Dance Gavin Dance - Acceptance Speech Album Review: All Eleven Tracks Analyzed
7. Honey Revenge The second half of the album continues with an ostensibly lighthearted song, with lyrics that seem to tell the story of a father professing his dedication to his young daughter with the lyrics, "I will never let you leave my sight / I've been staying up lately / all night / making sure you get to bed safely / dreaming of when it will be you and me." The song uses the two singers as the two voices of the man's mind: Pearson, singing the man's seemingly responsible and loving conscious thoughts in clean voice and Mess aggressively yelping the man's dark inner desires. Halfway through the song, Mess screams the lyrics, "I've got the sickest picture of you in my mind / I get the strangest urges all of the time inside / take part in this demonstration / rope mixed with wine," revealing the protagonist in the lyrics to in fact be a mentally unstable man wishing to kidnap the object of his affections. These lyrics help to provide greater context to the ones that came before, especially the line, "Girl, then I swear I'll take you home / whether you want it or not / whether you like it or not," which at first listen, comes off as something an endearingly protective father would say to his daughter, but when sung sweetly once more at the end of the song by Pearson, unsettles the listener with its creepy new context. 8. Demo Team Dance Gavin Dance open track eight, the chugging, "Demo Team," with some experimental vocal touches. The song begins with thumping, stop and start blasts of hardcore drums and guitar while Mess's screams cut in and out with the abrupt bursts of music. Pearson's vocals enter shortly after, and are manipulated in a similar way. The band even utilizes the dreaded auto-tune for a line, but it fits within the context of the song, whose lyrics criticize those in the video game industry. Mess makes these sentiments clear with the line, "I did college / majored in smart / concocted ways to be useless and poor / successful could barely describe the shape of the infinite wisdom / I can spit from my mouth." With "Demo Team," the band has crafted another satisfyingly heavy song to compliment "Carve." 9. Death Of The Robot With Human Hair The band begin the album closing trio of songs with, "Death Of The Robot With Human Hair." The song starts with a guitar riff featuring one of Swan's most evocative guitar effects on the album, creating a sound similar to the over-exaggerated hydraulic noises robots made when walking in old science-fiction films. To its benefit, the song also features a winding, complex song structure and crisp sound production. After the intro, the song launches into a verse section controlled by Pearson's clean vocals but is soon blasted open by an outburst of hardcore intensity. The sound quality of the music catches the listener's attention with sharp attack. The kick drum hits with forceful, punchy thumps and the guitars slice and crunch cleanly, free of noise or feedback. Despite these positives, the song never rises to the complex heights it aspires to because of Pearson's immature sounding vocals and another hip-hop breakdown at the end of the song.