Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

songwriting

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We listened to Battle of the Bands entries on Saturday. 35 entries. I could hardly believe that 35 bands were floating around on our campus, and took the time to enter our little contest. After listening to the entries, my disbelief continues, for multiple reasons. Firstly, there are some truly amazing bands on our campus (among them Wellington , Petland, & The Unsinkable Mr. Marden), and i had no idea! The three bands i just linked are only a small selection of my favourites, which easily numbered around 10. Punk, acoustic rock, emo, … everything except for women on lead vocals! However, while i’m terribly impressed with many of our entries, a few of them left me totally underwhelmed. Not because of bad mixing, or playing, but because the songs had no forward motion to them … no momentum. Songwriting might not be the easiest thing in the world, but some of these bands had put enough time into it to get their own albums printed up professionally, from which i’d expect a certain amount of professional work. I’m pretty sure that i wouldn’t have stood a chance in the battle given my current acoustic state of affairs, but i still maintain that “Under My Skin” in its band arrangement would’ve won me a slot at the battle. And that’s that.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/03/2662102/

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I wish i could write songs about stuff consistently. For every “Hold on Me” that talks about physical things like sheets and walking down the street, there’s a “Splinter” that isn’t grounded in reality at all. The latter case is fine, but if you aren’t going to talk about anything real you need to craft a strong metaphor, because just the words aren’t going to hold your song together. And too often it’s just words…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/03/2635784/

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Another new song just sorta showed up half-formed and tangled in my head, which makes for three in the last two weeks. They’re all very strummy and slightly discordant, but none of them wander too far afield from “Relief,” which was obviously the establishing song for my sound this year (since it’s both of those things). Of the three so far, only one of them feels “complete” – which can be a function of the amount of work i put in, or of if the song even can contain a complete thought within its structure. Even if this new one doesn’t pan out, i get the feeling that i might be visited by a few more sometime in the near future

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/02/2572388/

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So, i’ve decided it’s nearly impossible to write a good song anymore. To start with, my guitar hates me. Suddenly it’s holding a tune like it never had before, but it’s intonation is all buzzy and weird and it makes me think i need a new bridge/saddle. Meanwhile, to write a good song you need some sort of central phrase or imagery; a song that just starts and ends without saying anything is a boring song. But, do you know how hard it is to come up with that sort of thing without it being contrived? Phrases like “i’ve got you under my skin,” “you don’t make sense,” & “you are in high relief” came to me in sudden golden moments of inspiration that i could never replicate, and they serve as excellent central metaphors for a song. Without such a theme you’d be left with one of those lamely vague DMB songs that just locomotes by sheer force of guitar kinetics before finally collapsing down upon it’s lack of content.

Meanwhile, writing music is something else entirely. I lately have found it much easier to write music after working out lyrics only because none of the music i write is hook-y enough to lead me to generate lyrics for it out of mid air. So, yeah, i have tons of feelings i want to put down on paper, and lots of paper, but it’s just not working out.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/01/2058226/

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So, i’ve really let my conviction to share my life with y’all lapse this past week, and i apologize. Really, it’s the strangest week i’ve spent in my entire life, starting a week ago today. Or, maybe it’s been the weirdest year of my life starting from then. I’m having this interesting phenomenon lately where some of my old songs seem to be rewriting themselves to match what i’m going through right now; by swapping in something as small as a single word the whole intent of a song can change. “Under My Skin” became a different song on Sunday when i was singing it for someone, because i got stuck on the line “i don’t miss you anymore,” and rather than continuing on in the song i turned it into this cathartic 30-second long repetition with my voice rising in volume every time, only to finally calm for the “i’m not allowed to… but you’re under my skin.” Sure, she’s still under my skin, but i’m not allowed to miss her in a very different way now compared to how it used to be. >sigh

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/01/2000246/