Dennis Field

I’m looking forward to hearing your other music. I enjoy your style. If you have not already check out Spencer Saylor’s stuff on here. You guys have a very similar feel to your music. http://frettie.com/members/profile/25

Dick Plunk

I think your writing is very creative. This song has so many things going for it - a really neat, lazy guitar groove, a simple but moving melody, and lot of story packed into sparse, clever lyrics. The one word start to each verse really works. And lines like: “the lines of communication have been severed with a butter knife” are so good. My only critique would be the that the line ” I can’t get over your face” sounds kind of shallow to me compared to all the other great lines in this song.

Another good song from Andrew Bashaw !

JT Hillier

Good tune man, this song has such a great natural feel. Musically speaking, melody lines from verse to prechorus to chorus, chord construction and execution it’s just a great sounding song, and the lead section sounds really solid with the vocal refrain in the backdrop. This was just a really really solid musical performance and composition on your part.

To critique, I initially had some mixed feelings about some of the lyrics but they ultimately won me over, like the doubtin abbey line, the butterknife reference etc but as you said this is a “naively optimistic” song so I think that it ultimately works and is just you doing you and being creative, maybe just be aware that fun and kinda cheesy wordplay like this could be a turnoff to music snobs and haters (but you know, haters gonna hate anyway). I do think some of the lines are difficult to understand, ‘We both want out of it but not out of eachother” I think could be worded differently, kind of sounds like a sexual reference lol. Sometimes we have to be careful that we’re not just throwing words into phrases to help us shape our melody lines, words have to be more than notes. I think you have some nice lines here don’t get me wrong but I think lyrically there could be some improvement in word choice, sentence structure and phrasing.

Overall, you have a really great sound man and your very very talented. I look forward to hearing more hopefully soon.

Joey Hendrickson

Stream of Consciousness:

I like that guitar melody.
Opening line is great.  “Doubt.  It creeps into our mind.”
I missed the conclusion of first verse stanza.
“But not out of each other, just out of this mess.” 
Chorus first three lines are nice.
I like the O-K melody.
Jason Mraz feel.
“Shout but you can’t hear me.”
Why butter knife?
“Ouch, this feeling is painful”
Why save your life?
Chorus melody is attention grabbing.
Bridge
“I can’t get over your ... face?”
We’ll be okay.  Nice lead guitar melody.
That main guitar line is awesome.
No better way to end it.  Nice work on producing it

Andrew Bashaw

Thanks for the feedback and critiques, all!!

Good points about the line “I can’t get over your face” being more superficial than the rest of the lyrics. I try to stay away from superficial lyrics whenever I can, and that was definitely a throwaway line that I could work on and find something more significant.

JT, glad the tongue-in-cheek wordplay won you over in the end. I am working on becoming a better lyricist, I’m the first to admit that’s not my forte. The line “not out of each other, just out of this mess” is suggesting that we could just walk away and it’d be fine, but we don’t want “out of each other” entirely in that way… just the mess we’re in. Hopefully most people wouldn’t take that as a sexual reference, haha, but your point is valid, and it’s definitely something to keep in mind while writing lyrics. Thank you for your comments, man!

Joey, thanks for the encouragement. The conclusion to that stanza is “we’re both doubtin’ so much, we must live in ‘doubtin abbey’”... ha ha cheesy pun. The butter knife was chosen for a couple reasons. The first is that a butter knife is duller than a pocketknife or something, suggesting the cutting of lines being less ‘clean’, ya know? Like they were just sawed at with a butter knife. Also because butter knives seem less threatening and more household/friendly, which is just more juxtaposition/irony in the situation being presented. Sometimes I like writing vague/unusual lines like that that I know why I chose the words I did, but the listener may not entirely, so they can draw their own meaning from it. The “save your life” line refers to knowing just how you’d help that person but being unable to due to the circumstances. The song isn’t about a traditional breakup, it’s about being in the middle of awkward screw-ups and failures leading to a complicated situation in which neither party knows exactly how to fix the tangled mess. It’s not life threatening, just uncomfortable.

again, thanks for the comments, I appreciate them all!!