“Good Karma” – N’T
A concise, chuggy piece of electro-glam (or some such thing), “Good Karma” is one of those songs with a moment—a precise juncture at which the ear surrenders to the music, and everything is okay with the world. An effective moment, repeated each time it comes up (typically in a chorus but not always), extends its blessing both forward and backward, granting a kind of giddy grace to an entire song.
The (now that I think about it) appropriately titled “Good Karma” has its moment beginning at around 1:01, in the second half of the chorus, when Scott French, N’T’s mastermind, sings, “Don’t freak out,” with the “out” stretched to three syllables, describing a descending line equivalent to sol-fa-mi in the familiar do-re-mi scale. This is a basic and eminently satisfying progression, but any effort I attempted (and now edited out) to explain why became quickly labored and complicated. Music is much simpler than words. Listen and smile.
French drums and writes songs for the Philadelphia band the Swimmers; as N’T—apparently we are to say “N apostrophe T”—he has issued an album called The Color Code, which he wrote, recorded, mixed, mastered, etc., by himself. It was self-released last month. You can download the album via his bandcamp page, for whatever price you’d like to pay. Thanks to Scott for letting me host this one.
Fingertips 