"Lonely Hard Road"

I was thinking about "Lonely Hard Road" yester-day and realized that the shift to a slower tempo part-way through the song (at about 2:39) lends a sense of the narrator's weariness.

"Lonely Hard Road"

When I listened to Argent last week, I noticed a couple small things in "Lonely Hard Road."

"Away" in the line "Like a fool, I made her run away" is sung with a melisma (F F Eb C), musically giving a sense of movement or distance.

"Walking" in the line "So I'll just keep walking" in the slower section at the end is also sung with a melisma (F Eb Eb), musically giving a sense of movement but also of that continuing.

"Lonely Hard Road"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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Collection Audit:

This morning I listened to Argent's eponymous and debut album, and I noticed something about "Lonely Hard Road."  During the first half of the song, the backing vocals are panned to the right, but after the tempo change at about 2:39, when they appear again, they're panned to the left.  If those backing vocals are assumed to be static; their apparent shift from right to left is actually the movement of everything else to the right.  So between those shifting backing vocals and that tempo change, the singer/speaker seems to have made some progress in his walk.

"Lonely Hard Road"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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I listened to Argent again this morning, and I noticed these piano chords at the end of "Lonely Hard Road."  There're some fairly interesting dynamics involved.  It just goes between C minor and F major, but the C minor is forte where the F major is piano.  Since it's only two chords, I didn't feel that it was worth it to record an example.