Out of the Shadows

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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As part of my listening schedule, I listened to Colin Blunstone & Rod Argent's Out of the Shadows this morning, and I noticed a couple things about a few songs.

"Sanctuary"

The vocal effects in the third verse are what I noticed here:

When all around seems to be trouble
When life seems only to deceive
When nothing really seems to matter
And I look in desperation
For something I can believe

I'm not sure if it's Blunstone doing separate backing vocals or some echo on the last word or two in each line, but after "When all around seems to be trouble," there's a separate "trouble."  There's the same thing with "to deceive" and "to matter" in the next lines.

For "trouble" and "deceive," that extra word emphasizes the lyrics.  The "trouble" in the main lyric is centered, but the echoed "trouble" seems distant, panned left and right.  So, directionally, there really is "trouble" all around.  That effect also is either the cause of or takes advantage of the inversion in that line - how it's "all around seems to be trouble" rather than "trouble seems to be all around."  That effect wouldn't be achieved as well if "trouble" didn't end the line.

There's a similar thing with "deceive."  There's the "deceive" in the lyric, but also the echoed "deceive," which provides a sense of duplicitousness since there are two of them.

Argent's harmony comes in for the last two lines, and having an-other voice for the "desperation" emphasizes that feeling too.  It's as if more force is mustered coming down to the last hour.

"Baby Don't You Cry No More"

After the first line of the first verse ("I'm listening to that midnight whistle blow"), there are some glissandi in the guitar part, apparently a musical representation of the whistle.

"Love Can Heal the Pain"

The first two lines of this (as formatted in the liner notes) are:

You know love can conquer
Almost every thing my friend

I found this interesting not so much for the lyric itself, but that it's an altered version of the old phrase amor vincit omnia, which - translated - is the title of "Love Conquers All" from the New World album, from about a decade before Out of the Shadows.  "Love Can Heal the Pain" was written by Argent; "Love Conquers All" by Blunstone.