Nobody saw this coming

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Unseen wrote:

Since The Warning has dumped the full Teatro Metropolitan concert, that means that unless they have more current (new) material waiting in the wings, we’re about to go through a drought of TW material. They have started to get an unbelievable amount of reactions and/or reviews on Youtube. It used to be one every few days, then every other day or so, then maybe three or four a day, and it’s become around a dozen a day or so now. They’ve become a real Youtube “thing.”

I listened to few reaction videos before TW took over my brain, now I’ve listened to several dozen. I much prefer watching the true, first time reactions, and it’s especially fun to watch them turn from skeptical to amazed within minutes. I’ve seen jaws drop in disbelief, sometimes maybe dramatized as part of the reaction, but usually it looks genuine to me.

My favorite reviewers are those on their subsequent reactions while becoming more familiar with TW, and who have an obvious kind of musical expertise and/or personal experience in their own band. They can explain more than what’s typically enjoyable about TW, e.g. Pau’s supernatural drum + singing, Ale’s bass lines, surprising creativity wrt song structure, melody, harmony, rhythms, performance techniques, and so on. Of course I watch for the moment they react or fail to react during my goosebump moments,  e.g. when Pau screams in Evolve, or during some of her drum fills.

I learn a lot from the real musical experts, while I can still appreciate some of the first time reactors who are genuinely shocked by what they hear and see. To be honest, geekwise, I’ve even listened to and learned from vocal coaches who can break down the physiological mechanics of singing at the operatic level… which obviously apply to Dany, but Pau is not far behind. And they do still hear Ale sing when her voice is mixed in at very low volume, at times that I wouldn’t have otherwise noticed.

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 3 days ago by  PopeBeanie. Reason: very late edit: removed the duplicate quote block

[PopeBeanieModerator]

A lot of people feel different things during a reaction, so I’ve picked one that I’m guessing most people can appreciate.

Side-note, very few reviewers point out that the intro to this song, also replayed a few times in the song, is in 7/8 time, which is unusual. If you want to learn to follow it, count the beats one through seven, four times. Other songs in 7/8 Led Zeppelin’s The Ocean, Foo Fighter’s Times Like These, Pink Floyd’s Money, and others.

[UnseenParticipant]

@ PopeBeanie

Kudos for detecting that offbeat time signature.

Well, with all of their material out now, and unless they are ready to release new material, we will be forced to covering extra material for a while: reactions, reviews, interviews, tributes, question and answer video, funny moments, etc.

Here is a reaction from one of my favorite reactors. She reacts very emotionally to their songs and recently attended a live show by The Warning in their area. When I’m Alone opens with a lament that’s super effective. Dany wrote it, BTW, when she was only 14 and attending the Berklee School of Music’s summer program for younger musicians. Watch Ashlena’s reaction. Her reactiono was much like mine.

Here is a tribute to Ale, the bass player. The general public give little attention to bassists, treating them as roughly equivalent to tambourine shakers. But especially in a trio the bass player and drummer often have to hold down the fort when the lead player/singer stops performing. And one thing about this trio is that the NEVER EVER sound thin. Ale and Pau make up one of the best rhythm sections in rock.

Ale was about four feet tall when they started and now, assuming her sisters are of normal height (5’5″ or 5’6″ for Pau 5’7″ or 5’8″ for Dany), she’s pushing 6′ tall. In an interview when the girls were asked what they think they’d be doing if they weren’t musicians, her sister both said Ale would be a fashion model. She’s got the height, the figure, and a sublimely gorgeous face so, yeah, she coulda been a model.

[UnseenParticipant]

LOL

My prior post was made as the lunch hour approached and I neglected to do a read through for errors or style issues, and it shows.

My apologies. I’m really not totally illiterate.

[UnseenParticipant]

My favorite TW music video might be a surprise. It’s a version of Money done earlier than their Teatro Metropolitan concert, back when they were opening for The Foo Fighters.

I like it because it’s the one “modern period” video in which Dany is the cute one. Normally, Pau is the cute one. All three of the sisters are pretty, each in their own way. Normally, I’d say Pau is cute, Ale is beautiful, and Dany is the hot one.

Cuteness is generally associated with youth and with having a baby-like look. A round face and big eyes. And while Ale fits that description, she is by far the most classically beautiful of the three. As her sisters have stated, she coulda been a model in another life. That sort of beauty is never cute. It’s too mature to be cute. Which is strange: she’s the baby of the band.

Now, I had a business photographing pretty girls for about fifteen years and I thought a lot about beauty as I did so. My highest category of beauty was “So beautiful she’s painful to look at.” I meant by that, a female whose beauty was so transcendent, it seemed beyond my mortal grasp, filling me with an ineffable and almost tragic sense of longing and loss. Ale is somewhere in that range of cool and distant beauty. Strangely, of the three, she comes across as the most womanly and, in one sense of the word, “mature.”

Pau is, as I said, the cute one. On the stage, behind the drum set, her pigtails or ponytail flailing in the air, her round face so expressive, or up front singing Narcisista in a plaid miniskirt and knee socks, she embodies the concept of youthful cuteness.

But Dany is the hot one, the fiery one. This is on ample display in those videos when Three Days Grace invited her onstage to be featured during their performance of Painkiller, a song I don’t think I’d ever heard before, but which has become one of my own faves. Her performance is absolutely explosive.

However, there’s something about her performance in this version of Money that is cute and precious and irresistible. For one thing, there are her facial expressions. For another the loving way she looks when turning her head toward Ale. I want to give her a hug!

Anyway, here it is: My favorite The Warning video…

[UnseenParticipant]

My favorite reactor reacting to Dust to Dust. It was her second reaction, the first being to Animosity, which got her very interested in the band. With this reaction, the first time she realized that The Warning has a second lead singer in their drummer, Pau, she became a true fan, in the full sense of being fanatical about the band.

BTW, Ashlena is tangentially in the business. She does voice over in local ads (car dealerships and stuff like that). Other than that, she’s also a full-time mom.

As I said before, I love her spontaneous and emotional responses to the songs.

[UnseenParticipant]

For the true fan (PopeBeanie, at least), the sisters do a 1-hour long interview. One gem: They ARE in the process of recording their next album. Ale is fascinating, the way she defers to her sisters about 98% of the time:

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Thanks, that’s the most I’ve learned about them in an hour piece.

I struggle to hear more from Ale, and this confirms how she’s adjusted so well to her older sisters talking over her so much! I’ve been there myself, often just giving up, but I never see Ale giving up. She keeps looking up to her older sisters, while deferring to them. I’m speculating now that she also intentionally defers most of the lead singing to them, too.

I personally appreciate much more when other musicians/performers are asking the questions and can interact more at each other’s level.

 

[UnseenParticipant]

PopeBeanie wrote:

Thanks, that’s the most I’ve learned about them in an hour piece. I struggle to hear more from Ale, and this confirms how she’s adjusted so well to her older sisters talking over her so much! I’ve been there myself, often just giving up, but I never see Ale giving up. She keeps looking up to her older sisters, while deferring to them. I’m speculating now that she also intentionally defers most of the lead singing to them, too. I personally appreciate much more when other musicians/performers are asking the questions and can interact more at each other’s level.

Ale may simply be an introvert with two highly extroverted sisters. Following her over the years, she went through a phenomenal growth spurt that included growing very, well, womanly. She has developed a spectacular figure (the opening to the Alessia Cara + The Warning video) shows her backlit revealing an almost unbelievable hourglass figure.

Anyway, like a lot of girls whose body is changing on them in drastic ways, she went through a very awkward few years when she clearly wasn’t very comfortable on stage. Luckily, she’s past it now and obviously has a ball up there on stage.

[UnseenParticipant]

Often the offbeat performances are fascinating like the radio station promo where Pau takes over the vocal lead on Money presumably to rest Dany’s voice and sounds just like her!

So here Dany sings lead on Martirio in a live-in-the-studio performance for Sirius radio:

Poor Pau is stuck in a separate room off to the side.

Here is an unplugged version of Martirio for a Mexican TV station:

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 2 days ago by  Unseen.

[UnseenParticipant]

Big news for The Warning: They will be featured during this year’s MTV Awards!

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Another late night. But I learned more technically and musically from this guy (see below), again. I noticed months ago and really appreciated subtle “bends” in Dany’s guitar riff in Narcisista, which was also consistent in each performance. Out of several reactors I’ve watched, the reactor below is the first one who’s pointed out that subtle bend. Observations of subtle stuff like this tell me he knows what he’s talking about, and I can keep learning from him.

Unseen wrote:

Big news for The Warning: They will be featured during this year’s MTV Awards!

Nice.

I don’t understand yet why Rick Beato’s not made a video on TW, yet. But he played judge on someone else’s show that featured a fan remix contest on one of The Warning’s songs, plus the band hung around for part of the show to listen in, so I know he’s familiar with them. That’s when I learned how important record producer David Bendeth has been to them. David said that he likes to strictly control the production, but in the case of TW he had to listen to everything they insisted on. (Beato has interviewed David Bendeth. While at the same time, he pushed them to accomplish things they didn’t at first believe they could.

Reaction Video, to Pau, lead singing up front on Narcisista

[UnseenParticipant]

I also like that guy’s reviews even if he isn’t my favorite reactor. Since you like technical reviews, I wonder if you’re familiar with this reactor:

I like the more emotional reactors like Ashlena and some others. BTW, there is a reaction by A Musician and A Jerk where the female of the pair, who makes a show of never being impressed, was so impressed by Dany in one reaction that she dryly said, “I’m not a lesbian but I would be for her.” LOL

Also like you, I’m hopeful Rick Beato soon addresses our beloved band. I’ll be interested to hear what he has to say, because the Villarreal sisters, while good, are not at the top of the game on any of their instruments, so his praise would have to be more on their idiosyncratic song structures, their lyrics, and their fabulous live performances.

BTW, here’s a recently-discovered live performance of Evolve taken, I believe, from their gig opening for The Foo Fighters. Also, note that it’s on the MTV channel. Is MTV getting interested in music videos again?

[UnseenParticipant]

Looks like our favorite band will be opening for Guns ‘n’ Roses again. (article)

This band makes no bones about the importance of family in their lives. Their success, in large part, comes from the love and support of a pair of exceptional parents. Two family portraits from about 2 years ago. Looking at their mom, it’s clear which side of the family the girls got their good looks from!

• This reply was modified 2 weeks ago by  Unseen.

[UnseenParticipant]

Not all reactions to The Warning are abject genuflections. Not that he pans The Warning, but he doesn’t feel they are quite as important as the members of The Warning Army think they are.

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