Little Moments
One of my favorite things that can happen in a song is when one small thing seems to elevate the entire song to a new dimension, without really actually changing the song. Iâm reminded of high school, sitting in my friendâs car, listening to Voxtrotâs âEasyâ and being told that it was all build up to this one moment. I believed for I heard.
In Easy, at 2:30, the entire song is thumping along, very four-on-the-floor, and it's just been elevated by a harmonic shift, when suddenly the entire band stops for a âJack-ak-ak-ak-akâ (I have no idea what the singer is actually saying) before delivering the next line. The new chords introduced moments before feels like a wind-up to the punch of this delivery. Itâs the fulcrum that the rest of the song operates on, and I still think back to riding in my friend's Nissan amazed by it.
Two other examples of this:
In âSandra Partialâ by Anthony Raneri thereâs a growl on one line at 1:40 "past the prrrrsent tense". Up to this point, the songâs feeling is very cool-guy. Very... mellow? Too cool to care? âSandra, I need an answerâ is delivered very casually, and the whole song is sort of coping with these circumstances, trying to be understanding, but this growl indicates something more lurking under the surface, which makes sense given the text of the lyrics. And the emotion is restrained just as soon as itâs detected, and doesnât come back. It feels very relatable to try and play it cool and understanding, but then have a moment of weakness and succumbing to your own emotion, before recomposing yourself.
Last for now, in âRead My Mindâ by The Killers, Brandon Flowers goes pretttty flat on the end of the bridge - I wanna breathe that fiiiire again!. Itâs another really well placed moment of straying outside the script (in this case, the script of western tonality). I think I read that Flowers wanted to avoid pitch-correction on this whole record which I think really comes across. I think what works about this move is that it doesnât feel like heâs intentionally bending it out of tune, it feels like the emotion swelled and bent the parameters of what rationality was trying to accomplish (hitting a note). Itâs realy fun to sing along to.
I donât have good language for this yet (someone else does, Iâm sure of it). I think these little moments are characterized by their one-time nature. It almost feels like something that just happened or occurred in an otherwise planned-and-scripted thing. Set apart from another great technique of having a moment and iterating on it in the song (like an improvised solo, for instance).
It feels really magical to hear something that feels spontaneous on a recording. A smashing together of the scripted and the improvised.