Tune or No Tune: August Edition

[Shad_]

Archers are hosting Tune or No Tune this month!  We'll have a new track posted every few days.  Give them a listen and tell us what you think!

 

Our first entry is a 90s hit submitted by LedZepMan: Touch Peel and Stand, by Days of the New:

 

[Guest]

Tune, I like it and I found it quite catchy !

[Nikonis]

Tune! I've actually heard it on the radio a few times and enjoy the song.

[Shad_]

It definitely gets a Tune from me.  I absolutely loved this album as a kid.  It was a vacation staple.  Lots of memories of staring out the window watching the world roll by while this was blasting in my ears.

[Shad_]

According to last.fm though I've only listened to any of their songs 65 times in the past 15 years though.  Time to fix that.

[Guest]

65 times, that's already quite good lol

[Shad_]

I guess maybe?

 

Everything is relative.

 

65 plays left them in a tie for my 613th most listened-to band during that timeframe. 

[LedZepMan]

Tune obviously lol.

[Gentled Ben]

Tune. I remember this song. I liked it then and still like it now. I like the gritty sense of yearning that it emotes. It reminds me of Seven Mary Three's Cumbersome, from the same era, and for the same reason. Maybe yearning isn't quite the right word, but the music creates something of a gnawing feeling down in my gut that feels like a yearning, but in my gut, not my heart. Does that make sense? Cumbersome produces the same feeling in me, and I just like that, I guess.  Bob Seger does something similar with his singing, although I'm not that big of a Bob Seger fan.

[Shad_]

Touch Peel and Stand certainly fared well, with 5 Tune to 0 No Tune.

 

Now it's my turn. 

 

And anyone who knows me well

 

Should naturally expect

 

Swedish accordion and glockenspiel jams

 

[Guest]

LOL  I don't know what to think of this.

 

I was a bit surprised by the beginning, but I got curious. It has a kind of epic-videogame-kind of feel, so I'll say tune.

[LedZepMan]

Yeah.........

 

 

Sorry Shad, but Ima gonna say no tune. I agree with Chae on the video game-esq feel to it, and I'm not a huge fan of most instrumental tunes that don't involve a healthy amount of the shred

[LedZepMan]

Tune. I remember this song. I liked it then and still like it now. I like the gritty sense of yearning that it emotes. It reminds me of Seven Mary Three's Cumbersome, from the same era, and for the same reason. Maybe yearning isn't quite the right word, but the music creates something of a gnawing feeling down in my gut that feels like a yearning, but in my gut, not my heart. Does that make sense? Cumbersome produces the same feeling in me, and I just like that, I guess. Bob Seger does something similar with his singing, although I'm not that big of a Bob Seger fan.

Cumbersome is a sweet jam. And not too complicated on the bass.

[Gentled Ben]

Tune. I expected some folk metal like Eluviete, so this caught me off guard, but I liked it. It had a nostalgic feel to it. I probably wouldn't listen to an entire album of it, but the thread is "tune or no tune," not "how much of this could you actually take?" I like folk music in general, although I tend to hate accordions, except in this song, where she almost makes her accordion rock, but the accordion in the Swedish folk song was not too obnoxious.

 

I have never tried to play Cumbersome, but the guitar parts do not seem overly difficult, either. 

[Guest]

oh that's an interesting song!

Usually accordion makes me think about these village songs that really hate lol but this was ok

Thanks for sharing Ben

[Gentled Ben]

oh that's an interesting song!

Usually accordion makes me think about these village songs that really hate lol but this was ok

Thanks for sharing Ben

We share the same opinion on accordions. 

[Guest]

Hi5 lol !

 

well i have been to wayyyyyy too many village parties when i was a kid

it left me mentally scarred for life

[Gentled Ben]

Hi5 lol !

 

well i have been to wayyyyyy too many village parties when i was a kid

it left me mentally scarred for life

I have never been to a village party. Most of my accordion experience is with the polka-influenced  music that a lot of the Mexicans listen to up here. I don't like German polka music any better, nor do I like French or Italian accordion songs, which are the other two cultures I usually think of when I think of accordions. I just don't like that instrument.

[Shad_]

Obviously it gets a Tune from me.
 
Accordion is one of the most common uncommon instruments in the stuff I listen to, but I suppose my tastes are a bit unconventional.
 
Some friends and I on an old dead forum used to share whatever random music we stumbled on, and someone sent me Hemvägen right around the time it came out (2006).  I learned how to play E18 on accordion at one point, though I've long forgotten.  Probably the most memorable thing about this album to me is that we all ended up calling it "Ham Wagon".  But uh, we also all really enjoyed it.

[Shad_]

The next one comes from Chae!

 

(and Rhea I never got one from you, if you were planning to

 

And I'm falling asleep hard as I type this so bear with me if it's broken or somehting and I don't notice.

 

[Gentled Ben]

TUNE The new singer has a better voice than the first one, and this is a nice song. It's like a fresh start for me, because the first song I heard from them was Omnos, and now this is the first song I've heard with the new singer (I'm not really a fan, so I don't follow them closely), and this has a similar feel in that it's an accessible, listener-friendly folk song with the metal turned down in the background and no deathgrunts. I mean, the rhythm and melody are different of course, but they are the same type of song, so it's like coming around in a circle for me. Nice pick, Chaelca, thanks! I can add this to the list of Eluviete songs that I like.

[Shad_]

It's ok but feels more Eurovisiony than folky to me.  I respect their attempt to create Gaulish lyrics (and I assume that's what we're hearing in this song), but it lacks the sense of authenticity in execution and production that I like to hear in modernized folk.  That's not really a fault of the new singer so much as a trend the band has been headed towards since at least Slania.  Too much gloss and precision without an edginess to compensate.  There are bands that can still pull that off and really captivate me--Lumsk comes to mind--but they're a rare breed.  To me "folk" isn't just a matter of what instruments and patterns you play, but how you perform it.  To really hit me it needs to sound like they could be playing it around a camp fire just as easily as in a high end studio, or else it needs to be a sort of party song or something spiritual that you can imagine pre-industrial ancestors actually engaging in.

 

It still deserves a Tune, just not a strong one/not my cup of tea.

[Gentled Ben]

Well, for me, folk rock is really more like Fairport Convention or Steeleye Span or even Pentangle, and those bands, Steeleye Span especially, play some pretty traditional stuff, and even the ones that they've adapted for rock, like "Cam ye o'er frae France," still sound like they could be played around the campfire, but even though I don't care much for them, I appreciate what Eluviete are trying to do. None of their folk music is folky enough to really be folk, and I can't put my finger on why, but I don't really like their metal, so they are just not my band, but kind of taking up this mantle and saying, "Hey, for all we know, we're likely descended from the Helvetii, and here's what they might have been playing today if they liked metal," is alright in my book. 

[Shad_]

"Hey, for all we know, we're likely descended from the Helvetii, and here's what they might have been playing today if they liked metal," is alright in my book.

Yeah and maybe that's a good way to summarize the mentality.

 

Vs a lot of bands are more assertive about it and own the tradition.

 

It's really apparent in Irish music because the tradition was never lost. Like The Pogues are a direct evolution of Irish folk regardless of the fact that they're a punk band.

 

It's not "hey I've got a cool idea, let's take a bunch of classic themes and adapt them to our style", I don't think. The tradition is more fundamental to their sound from the get-go.

 

tl;dr: Eluveitie mostly sound to me like a metal band that decided to play folk, not vice versa.

[Gentled Ben]

I agree 100%