feature photo: Jay Gilbert
Just the other day on May 15, the Lickerish Quartet released the first of three planned EPs, Threesome Vol. 1. This is an overdue return to rock-pop music as carefully constructed kraftwork, with each detail strictly serving the song’s intrinsic appeal yet free of the self-indulgence sometimes found in art rock.
The second track from the Lickerish Quartet’s Volume 1 “Bluebird’s Blues” provides a great example of this, and with a newly-released lyric video, there’s more to ponder, here. This video was created via a TuneLings app (Dan Soroka did the animation). TuneLings — a crowdsourcing eCommerce platform that pays musicians — creates an animated, instructional display, synchronized to the music. It can show how the song should be played including chords, notes, scales, rhythm, lyrics, song structure, and more, arranged in any number of highly customizable “views,” which don’t require any knowledge of reading music.
In the video above derived from TuneLings, you see the chords and the lyrics, about a guy mustering up the nerve to pop the question on a girl he’s so enchanted with, he’s too nervous to make the pitch on his own. The narrator appeals to the bluebird to “serenade her a song to help me find my voice and speak my mind.”
The richest experience remains from the listening, especially with some good headphones. The recording literally caresses your ears, from the opening moment with the endlessly stacked vocals à la 10cc’s “I’m Not In Love” to the slightly lounge-y coda that’s a clever reworking of the intro brought down a key or two. In between, there’s a lush arrangement weaving in Eric Dover’s acoustic folk guitar with his electric rock one, Tim Smith’s fully integrated bass (which slyly sneaks in starting on the first chorus), Roger Joseph Manning Jr.’s assortment of unobtrusive keys and his lead vocal placed perfectly in the front-middle of the mix.
A new song put together using old, time-honored values such as putting in the work to make it sound just right will never sound old. Like the rest of the EP, the Lickerish Quartet’s “Bluebird’s Blues” is for the ages.
Click here to purchase a download of Threesome, Volume 1 by the Lickerish Quartet.
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