Spintunes #4 Round 4 Review: Heather Miller

I was considering reviewing in my usual "order of songs played", but decided since we aren't ranking this round to put the reviews in order of my favorites, most to last. Definitely hard to do and very close, because it was quite the awesome round! Good work everyone!

Steve Durand - A Beautiful Voice
Things I loved about this song - that you really created a melodic, musical backdrop to your lyrics as opposed to just harmonizing or making a rhythmic backing track. The rhyming and wordflow. The honest, earnest message of the song. It doesn't seem to be fishing for compliments, just really just speaks plainly to how you feel and how much you love music. That said, I think your voice sounds great, and at least from this song, I think we DO know what's in your heart with your voice exactly as it is! Beautiful work. I could see this somehow being part of a children's program about believing in yourself or something of the sort, and I mean that as a high compliment, so I hope you take it that way!

Edric Haleen - Exultation!
Google translate thinks this might be Swahili? If it is, the translator doesn't make much sense of it. :-) Whatever it is, whatever it means, it sounds pretty amazing and pretty authentic. Amazing layers of harmony, wonderful rhythms. I'd love to see this performed live with a choir, I imagine it would be goose-bump inducing!

Jess Scherer - Threadbare
Lovely harmonies. The lyrics are very honest and exposed emotionally (threadbare!), which works well with the style of the song. I saw you wrote this from the point of view of a guy, but really, it works from either gender, which is great. Use whatever devices, inspirations and point of views you need to write a song, and then the more ways it works after it's written, more power to it!

David LeDuc - Fear
Very cool beat. Neat to see your video and where the sounds came from! While this obviously is a very personal song the sentiments are so relatable - fear of dying, of not being a good spouse or parent, struggling with money, etc, it's all very universal stuff. The break between "ant" and "worker" threw me a little flow-wise

SHADOWS

Jacob Haller - What Do We Need?
Clever and creative concept, I love how it addressed the challenge head on without actually referencing it directly as in "I can't use any instruments for this song", but rather like it was just a bunch of folks out on the porch wanting to make some music and making the best of a situation where they didn't have anything! The vocals are a little pitchy sometimes and a few of the words have awkward syllable placement but overall it's super fun, and another one I'd love to see performed live with a real "band"!

Drei Viertel Drei - Igor's Jigsaw
This is great! Y'all do creepy so well (thinking back to the Lollipop Lady especially). Wonderful layers and ambience that sounds so like it's in a cavernous castle. Lots of funny puns (I'm quite partial to puns!) that add to the campy feeling of the song, reminds me of the flavor of Young Frankenstein or Monty Python.

Brian Gray - Before You Go
OK, so I was listening to this for the first time on the bus on my way to work and I scrolled down through the words and saw the punchline seconds before hearing it. I both laughed out loud, was slightly disappointed I didn't get the chance to experience it without reading it first, and desperately wanted to turn to someone and share the brilliance of it all. Something like the Backstreet Boys or the Warblers from Glee do SNL. Very funny, very well done.

Menage A Tune - Don't Miss The Rainbow
Hooray for shadow flexibility! I remember when you wrote this awesome song, and obviously as a judged contestant you would have needed to write a new song, but I love what you and Ted have done with it! It's a beautiful message, and well executed. And I can't help it, the end makes me think of Skittles! :D