Polacca
Polacca’s vocals are unexpected, almost jarring at points, both in timbre and in pitch. The song doesn’t adhere to any fixed scale, and I think the tempo speeds up at various points throughout the song. Total chaos begins around 6:30, where it’s hard to discern any steady pulse and all the tracks seem completely unrelated.
Spaced Cowboy
The yodeling completely caught me off guard on my first listen of this song, and it occasionally comes in out of tempo. When Sly is not yodeling, often times the backup singers come in a little bit after he does, just enough out of sync to be noticeable but not sound too messy. Around the 1:45 mark, the synthesizer is off beat as well. These are all discrepancies in time. Additionally, Sly’s singing borders on speech or laughter throughout the song, which I would also consider to be a discrepancy.
Something that interests me about participatory discrepancies is how they might differ in live performances versus studio recordings. It’s easy to unthinkingly speed up during a live performance or mismatch a little with other instruments, but this is usually avoided in studio recordings. I think when discrepancies are included in recordings, there’s a heightened sense of intention along with them. I read a little about the album this song is from, and it seems like most of the tracks were overdubbed rather than played simultaneously. This means that all the song’s “quirks” were likely put there on purpose.
Agua que va a caer
This song is like a musical solar system, in that all the instruments are interrelated, but are off spinning on their own, doing their own thing. The two drums are the most consistent element throughout the song, and even they don’t always match up. As different elements – lead vocals, a chorus, guitar, and bass – come in and out, they are never perfectly aligned with each other. But somehow it all works out!
