sense of breaking free, getting away from it all, and in a way it sort of nods back to the two songs I featured a while back in my “Two sides of the same coin” section, Tom Waits's “Burma-Shave” and Springsteen's “Thunder Road”. Like the little change there in the fourth minute, also the tapping of the hand against the guitar as a sort of percussion. Very effective.
The other track on the single, the B-side I guess, is called “Fall in time” and has a slightly more uptempo beat (though not much), again on acoustic guitar, on which Machine seems to be a real expert (watch out Plankton!)
and this time has a chorus, which is nice. His voice does sound a tinchy bit stretched on the chorus, maybe close to cracking for a moment, but that's okay. It's a longer song than the A-side, with this coming in at just over five minutes whereas “Goodbye, good riddance” just about hit the four-and-a-half minute mark. The guitar is strummed harder on this, delivered with a great amount of passion. Again, his voice is one you could listen to for some time without ever getting tired of it. There's a sort of world-weariness he injects into his music that is quite astonishing for someone so young.
A tag on his bandcamp page says from the forthcoming album “Empty house”. Hope it's out soon cause I certainly want to hear more from this guy!
https://machineplus.bandcamp.com/releases