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Indie Rock Psych-Rock Singles

Who needs weed when you have “A Tip of the Hat?”

Release date: January 25th, 2019

Dan Ray February 6, 2019
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Who needs weed when you have “A Tip of the Hat?” February 6, 2019

Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).

Photo courtesy of Troubadour and the Sword

“A Tip of the Hat,” the newest single from a forthcoming EP by Troubadour and the Sword — a psych-rock project founded this past Halloween — is an incredibly layered, incredibly detailed soundscape that could easily be the backing track for a montage of the darkest days of Rick & Morty. It’s trippy, it’s wavy, it sounds full of corruption, and, just like Rick, it takes you by the hand and gently guides you down the alien-worm-infested rabbit hole.

The track starts with an ominous, organ-like synth intro, before Jacob Kelly’s vocals come in: “there’s a place evil goes that no one knows.” The melody is haunting as Kelly follows a sort of minor arpeggio on the “oh” sound of “knows,” creating a sense of a ghost encircling you in a haunted house or the wicked chill you feel when a Dementor comes to steal your soul. (This “oh” motif continues throughout most of the track, and it’s equally as excitingly disturbing each time.)

During the verse, different lines of drums, guitars, keys, and synths flow in and out of consciousness together. Each part seems to be totally unaware of the other tones surrounding it in space, yet they fuse together to create a wobbly universe. It’s almost reminiscent of an other-wordly “4:33,” by John Cage, in that the sounds all seem to be springing organically up from this world Troubadour and the Sword has created.

When the chorus comes in and Kelly chimes, “praise the earth,” it’s rather terrifying, because you’re not really sure which world he’s talking about. You want it to be this world that you’re…pretty sure…exists, but it sounds as if Kelly’s sprouting up from the ground like some kind of magic-mushroom-human-hybrid, wearing some kind of flower-petal crown a la The Queen in “A Bug’s Life.”

What this track really excels at, though, is keeping its listener interested. In the second verse, a screamo-esque layer of vocals is mixed in behind the main, hypnotizingly smooth vocal line, creating the sense that there’s evil lurking inside the narrator, just waiting to escape. The instrumentation in this track is also exceptionally well done: instead of keeping steady lines going throughout the track, itching for something exciting to do, a lot of the guitar and synth lines come in sporadically for added pizzazz, adding a punch here and there, while the drums (which are also interestingly diverse) and main synths keep you on the ride.

When the end of “A Tip of the Hat” rolled around, my initial reaction was, “what the fuck? No, I need more.” TATS holds its listener so tight on this journey — engrosses them so completely — that, as the final notes fade, it feels like Kelly has ever so lightly plucked your grasping fingers, one by one, from his spaceship, so that when he finally releases your hand, you don’t realize you’re floating out into space until it’s too late. It’s quiet and eerie, but also peacefully content. You want more — to understand — but you’re also still busy marveling at the experience you just had as you watch Kelly, flower-petal crown and all, slowly drift farther and farther away, until you can’t tell if that little white dot you’re peering at is Kelly, a star, or just a speck of dirt stuck outside of time.

A Tip of the Hat

A Tip of the Hat
9.5

Instrumentation

 9.7/10

Lyrics

 9.0/10

Variability

 9.9/10

Production

 9.5/10

Emotion

 9.5/10

Comments

Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).