The Benja-man Is Verbose

I came to a realization about what I most dislike about Cherry Tree ’s much-maligned (by me, and apparently nobody else) opener, “Wasp Nest.”   It’s not the bland instrumentation, although it’s not that interesting to me.   It’s not those damn bells, although I do find them annoying.   My biggest issue is Matt Berniger, plain and simple.   I don’t like his poor-man’s Dylan vocal approach of mumble-singing without putting a vocal melody to it.   I don’t like his specific inflections, and in particular, his delivery of the line “I wanna kiss your skinny throat” makes my skin crawl in a way that distances me from the song rather than pulling me in.   I don’t like the lyrics on this particular song, and more generally I don’t like the fact that seemingly 90% of his lyrics are about the narrator being condescending towards a woman.     Moving on to “All The Wine,” this one does have a solid hook and a more interesting lyric, and more energy to it. ...

I won’t be doing the Vên EP since my streaming services don’t have it in its original form.   I don’t know where the hell a re-recorded version of the already re-recorded “Uis Elveti” will fit in my attempts to get a chronological sense of this band’s evolution.   Instead, I start the project with Eluveitie already having achieved its near final form, as a nine piece of non-session musicians.   In addition to  Chrigel , guitarists Ivo Henzi and Siméon Koch are both on board by this point, as are drummer Merlin Sutter and fiddler Meri Tadić.   So, here’s their true debut, Spirit .   Track One:   “Spirit”   I’m only going to know what the English songs are about, to be clear.   This is the ever-popular “intro track,” just a few simple musical ideas repeated over and over.   But the chanted vocals are nice, especially paired with what sounds like a hurdy-gurdy despite no gurdyist being credited.   Makes you want to ride a horse i...

 [Note:  On 12/10/24 I realized that I have somehow spent the last year getting Chrigel Glanzmann's nickname wrong, which is... something... and went back through all my Eluveitie posts to date correcting the spelling while leaving everything else the same.] Whilst I continue to work up the motivation to press on with Cherry Tree and beyond, the next band that's going to be concurrently taking up many strokes of a virtual pen will be Swiss folk-metal band Eluveitie.   The story behind this decision isn’t that interesting, but in brief, I’m always trying to discover new artists – I mostly focus on records that came out during the year that it is so my new music is new-new, but I’m trying to get better about also delving into the recent and less recent past.   I often have YouTube videos playing in the background while I work on certain things.   One channel (reaction channel “The Kel N’ Rich show”) featured a song by Eluveitie.   I was mildly intrigued, ...

  Last run-through I lightly praised “A Reasonable Man” for committing to its minimalism.   That was in my mind as I was listening to the EP again and was noticing that “Wasp Nest” isn’t necessarily any less committed to minimalism than “A Reasonable Man.”   You could argue that in certain ways it’s actually more so.   Here’s how I’d describe what happens in the song “Wasp’s Nest.”   There’s one Dessner or other playing a few note guitar pattern that repeats over and over.   There’s a very straightforward rhythm part that anchors the song and doesn’t change.   Over that, Matt sings a single vocal line over and over that’d be hard to describe as a “melody” since it doesn’t have much of a tune.   There’s not really a chorus, except that every verse/phrase/whatever ends with “you’re a wasp’s nest.”   Seems pretty minimalist, right?   Seems pretty boring, right?   At least for me it is.   In contrast, everything else on Cherr...