by Patrick Pilch (@pratprilch)
Sometimes I feel good but sometimes I feel like garbaggio. Right now, I feel the latter. The new Proper Nouns track is a soothing balm for these garbaggio times, as my roommate sets off the fire alarm for the third time this week. “Redeeming Qualities” is a crazy song, I really like it! The opening riffs never hint toward the track’s ending. Kinda-Americana intro chords, an upbeat punk chorus, a breakdown that sounds like the end of the movie, and it all connects under three minutes! “Redeeming Qualities” combines clever songwriting with a sharp blend of genre between Spencer Compton’s charismatic vocals and Proper Nouns’ top notch instrumental breaks. Ted Vigneau’s cello rounds out the back end of the track and it's really nice when the strings make appearances in the post-chorus and at the end of the song. Speaking of post-chorus, I think Spencer Compton sets it up perfectly with that “uh-huh.” Singing “uh-huh” and making it sound cool: not an easy thing to do, folks!
I try to avoid making comparisons but there’s a lot of great inspiration happening behind Proper Nouns’ sound and songwriting: Prefab Sprout, Mark Mulcahy, The dBs, but also like, Wire, Thin Lizzy and Fountains of Wayne. But in the end the song surpasses mere comparisons, plus I bet the band loves pop music and a lot more bands than the six listed here. This is the second single from Feel Free and I very much want to hear what’s on the other side of “Known Unknowns.” Feel Free is out 4/23 via Phone Booth Records. Listen to “Redeeming Qualities” below:
Speaking about the track, the band shared:
““The differend,” a term made up by French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard in his 1983 book of the same name, means a conflict so irreconcilable that its opposing parties can’t even come to an agreement on rules for communicating their disagreement.
“Redeeming Qualities” is something of a psychopolitical treatise flooded with philosophical references that tackles this idea of the differend. In that way it’s loosely akin to songs like Scritti Politti’s “Jacques Derrida,” Billie Eilish’s “Therefore I Am,” or Elliott Smith’s “Either/Or” (the song and the subsequent album title).”