Glitter and Butterflies
Big Star - Jon Smith's Voyages (Newer Music Tuesday)
I can’t listen to a song without having some sort of visual pop into my mind. It’s something I look forward to when listening to music, so I was pleasantly surprised when Jon Smith’s Voyages’ great new song “Big Star” sparked not one, but two visuals for me! The first is of a big-top circus, with some kind of light show surrounding the band, with Jon Smith as the ringleader of course. (With a voice as big as his, how could he not be?) The other is a really stretchy, brightly colored animation, the kind that is playing when you wake up with adult swim on the tv. “Big Star” is a song that I just know will spark lots of different pictures in the head of every listener it grazes with its glittery and fun style.
This song reminds me a lot of Queen’s Sheer Heart Attack, with a falsetto to rival Roger Taylor’s in “In The Lap of the Gods”. (A feat pretty difficult to accomplish!) It has the quirky charm of Bowie’s first album, with the modern production value of artists like Mika or The Lemon Twigs. This song seemed tailored to my music taste in particular, something I definitely enjoy.
Smith has a strong, almost operatic belt that commands attention, with inflections on certain words that add a little wink and a smile that help make this song totally irresistible. What I think of as a saloon-style piano is the perfect accompaniment, adding even more personality to a song that’s already chock-full of it. One of the things I like most about “Big Star” is that it’s not predictable — the bridge section in particular was so musically interesting to me that I found myself rewinding that section quite a lot in my listen-throughs. It strips down the fanciful ambience to place a spotlight on the vocal. What really got me there was the note on “star”, which starts one way then switches so subtly to a slightly sinister sound, one of those split-second moments that really solidifies a great song in my eyes.
To put it simply, “Big Star” is an super awesome tune. What makes me happy about it is that it’s only one of the tracks that’ll be on their new album, Unattended Symphony. If “Big Star” alone made my head spin, then I’m confident that Unattended Symphony is going to make it explode. (Into glitter and butterflies, of course!)
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