"Madeline, Every Girl" - Cameron McGill & What Army
A truly wonderful song from beginning to end. But a funny thing: every time the tempo falters, because of how the song is constructed, I find myself almost annoyed because of how much I was digging the forward-moving energy that's now interrupted. And it happens in the chorus, just when I might be expecting more rather than less motion. But then each time the tempo picks back up with the new verse, I realize that maybe I'm enjoying the faster-paced section precisely because of the repeated way it pulls back. Life is like that too. Oh, and check out how, the second time we hear the chorus, McGill picks up the tempo before the end (2:00). Feels very satisfying somehow. But the third time is the best--he kicks it up for just a moment (3:22), and somehow that's most satisfying of all.
While Cameron McGill & What Army often play music with a definite folk-rock or folk-pop feel, "Madeline, Every Girl" is, in this age of micro-genres, maybe too straightforward for any workable label: it's just guitar and bass and drums playing together without any particular fuss or special flavor. Some songs depend upon their instrumentation and arrangement for their very existence, and other songs, like this one, exist so strongly as things unto themselves that you could probably play them on a toy xylophone and they would still shine through.
Cameron McGill is a Chicago-based singer/songwriter who released an album called Warm Songs for Cold Shoulders, his fourth, back in April on Parasol Records. "Madeline, Every Girl" is the a-side of a three-song digital single released last month called Two Hits and a Miss, which is available via iTunes. MP3 courtesy of Parasol.
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