There’s something badly wrong with this song. Very wrong.
How dare Sam Miller crowbar so much fun into something that only has a minute-long lifespan, just to end it all – just as I wanted it to fly further and higher – in a flurry of buzzing bass!
It reminds me of the sort of audacious track that Bernard Butler might have put on his debut solo album People Move On – if he’d only had the cojones to do so! Because, yes, it takes guts to air something like this.
Fair enough though, the video is merely a clip of the longer piece. The song kicks off with the kind of thumping drums and piano-y intro that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Beatles or early Bowie album. Then there are some female backing vocals, some acoustic guitars get themselves spanked, and THEN there’s some more bone-shattering bombast on the scale of ELO (at their most fearless) and just a bit of an edge to the lead vocal; which suggests that things could get dangerous if we’re not careful. It also sounds a bit like it could have been a track on REM’s Out of Time – were it not for the fluttering, whistle-y synth in the background.
Without wishing to get too meta about it all, Sam Miller is doing himself, and rather well – and hang the rest of us, as we should clearly be doing ourselves, too.
I have no idea what Miller set out to achieve with this – and care even less. It’s a big, brash mayfly of a tune, and makes its whopping great point before putting the cat out and turning off the lights. Epic, truncated fun!
Grab the project In One Place at a Time via Bandcamp. Find & follow Sam Miller on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram or visit his Website.
