Ne’er Do Well - Dusty Sunday Morning
Hey kids. Yesterday I received a copy of “Dusty Sunday Morning” from the band Ne’er Do Well, out of Brookings, SD. Actually, I received the disc from the one guy in the band that seems to even be promoting it, and that’s the vocalist, Ryan Stoick. It’s pretty good music, but from what I gather you aren’t likely to ever hear them play any time soon, and that’s too bad.
This review should be pretty straight forward. I’ve heard the record straight through about five times now, and it’s not bad for an unsigned effort. They recorded it in a friend’s studio I believe, and a good deal of the music was handled by session musicians or something like that. So there are things like hand claps, organs, drums, and all that which they actually don’t know how to play. The band itself is just Ryan on vocals, and Jameson on guitars.
One last thing, I don’t review music by comparing it to other bands or anything like that - I think that’s kind of lame. So that’s not what to expect. I usually just describe the song, let you know how I feel about certain things during the track, but ultimately it’s up to you to give it a listen and find out what things you like or dislike. Alrighty, here we go!
01: Lordy, Lordy
The song opens with some random notes and things, but quickly the intro guitar line comes in followed by drums. It then jumps straight into the verse, which has a winding down kind of break until it finds its way into the chorus. After the 1st chorus we hear the main intro guitar bit again this time joined by a bit of piano to build towards the 2nd verse and chorus. All throughout the guitars are very strong and really keep things moving forward along. A simple but effective lead coupled with wah-wah leads us out, and the song concludes in a kind of echoing, reverberating cocophony on guitar while the other instruments drop out.
I had heard this song before on the band’s myspace, and it’s always been one of my favorite performances, vocal-wise. They’re simple, fit the music, and there really doesn’t need to be anything more. Plus the “doo do doo”’s during the verses are a really nice touch. All in all, it was a really good introduction to the record, and really doesn’t fall too short at any time from what I can tell. Solid tune to start out “Dusty Sunday Morning”.
02: So High, So Low
The 2nd track on the record begins with a simple bass line that begins in a higher octave and then sounds the snare hit. The bass then comes in lower to mirror the line in the lower octave along with a beat, hand claps, and an almost eastern sounding vocal bit. From here the guitars come in strong and the verse begins along with less, but steady hand claps to pace the section. As it ends, we return the eastern vocal sound along with keys, some well placed guitar phrases that heads straight into the pre-chorus and we hear Ryan in take his vox to the next octave which sounds really solid. The track’s title comes in for the chorus and you can hear the break on the end of low, which would seem a bit off normally, but here it adds to everything. The guitars in the chorus are simple but it works great.
The structure is good, and we return to a lower-vox verse section but skip the high-vox verse part initially to return straight to the chorus…but the high vocal section returns to take us out after the chorus, and the arrangement just really makes the ending of this song work. Sounds kind of stale when you talk about it, but musically it was a fantastic idea. Two down, still sounds great! Let’s move on.
03: La Dee Da
Very heavy over-driven and actually kind of a dirty guitar sound on this one. Almost sounds like the strings are ready to fall apart, not really a negative thing, just an observation. The drums are steady, and the guitars have an occasional string scrape or string noise that adds color to the slow, rhythmic, almost trance-inducing bit. The vocals fit well here also. Then the vocals ring out and the hi-hat counts us into the chorus.
The chorus is a cool shift, it’s a little bit more up-beat, accented by tail hand-claps and the upper register vocals from Stoick are great. It ends quickly, and we’re back in that lower, kind of boot-stomping verse. The more I listen to it, the more I like it. The verse bit at about 2:40 is pretty kick-ass. The feedback of the guitar, the vox, the stomping guitar line and the drums banging away while Ryan sings the lines, just makes it the perfect ending to a solid song.
04: Sowing Season
This track begins with a nice clean guitar sound, strumming away at the chords while the bass and drums kick in. There’s some kind of backwards-fade in lead and feedback throughout the verse. The vocals in the verse are up front and clear, but are contrasted in the chorus by a higher bit that sits back and sounds like it’s a bit distant. The chorus’s distorted guitar shift is well executed and the drums take the spotlight with solid tom hits and constant cymbal crashes.
The vocals in the verse are almost a bit creepy, but they’re also really great. The break comes after the 2nd chorus and gives us space and an almost marching build up with feedback and guitar melody in the background pushing it through to a final chorus. It ends with an almost, de-tuning effect…on I’m guessing guitar? It’s a pretty cool idea though, and makes a good transition to the next track. I can’t remember which songs were on their myspace, but this one needs to be added soon.
05: Nightingale
Kind of reminds me of some old Pink Panther stuff….oh I know I said I wasn’t going to say bands, but I don’t mean a band I mean those old films, so nyeh! But the opening guitar is slow, mellow, and the vox are even better on this track than the others in terms of clarity and up-front sound. Maybe they just turned them up more, who knows. The chorus moves a bit more and doesn’t really have lyrics but is just chanting of sorts (well from what I can tell, I don’t have lyrics to this), and it’s really cool.
There’s some kind of key solo I believe during a kind of break, before the song slows down and comes to an end. It’s a simple tune, and it’s probably one of my favorites right now.
06: In Dispute
The track starts with a nice side stick kind of thing and a really interesting guitar line. The verse vocals are accented with some kind of bluesy sax licks. Definitely not what I expected, but again the record was filled with a lot of these things by the studio musicians. Later in the song there’s another sort of something from the 70s in the form of a jazz thing, with the cha’s and I swear those dings could almost remind me of cash-drawers chiming without the drawer sound itself.
The chorus features chords ringing out with a kind of off-and-on stutter effect, and it colors an otherwise empty chorus save for the sax and vocals. Honestly that was my least favorite chorus, but the song itself wasn’t too bad at all.
07: Halo in my Hand
Halo begins with a slow but catchy guitar riff, and this one has really nice rolling percussion, and it really picks it up once it gets going. The vocals came in extremely strong, as I’ve come to expect from Stoick. The horns are a bit strong and almost distracting in a way, but I can get over them. The lead melodies in the background are subtle and work, as do the low chants. Again the percussion continues to lead the song with the guitars and the great solid vox at the 3 minute mark. It’s almost a 6 minute track, which says a lot for the instrumentation, because it really didn’t feel like it was that long the many times I played it.
08: Noose Around the Sun
Guitar all alone with the drums, then the bass joins in and it fills it out. Great lyrics but something is missing here, the track almost seems a lot more raw than the others in terms of all the little things that were added to the others and lacking from this one. I can’t help but wonder what the other songs would sound like without all the extra crap thrown in. Personally, it’s not my style to add in organs and all that…and anyway while I type this and I’m again listening to the song to kind of get my thoughts on it, I must say it’s not a bad song and I could easily listen to it many times over.
The song itself has a nice contrasting clean guitar to distorted guitar shift during the chorus. The distortion is again very dirty on this one. Ryan’s vocals are strong, but occasionally seem to drop off during the end of certain lines, but it’s not really that bad and adds to rawness of the track. There is a guitar solo of sorts at about 2:40-ish and is joined by another guitar panned hard right and a large amount of stuttering from the rhythm beneath. All of that brings us back to the final chorus and what would have been a nice fade of Stoick’s sustained vocal but is virtually ruined by a kind of goof-off guitar doodly-echo thing. I have no better way to describe it.
09: Kaleidoscope
This song almost immediately reminds me of In Dispute. Doesn’t help that the guitar lines are so similar and in the same key either, I suppose. To be honest, the female left, male right thing didn’t work. I think they don’t mesh well at all, and I’d have rather just heard Stoick during the verses. The chorus isn’t nearly as bad though, and the vocals work together there for some reason. The way the chorus outro extends and comes back to the verse works very well. I rather liked that, but then I have to hear the female vox in the verse again, and I’m grinding my teeth a bit…ouch. But alas, the chorus returned and all was almost right with the world (I swear she’s louder in the 2nd verse).
But I have a bigger complaint with this one. The ending didn’t jive for me…I don’t know what those horrible sounds are at the end that kind of merge this song with the next one, but it was a bit too much and for my experience, ruins it every time. For one they’re horrendously loud when mixed with the guitars being as low and quiet as they were, and two they’re just ugly sounding. It would have been better to just end with the guitars building their riff back up and taper off as the sound fades out. Give the next track a bit of space. This again probably has to do with the fact that they had a bunch of studio musicians adding all this random shit here and there because they thought it’d work better and sometimes, it did, other times…not so much.
10: Winter Song
Ok I know this is a cover, but I never heard the original so I had to settle for live versions on youtube. This version seems slower, and honestly I like it a lot more than what I listened to on youtube. Ryan’s vocals are clearer, stronger, and work better in my opinion. The slow and more mellow version of the guitars and everything, makes the song more interesting. But again this is a cover, so I don’t want to comment much more on it.
11: Corona
Something about this intro reminds me of James Bond. Is that weird? But then that sort of thing kind of dissipates anyhow, and Ryan gives us a slow kind of melodic, mysterious piece. The title fits, and it really makes my mind wander to all kinds of epic things. This is the music that inspires me to put together great stories, just listen and it sort of carries you away. There were a couple vocal bits where normally I’d say “you could have auto-tuned that a bit”, but I really like the pure and honest vocal much more with the slightly off parts left in.
12: Velveteen
Begins with a marching drum beat accompanied by the chorus of boots hitting the pavement on the beat as it progresses into the verse. The vocal harmonies are awesome, and the elongated and somewhat dreamy “lullaby” stand out as some of the most interesting vocal bits I’ve heard on the record yet.
After the chorus a xylophone comes in? I really don’t know, I’m guessing…but it works for a bit but the climb at 1:32-1:34 doesn’t fit and is followed by a decline with a few wrong notes that really almost kill the whole thing. It gets better, and then we get more random notes again out of key and it’s not until 2:24 that we find the xylophonist does know how to play the higher notes without destroying things. So I have to wonder why the out of key notes were left in?
There’s some kind of spanish guitar solo bit at about 3-ish, complete with more ridiculously bad notes and licks that stand out in a bad way, like your pre-teenage daughter wearing stilettos. I hope I’m not sounding too harsh, but it shouldn’t matter too much because the song is great and ends with an organ and a kind of robotic, circular sound that’s pretty awesome, very Robocop :p
13: Fly in the Wall
From Robocop to acid meets Wall.E sounds open this one. It’s a bit weird, but then the guitars come in followed by the occasional weird electronic sounds in swells, that kind of move from left to right or maybe they’re just random, but anyway. I suppose the title must have something to do with the weird sounds, maybe. Mostly it’s just an instrumental track, and there’s what I guess is….the fly…towards the end. Not a bad end to the record, considering this song wouldn’t have worked anywhere else. Despite having a crazy collection of my own instrumental music, I actually don’t like instrumentals very much, and so for me, I’d have preferred a final song with a nice vocal….but alas.
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Conclusion
Here are my final thoughts on “Dusty Sunday Morning”. All together, it’s a good set of songs. I don’t have the lyrics so I don’t know if there’s a cohesive theme or not, I’ll have to find out. The vocals throughout are great and fit the style. The guitars also fit the style but it’s just the kind of guitar stuff that doesn’t interest me much at all…but for what it is, it was done very well and most people will enjoy it. The drums were great, percussion, it all kept it together and felt decently produced.
If I had a problem with this record, it would be the all too frequent, out of place instruments. Now I don’t mean the jazz saxophone or that kind of thing…but maybe the xylophone being played out of key. Or how about the horns on Halo in my Hand being turned down a bit or maybe just try some other instruments (the latino sound was cool, but in the course of this record it was highly out of place). Then there’s that weird instrument on “Kaleidoscope” at the end, just didn’t work in my opinion and maybe had it been turned way down it could have been alright. And I guess for me that was really one of the only downsides of the record in terms of listening to it.
The production isn’t perfect, but it didn’t suck either. But hey, that stuff is expensive, and for an unsigned project this was definitely more than acceptable.
But all of that aside, the songs are very well written and are nicely structured. They don’t make music like this anymore, so it’s nice when you can find it.
With a rating from 1.0 to 5.0, I’d have to give it a solid 4.2 just because the songs were so well written and because it sounded good in my car =] So go check out the band and add them on your myspace:
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