Geese “Taxes”
Cameron Winter’s voice can get a bit ugly and awkward and honking, but he sings with so much raw soul and earnest feeling that it becomes beautiful and sometimes totally heartbreaking. There’s no shame in how he performs, only total commitment, so even when he’s expressing totally pathetic feelings he sounds like a man with great dignity. That’s certainly the case in “Taxes,” a song with lyrics so grandiose in its self-pity that at one point he demands to be crucified. The lyrics work because Winter has found the ideal balance of cartoonishness and earnestness, so both the humor and the pathos land just right. And the arrangement does the same thing – meloddramatic, but also bright and crisp and light.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Dawuna “Love Jaunt”
I don’t know much about Dawuna or how this track was made, but it makes me think of the term “demoitis” – the thing where an artist’s demo is so good that every attempt to fully flesh it out in the studio feels wrong because it’s not capturing what’s already been put down on tape. “Love Jaunt” feels like a home demo in the best sense – low-key, understated, a set of feelings and musical ideas laid down without any fuss. Could this be better as a slicker production? Sure, this has the bones of an excellent R&B song for any era. But I’m not convinced you could improve on what Dawuna conjures here, unless you wanted to drop the “low-key” aspect entirely and then you just have a very different song. I like that the music doesn’t feel uptight, but also that she’s singing quietly enough to make it seem like she’s choosing her words very carefully.
Buy it from Bandcamp.