"Free Fall"

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When I listening to Argent a few days ago, I started thinking about the guitar part in the middle of "Free Fall."  I listened to just that section a few times (and figured out how to play it), and now I'm pretty sure that it's played with a guitar slide.  The final note isn't as distinct as the others; it's just the sustain from striking the previous note, but it's at a lower pitch because the guitar slide's moved down.

At first I was kind of dubious about slide guitar, but then I remembered that it's also present in "Hold Your Head Up," although that's from two or three years later.

Argent

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I just listened to Argent's eponymous album as part of my listening schedule, and - as always - I noticed things:

"Be Free"

I'm not exactly sure where the verse divisions are, but there's some parallelism either between the first two verses or within the first verse.

I said you'd be free, didn't I?
I said you'd climb high, didn't I?
Took you out to the sky
Told you one day you'd fly

You didn't believe me, did you then?
You didn't look up, did you then?
Didn't look to the sky
Didn't believe you'd fly
Didn't believe you'd fly

There's "didn't I" in the first verse (or first half of the first verse) and "did you then" in the second verse (or second half of the first).  There's the same verb with different subjects ending the first two lines of each verse (or each section).

"Dance in the Smoke"

The second and fourth lines of the verse (which is just repeated over and over again) are identical save for one word:

We will light a giant, burning fire tonight
We will build it and dance in the smoke
Every branch we'll tie somebody's worry to it
We will burn it and dance in the smoke

but those two different words alliterate with each other, so it's not a difference that sticks out that much.

"Free Fall"

I'd noticed before that during the hand-clapping part (which ends in a difficult rhythm before repeating), someone messes up and claps before they should.  But in listening to the song this time, I noticed that that mistake is after the line "That now I'm confused inside."  So while it's a mistake, it actually fits pretty well.  It's like it demonstrates the discord of the confusion.

"Stepping Stone"

I'd noticed before that in different iterations, the first line of what I guess is a chorus changes from "I would gladly make you happy" to "I would love to make you happy."  I realized listening to it this time that - duh! - it's a progression.  The feeling becomes more ardent as the song goes on.

Argent/Breathe Out, Breathe In

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This morning, I listened to Argent and Breathe Out, Breathe In just for the sake of it.  I didn't even work on lyric transcriptions.  But I still noticed interesting stuff.  There are a lot of things I still have to look into, but here are things I'm sure about:

Argent
Some of the guitar part at the beginning of "Like Honey" is double-tracked.  I plan on recording an example of this, and when I post that, I'll explain more fully.

At about 1:16 in "The Feeling's Inside," there are guitar harmonics.

"Free Fall" starts with a falling fifth, beginning the song with a musical portrayal of what the lyrics relate.  When I confirmed this, I was surprised to find that it starts with the same falling fifth that "She's Not There" features - E to A.

There's some connection between "Stepping Stone" and "Brief Candles" in that the very end has a piano part (accompanied by bass in "Brief Candles") panned to one side ("Stepping Stone" is panned right; "Brief Candles" left).  That part is still audible on the other side, but it seems more distant, so between the two channels, you get the impression of space.  I'm not sure that's the best explanation though.

Breathe Out, Breathe In
For the first time, I noticed Rod Argent's falsetto part during the second halves of the choruses in "Play It for Real."  While Colin sings, "When you feel how you feel / There's no deal to reveal," Rod sings "Feel," spreading it out to four syllables.

There are a lot of elements that evoke the feeling of Odessey and Oracle too:

I'd noticed the music that's the mellotron plays in "Shine on Sunshine," but I don't think I'd really realized that it's a mellotron.

"A Moment in Time" also has mellotron, which I hadn't noticed at all.  The lines "Life is a stage where / We all just act a part" come from Shakespeare's As You Like It.  I'm not sure if I'd really recognized their origin before, but listening to it this time, I realized that it goes well with the quotation from The Tempest in the Odessey and Oracle liner notes and Macbeth's "brief candle" in "Brief Candles."

Finally, I noticed the lyrics in one of the verses of "Let It Go":

I long to see you
Back again
In sunshine after
Summer rain
That washed away
The hurt and pain
So we would never know

It re-uses a phrase from the first line of "Beechwood Park" - "Do you remember summer days just after summer rain."  Not realizing this until just now made me feel pretty dumb.  It was literally a head-smack moment.