Saturday 4 May 2024

Time gets somewhat muddled here

Besides Escapade, I can't think of many albums where one track has made the complete journey from my least favourite to one I have a particular fondness for.  One that does spring to mind is The Good Son (1990) by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, on which I used to think "The Witness Song" was a low point, just hearing it as long-winded and pointlessly noisy.  That changed when I re-listened to this CD for the first time in years, as it happened, shortly after seeing the 2022 film Elvis.  With that context, the vibe of "The Witness Song" struck me as, basically, the sound of Elvis Presley turning to the dark side.  And I can't not love a song that pulls that off.

The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many songs some consider to be... unnatural.
"As you can see, young Elvis, your Colonel has failed.  Now you will be the witness when the fog's too thick to see!"
"Look and See" could actually be said to be a song where time gets somewhat muddled, due to the interaction between the past and the present in the lyrics, as well as its reversal of the usual dynamics in this genre.  In order to create enough space in the song for the diminuendo to work, I had to have the drums enter earlier than in the Escapade or Escapade 2 version.  I took the opportunity, however, to adapt both previous drum parts: the rather busy Escapade part for the first "chorus" and an elaboration of the sparser Escapade 2 part for the second verse/"chorus" section.  And as a little something extra, I applied a fade-out to the entire audio of the overhead stems, making the overall drum sound very slowly become less resonant during the song.