Just as one bad ending track can potentially spoil an album you'd been enjoying up till then, the disappointment felt when a song suddenly veers off from the melody/direction it had been following up to then, or ends suddenly or badly, can be really annoying. I know more than a few songs that I've really been getting into and then suddenly someone decided to change the whole direction and the song ends really badly. We looked in the first edition of this section --- months ago now --- at Meat Loaf's classic “Objects in the rearview mirror”, but a song I feel just loses it right at the end is the subject of today's feature.
Tearing at the faerytale
Mostly Autumn
Glass shadows (2008)
Written by Bryan Josh
The first song I heard from what was, at the time, the new album, I really loved this at first, and it gave me high expectations for the coming album. Those expectations were not entirely met, but that's a story for another day. I loved the way the song moved along from a gentle, plucked almost acoustic guitar intro into a full-blooded keys and strings melody, and after running for something like seven minutes it looks like it's just going to fade out, which would have suited me fine. A good ending.
But then from out of nowhere, a hard guitar sets up a repeating riff, and for me the ending is ruined. I don't know why they didn't let it just fade, but they seemed to want to change it at the last moment. The intrusion by the rocky guitar is unexpected, and quite incongruous: it just doesn't seem to fit at all, and it's not borrowed from any other part of the melody, so I really just don't get it. It just changes the whole feel of the song, and for me at any rate leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. It's almost like being told as a kid you were going to Disneyland, only to end up at the dentist! Well, maybe not that bad, but it is a major disappointment.