I Attended A Portals Listening Event!

hey tarts! it’s been so long i can’t even why i called you tarts!

anyways, i attended one of Melanie’s listening events to hear Portals a week early last night, and thought I would share some thoughts and snippets with you!

*no, this is NOT a leak. Melanie held official listening parties all over the world on March 23rd at local record stores to preview the album early and it was open to the public. There were no rules about not recording or it being private, etc.

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Song Snippets

I only recorded a few songs and there was a good amount of people talking over them so there are only a few sections that are worth posting lol, but here they are!

VOID (verse 1)

SPIDERWEB (outro)

BATTLE OF THE LARYNX (verse 2) (and end of chorus)

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Album Thoughts & Information

Overall, I thought the album was very cohesive and put together without feeling like all the songs sounded the same, which a lot of artists struggle with.

SOUND

We know Melanie is known to often stick to electronic sounds and effects when it comes to her instrumentation, but strangely enough this album actually included a lot of more raw sounding elements with picked guitar, synths, and cleaner vocals. However, in other areas, the effects were even heavier than usual, with tons of layered and harmonized vocals and lots of reverb sounding effects, but it did not take away from Melanie’s voice whatsoever— which sounded amazing by the way.

TRANSITIONS

Another interesting thing I noted is that she jumped around in the songs a lot, almost in like a System Of A Down kind of way in which, she would start the song with one vibe, and then randomly switch to something completely different halfway through. (No, she was not screaming like SOAD does. I don’t think Melanie goes Metal is happening yet.)

So usually her songs are very much the same vibe throughout from the past few albums but these could switch up so fast. There were also very interesting and unique transitions between songs, with more frequent use of “strange” noises and such than previous albums in my opinion. We’ve always gotten that from Melanie, but I think this album definitely had more of it and we have never really gotten super prominent and flawless transitions between songs on her albums before. This one has lots.

LANGUAGE

Something else interesting is that I felt there was much less explicitness on this album! There were very few songs where I could outwardly notice a curse word or sexual reference, usually there are lots of course— but I think the material of this album went a lot deeper for her and she had less reason to use that kind of language. I will say though there is a song or two where everyone was like “ :frowning: oop-“ when it comes to that hahaha.

LOOK OUT FOR…

One of the coolest things I noted, which I will not be telling y’all about because I think you should experience it for yourself, but pay close attention to the beginning of the first song and the ending of the last song.. it brought the whole album together perfectly!

I also noticed a song (truthfully I cannot which) that had a lyric that reminded me a lot of Bittersweet Tragedy. I’m unsure if it was on purpose or a coincidence, but when the album is out, you guys let me know if you hear it too!

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Well, that’s all I have to say for now, tarts! And happy music video release day!! I hope you guys enjoy the snippets I got. The event was so much fun, I got a poster and stickers and wristband to it too🥰. The event itself was very chill and not overly crowded, it was perfect. I would absolutely recommend attending one of these events if any other artists you like hosts one in the future!

BYEEEE

#TartNews