Background from the Band
“I Will Move On” is the last song on the upcoming concept EP, and the final chapter of the story. It again follows the same character, rising up above the negativity in their life and gaining the confidence to keep on going. This song is one of the heaviest on the record, bringing the sound back to that of our debut EP, The Black River. It is very modern hard rock, this time with a very imperial feeling to it.
Loud and aggressive guitar tones, soft and crisp acoustic and clean guitars, with powerful thrashing drums, eerie vocals and chilling harmonies are all mixed into one with this track. The verse takes you to what seems like a whole other dimension, a side of The Jailbirds we haven’t heard before. Acoustic guitar and Leslie speaker guitars duel side by side, with screaming leads echoing overtop.
We then are catapulted into the chorus with a dramatic drum roll, and saturated guitars sliding into the main riff. The dynamics really open up, and the band is playing at full force. The vocals are more forward in this section and the character is finding the way. The explosion of energy and strength in the chorus is a portrayal of the new found confidence our character is discovering.
I love a good classic rock-inspired song, so The Jailbirds keep drawing me back because they play with that nostalgic style so well.
Balancing the Instrumentals
I think what I enjoyed about this particular song is that it’s good at playing with a more minimalistic sound in the verses compared to the fuller sound of the chorus and the bridge.
One of the most significant issues that I have a lot of rock music is it feeling muddy because there’s a lot of distortion involved with the genre and loud instrumentation which can blend too much in the backing track. It’s a very fine balance between filling out the back of a track, with a rhythm guitar line or percussion, and another thing to have everything feeling as if it’s blending because there isn’t a balance between what should be focused on in the music and what is there just to fill in.
So I really love how drawn back the first verse of the song is with both the drums and guitars, and the vocal delivery.
I will say one thing about the balance of going from these minimalistic sections to the louder areas; I wish there were a better transition between the bridge section and the final chorus.
There’s an excellent quiet section that helps with the dynamics song, but it’s switches very abruptly back into the chorus, and there isn’t a switch up in how that chorus is arranged. It just feels a little bit jerky to go from this quieter section to this full section and not have a buildup of some kind or some element being pulled through both that quieter bridge and the chorus.
Distinctive Vocals
And of course, we’re going to have to talk about the vocals themselves partly because I’m a singer and always have something to say about vocals and because I think the vocal technique is really what makes or breaks doing a classic rock style song in modern music. It’s a very distinctive way of delivering the vocals that instantly connect to 70’s era rock bands.
I think they are done well in The Jailbirds.
I love how in this song we can hear both that loud head voice sound in the chorus parts but also a quieter and more gentle sound during the verses. It can be difficult in a rock song to be able to do softer vocals and not lose the tone that is so important to get this sound of rock music just right.
Rating:
Overall, I’m excited about what The Jailbirds are doing because I am such a huge classic rock fan and the fact that they can show off their own sound while still very much being aware of what classic rock is.
I think it’s a very good balance of being aware of stuff that has come before them without just copy and pasting someone else’s style. I don’t feel like they are trying to be a specific band from the 70s, but I know that they are fans of that era of music.
Check out my review of their song ‘Dull My Brain’ to learn more about their music!
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