Quote:
Originally Posted by David
I think he has (or had) great skill in crafting a track out of a song, for the two are not different terms for the same thing. That's what I like (or liked) about him. He had marvelous musical ideas & the craftsmanship & intellectual intensity to execute those ideas, whether his blueprint was fully there beforehand or whether he kept refashioning what he had done until, like a sculpture, it had taken the shape it was meant to take.
As an orchestrator, Lindsey is a miniaturist. He puts each element of the track under a magnifying glass, expanding & sometimes distorting its place in the whole. He uses a single filigree -- perhaps a short motive or even a single note on a keyboard, a guitar, or a found sound -- & by embedding it just so within the whole, alters its emotional & musical landscape. Take the relatively simple motive of the ascending-descending pentatonic scale in GYPSY, which transforms a straightforward mid-tempo rocker into a gossamer web of longing with a simple leitmotiv that carries the listener into the nether reaches of his imagination.
I also like the personal style with which Lindsey plays (or played) his electric guitar. His messy picking gave these old pop & rock songs a kaleidoscopic effect -- like shards of colored glass within a prism. Lindsey worked in Technicolor.
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Daivd, you're a hoot. But you're actually right on.
Sometimes I wonder about Lindsey's reasoning behind speeding up his voice or his guitar tracks. The temptation is to think that he's trying to make himself seem more skilled at guitar or make his voice sound younger again. But I really do think that he just has a certain sound or effect in mind and he uses his studio know-how to find a way to achieve it. And if that's the case, I greatly respect him and his vision for songs.
For example, the vocals is Bel Air Rain sound like he still has that young, flexible voice from the seventies, but in reality they are sped up a bit to raise the pitch. The result is a frantic, energetic sounding vocal that is just beyond humanly possible. It's subtle but it makes a great effect.