The Doughboys - Melt
“Melt” is the second track on Crush by The Doughboys, and was not released as a single from it, for some strange reason. To me, the fact that it is the best song on the entire album seems blindingly obvious, but it’s also probably true that some of my favorite elements of it make it ill-suited to be a single. Don’t want to force the listening public to have to think too much. Or something like that.
Anyway, “Melt” starts with an uptempo riff, the whole band coming in at the same time, with singer and rhythm guitarist John Kastner’s guitar playing distorted chords in the left speaker while lead guitarist Jonathan Cummins lays down a melodic lead in the right speaker. The most interesting part of this intro riff is the way the guitars and the drums are actually playing in two different time signatures. The guitar lines are in 3/4, while the drum part is in 4/4, meaning that the guitars and drums subtly move in and out of time with each other. By the time the intro is over, they’ve come back into alignment and change into the first verse at the same time, but while the intro riff is playing, it adds a subtle but strange feel that you won’t even catch unless you’re listening closely.
When the verse starts, Kastner’s vocals are run through a small amount of distortion, which make his lyrics tough to understand. As far as I can tell, it’s a song about feeling abandoned by someone you rely on for support. One bit of the distorted first verse that I can definitely hear says, “You can wash my mouth out with soap,” while a line in the second verse says something “…makes incisions in the static charge behind my eyes.” I’m not sure what all of that means, though, so in the end I’m going by the song’s chorus, and really by the emotional feel communicated through the music. In the verses, the guitars drop out entirely, and a slightly distorted bassline carries the basic chord pattern underneath the equally distorted vocals.
It’s when the band transitions into the pre-chorus that “Melt” gets really interesting. Suddenly, the vocals are undistorted, and it’s bassist Peter Arsenault who is singing here. “Can I be so disenchanted? Everything’s so disconnected,” he sings. Then on the third line of the pre-chorus, he gets as far as “You can strike a match and…” Right there, only 3/4 of the way through the third line of the pre-chorus, drummer Paul Newman hits his snare with both of his drumsticks, cutting off the guitars and vocals mid-riff and creating a millisecond’s pause that is so brief as to be over before you’ve really registered it. And yet, it has a hugely powerful effect, especially when the whole band immediately launches into the chorus, John Kastner picking up on the sentence that Peter Arsenault started singing in the pre-chorus: “…burn me down! Watch me melt!” In the left speaker, his distorted rhythm guitar riffing is frantic and fiery, even as he sings high, clear notes in his excellent tenor voice. Jonathan Cummins’s lead guitar line matches both the intensity of the rhythm guitar riff and the melodic clarity of the vocal line.
However, I contend that what really makes this chorus work so dramatically and so well is the sudden transition from the pre-chorus. The standard formula of pop song construction, its emphasis on repetition and every song being put together the same way, is what makes it so easy for pop music to attain the mass appeal that it has. However, the expectations that these formulae create in pop music listeners also open up opportunities, in that the smallest subversion of those formulae can knock any listener for a loop. The Doughboys take advantage of this reality in perfect fashion on “Melt,” not only giving us a pre-chorus with three lines instead of four, but even shortening that third line at 3/4 the length any pop music fan would feel like it should reach. When Paul Newman brings that third line up short by slamming down on his snare, and the entire band then leaps straight into the chorus without further ado, it’s such a shock to the system that that first chord of the chorus seems to reach right out of your speakers and punch you in the face.
And it’s the most beautiful punch you’ve ever taken in your life, laced as it is with both punk intensity and the purest of pop hooks. The punk fans may have decided years before the release of Crush that The Doughboys had lost their edge, and certainly no one would argue for the music on this album to be included under the descriptor of “punk rock.” But by moving in style from melodic punk to something more easily described as power pop, The Doughboys also expanded their stylistic reach to allow them to do something like what they did on “Melt“‘s pre-chorus. They never would have attempted a transition like that on Whatever, probably wouldn’t even have been able to think of such a thing. Sometimes the early stuff a band creates is better; sometimes the initial inspiration provides a passion that forever dissipates once a band settles into longterm existence. But other times, it is artistic evolution that truly brings a band’s full potential to light. The Doughboys are a perfect example of the latter phenomenon, and that remains true even if no one outside of Canada remembers them anymore.
