In last week's song fight for "Too Far Away" I ended up with 5 votes, or a tie for 8th place out of 25, which to me was not a bad finish at all. In retrospect it was kind of a crappy song, at least crappily recorded and sung. I got a wide assortment of reviews in the forums: "Like a house with good bones but shingles that are peeling." "this is pretty neat." "Suckage." Several people commented on the part where the loud pop-rock verse suddenly broke down and was replaced by a quiet acoustic section, then abruptly went back to the first part. When I make a pop song I try to include at least one thing, whether subtle or radical, to separate it from every other pop song. I always feel guilty about failing to surprise the listener in the least and clinging to the pop formula, even if maybe sometimes, if the song is good, the formulaic is more satisfying. But any time you make the listener think they're going to hear a standard pop song, and then dump a big pile of noise on it or something, it's going to be polarizing. You get comments like "what's with the sudden breakdown into the acoustic part?" and it seems like they just don't get it. It's like criticizing "4:33" because there's not enough going on. But in the end you have to acknowledge that putting something experimental in a pop song doesn't automatically make it better--it can make it better or worse, and probably more often the latter. But if you can make it better and interesting, then you've really got something special.

Anyway, this week we've got a collaboration between the zero effect, Radio North, and Maya, for the song Galaxies Floating On a Dark Matter Stream. The recording process crossed state lines and creative boundaries as we recorded the guitar, drums, and principal vocals in New York, shipped it off to State College, PA for bass, lead guitar, tambourine, and the all-important handclaps, before it came back to NYC for mixing. We're all really happy with the result, a pretty straightahead 70's power pop number, and think the prospects are good.