A perfect circle released their first studio album, Mayor Denom's in the summer of 2000. I was in high school, I heard Judith on the radio, and I was absolutely in love with it. So I bought Mayor Denom's on CD, and the whole thing was just different. I remember just being so stricken by the exotic scales, and I'd never heard Maynard James Keenan's voice before I hadn't been introduced to tool. Most of a perfect circle's songs are written in a six, eight, or three, four time signature, which is kind of like a waltz. And I really hadn't heard that type of meter in the music that I was listening to at the time. Another thing I was really stricken by was the guitars, because they were so textured and very vocal, you know, they really sung, they really soared, and they were creative. I just found the whole album to be so beautiful, and tender at times, but also really powerful, and even desperate. And so, for the month of January, I want to analyze the entire album, three tracks at a time, because these songs have been haunting me for years. There is just so much compositional gold. So I learned that the musical compositions are written by guitarist, Billy Howard L, who was a former guitar technician for Nine Engineers, tool, and a few other bands. And originally, they wanted Elizabeth Frazier from the cocktail twins to sing on the album, but she wasn't available. And Billy and Maynard were becoming friends at the time, and so I guess he shared his demos with Maynard, and he said, wow, I could really hear myself singing on these songs. So basically, Billy wrote like the musical compositions and arranged them, and then Maynard wrote the vocals and the lyrics. I was reading on the a perfect circle fan wiki that most of these songs on this album are dedicated to people that Maynard knew personally. Judith, his mom, Ren Holder for Danny Loner, and then Magdalena, Brenna, Rose, Orestes. I don't know if he knows anybody named Orestes. Of course, that's like a Greek mythical figure. But still, it's a name. Mayor Denom's is French for Sea of Names. And apparently, the symbols on the cover, and I don't know what language it is, but they apparently translate to the waterfall of first names. If you're new to my channel, welcome. I'm not really a lyric analyst, but I will try my best to tie the musical themes I'm hearing to the lyrical themes. I would describe the first three tracks of this album as having some shared DNA. They all seem kind of primal and animalistic and even ritualistic. I'm just going to be blunt. I think the song is about trying to fill the void with sex as it consumes you. I think the song is in B flat minor, or more specifically, B flat Dorian, which is a really beautiful mode that we'll go into in a little bit. And the time signature is 6'8", but the intro uses 6'8". Either way, he's phrases. Everything is sort of in all because of three. I think this is important not just for the themes in this song of cycles and circles, but also because this is a signature sound of a perfect circle. It really sets it apart. And I think it gives the music kind of an organic lilt, a bit of a sentimentality. The kind of dancing that would accompany rhythms in three feels a lot more ritualistic and primal to me. Half of the time I'm listening to a perfect circle I'm imagining some kind of creature of the earth like dancing around a fire, you know. Things that go in threes, I think, have an inherent cyclical nature to them because three is uneven. So it feels like there's always this forward momentum. It's trying to find some kind of stability and it just kind of keeps tumbling forward. In the first verse and also in the second verse too, but it's really, really audible in the first verse. You can hear the lead guitarist playing this beautiful ascending and then descending arpeggio. And it's on the 16th notes and they're in multiples of three. One, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, three, four, five, six, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, I love this so much. It's one of my favorite parts of the song. And in the first verse, it's highly distorted or somehow it's affected. And so the harmonics in the notes are getting really brought out, which really obscures and confuses the actual pitch of the notes. It's just sort of a feeling of rushing up and coming down over and over and over again. Maybe like a waterfall of names. When you watch it live, you can actually hear the notes a little bit better and it's exquisitely beautiful. It's difficult for me to hear the lower parts of this arpeggio, but what I do here is on the top. Just by itself, maybe you can hear that there's tension in that. That's not just like a major chord. It's not like it's got some kind of wanting. And one of the things that's interesting about this to me is the top three notes. This type of chord is a very unstable sounding chord. It sounds so open and empty. This is kind of made up of fourths, which is an interval that's not particularly big or small. And it's not particularly stable or unstable. It can kind of shape shift depending on the context. But when you stack them like that, it's disorienting and one of the most beautiful ways imaginable. And Maynard also sings in cycles of three, although that is not unique to this song. It's just something that he does. In fact, it's not even unique to this band. So Maynard's singing in cycles of three, while the meter is in cycles of three, you might think they kind of line up. But I think most of the time he's singing in cycles of three that are in opposition to the main meter of the song. Literally when he sings in cycles in circles, he's singing in a pattern of three over a different pattern of three. And so they are creating sort of a polyrhythm together. So there's a feeling of... Before I continue breaking down the song in terms of its themes, I just want to make a few comments about Maynard's singing. I think Maynard's voice reminds me of a violin or a stringed instrument, actually probably more like a viola, given his range, in that he kind of swells. The way that he swells into notes and hits them and backs off of them, there's, it just, it mimics like the, the motion of bowing. He also has this sort of dramatic liquidity vibrato that reminds me of a string player, like, hmm, hmm. The other thing I've noticed about his singing is that it's very melismatic, and melismas are when you sing one syllable across multiple notes. So when he sings, hello, or temporarily, this is like a signature thing that he does in, again, all his bands. Melismatic singing is often found in Gregorian chant, and Torah chanting, and Arabic music, and even Celtic music. But my point is that it's not a modern thing, you know, it comes from long, long ago, and it's also very expressive. It's a way of decorating and exploring an area of tones, okay, back to the song. So one of the themes or the feelings, I guess, I pick up from the song, and also the lyrics help with this for sure, is sort of this like predatory animalistic primal feeling. The first thing that gives me this feeling is his vocal melody in the verse, which is in the Dorian mode. And Dorian itself comes with all sorts of connotations, at least for me personally. I associate it with gay lick folk music and pagan folk music. It's like minor, but it has one note that's higher. And so every time you hit that note, there's like a little bit of a lift, a little bit of light coming through the trees, and it creates some sort of like mystery.It's not so definitively cold and dark. It's like, hmm, what? Ooh, it makes you want to lean in Right there. Another thing that makes this feel kind of predatory So every time it just kind of feels like these like soft slow steps of someone hunting you now the bass is doing something so cool which makes things feel empty and hollow to me which is that at first there is no bass I mean, I'm talking about after the intro when we're in the verse and we just hear Maynard and this cyclical guitar and then the bass comes in and it comes in on the second half of the verse So you're already left feeling weightless and empty for the first part. We all expect a low-end in a song Especially a song like this and with an intro that did have a low-end, so there is a feeling like something's been removed So you feel that suspended feeling, that empty feeling, and then the bass comes in just for a moment to tease you with then leaves comes back in When the chorus hits and Maynard sings screaming feed me here, filming up again He's singing the highest note he sang by far so far because it's higher There's a sense of desperation to that not to mention what's underneath it when he sings feed me is a note that creates tension with feed me that intervals called the major seven and it's extremely tense Then there's a little bit of a resolution before Goes back to another major seventh in this way there's never really a resolution you always feel Wanting more and the chord progression is also doing that to you because if we're in B flat minor The chords that we hear in the chorus don't ever play B flat minor We are expecting that the chord progression is going to go back to B flat minor because that's where we've been We have that expectation of returning home, but we don't While he's singing this the guitar is doing kind of another sort of cyclical feeling descending arpeggio Can't exactly tell again what happens. There's a lot of delay on it the first notes are And then I would guess maybe go or but it's just sort of decorating this chord Which is an inverted seventh chord and seventh chords inherently have a feeling of Fordum momentum. They are not settled typically and that first note it's playing F is the same note that may not singing creating tension with the bass The guitar in this chorus almost sounds like a second individual to me another melody another Person or a force that is trying to assert itself because it can kind of stand alone But if you just focus on it you can hear and follow it and it's very Expressive and it sticks with you like a good melody would the only part that's hard to parse is of course the very quick Tumble down like trying to assert myself but falling and crumbling in the process like a ribbon unraveling Maybe this other individuals trying to not trying to escape and not be consumed or it's a part of him That's trying to escape and not be consumed When the verse comes back in then no longer are we left with this sort of intermittent unsatisfying Be flat in the bass coming in and out now we have a full on chord progression with the full rhythm guitar section backing it up and the chord progression is awesome It's really really satisfying the guitars are just playing power chords, but Maynard's voice is often filling in The gaps left in the power chords to create a full major or minor chord Not there, but here So so gorgeous and that's what that's what Dorian does Dorian sounds like it's minor until That raised sixth makes that chord major so it's just super super pretty It's a great chord progression. This is a pattern. I've noticed in a lot of songs. I love you got your one chord moving down to the flat seven which is such a great dramatic awesome chord then to the surprise major four is so beautiful But taking away the satisfaction of arriving there by going to the kind of sad sounding but bitter sweet major flat three chord And that's the chord that we stay on when we move into the bridge and when we're here This sounds very much like for a moment. We're exploring E flat Lydian, which is a different mode and this mode sounds a lot more It doesn't sound powerful to me. It sounds vulnerable or maybe we're seeing the The force you're seeing the tender side of it the wounded side of it But this is really just a very short respite before we move back into the very powerful B flat Dorian sound It's time for this to be over this endless feeling of just always needing to fill the void when this happens We hear a very special kind of chord called a suspended chord and the way it's arranged is in spread position Meaning it's really been sort of pulled apart So it might sound like this That's a great sound This is called a sus to a suspended second I'm not really going to go into what that means right now But essentially it's like we've blown past the boundaries of an octave And gone just above it being suspended right above where we feel we belong It's a little destabilizing but oh, it's so so beautiful and the guitarist Use is this chord to walk down the chord progression. I say the guitarist. I mean the lead guitarist. So we hear Instead of just power chords or triads or anything like that opted for this voicing and this voicing to me feels empty It already feels a little empty if it were just a power chord which is root fifth and octave Because we're missing the third the third is what makes it a major minor chord So there's already a feeling of incompleteness But then you make it even more incomplete by spacing out the top three notes even more to create more spaceCorus kind of comes back for the last two repetitions. Maynard starts to harmonize with himself. And this is another example of where I feel we can actually feel the hollowness getting filled up. So he's harmonizing with himself in fifths. So fifths, it's a pretty big interval. It's kind of past half way in terms of the spacing between an octave. So it's a little bit big. And when you harmonize with yourself in fifths, you leave out the important information of whether or not the chord that you're singing in is major or minor. Some people actually say don't harmonize in fifths. It doesn't sound good. I strongly disagree. And this is one of those examples where it really, really works. But then you'll hear he switches to harmonizing with himself in thirds, which is more traditional. And it almost like makes more sense to our brains. But listen to when he changes over. Actually, I misspoke. He's harmonizing with himself with fourths and fifths. There's a fourth. Here we have parallel fifths. They're moving by the same distance down and they're both perfect fifths. And that creates lo and behold, another sus too. That's nice and spread out. Then he switches. He ends up with this higher harmony temporarily, both with a melisma, but then he goes to harmonizing in parallel thirds with himself. And that's actually how the song ends. Him singing a third with himself and on the A flat chord. Remember, the song isn't B flat. So this, you know, it self feels empty and incomplete because we never get to return to home. That's where things are supposed to go. I love it when musicians do that. That is such a flagrant violation of our expectations and it's always so exciting and emotionally meaningful. And I think this track is about desiring a person or maybe even a thing so much that you will completely sacrifice your sense of self for it. This song is in C sharp. And I've noticed a lot of a perfect circle songs are in C sharp. In APC, we tune down to C sharp at all the strings are down three half steps like this. But it's really cool in this song because you can hear the bass at the very beginning playing a really low C sharp that just rattles you. There are quite a few different scales that are being explored in this song to the point where it's like, is it even worthwhile thinking of it that way? And I'm not really sure, but there are a few parts that have sort of the sound of a certain scale. That sounds fairly unusual to me. So if I had to take that part of the song and make a scale out of it, I would say it's a Romanian scale, which sounds like this. There's a big jump in that scale. This is called an augmented second. It's so big that it sounds like a minor third to our ears. It's partly that big jump that makes this sound so unusual, but really it's, I think it's mostly that the note that is being played is a sharp four, which creates the sound of a tritone with the bass note. And then Maynard sings this as well. Tritone is considered pretty much the most unstable interval there is, and there's some great videos by Adam Neely all about its history and whether or not it was actually banned by the Catholic church or not. So anyway, he doesn't stay with that sharp four forever. It's just for a moment where he's just sort of wiggling back and forth. And this major guitar comes in. Like the major third while the bass moves up to the minor thirds, there's kind of a conflict there. So cool, I love it. This feels as if you've like completely lost and then coming to your senses because the sharp four then resolves to the perfect fourth where everything makes sense. It's almost like he doesn't have control over his body for that first part, right? It's just completely overwhelmed. And then he regains some composure. The song is not in Six-A. It's in four four, the sort of common time that we're all accustomed to hearing. And I think that this is an important part of the song as well because it gives us this sort of pounding pulsating just consistent rhythm. I just have to mention there are more cycles of three in this song. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. That's also in a cycle of three. There's another cycle of three when he goes, so pure, so rare. Those entrances are in cycles of three. So pure, so rare, da, da, da, da, da, da. All of this propels things forward, keeps us on our toes, makes us feel like we don't have control because it's a very strange flow. It doesn't fit into the grid the way that we expect it to. The bass line is also quite disconcerting in the chorus, in my opinion. C sharp, D sharp, then B, then A, then sometimes C sharp, B sharp, D sharp, B. This is not necessarily the bass line I would expect underneath the melody of. So pure, so rare to witness such an earthly goddess. So much conflict, spicy. But what I love about it is that there's a contrast to that feeling of, like, these aren't, things aren't really matching up, but I don't really know what's going on. I'm losing myself to later in the song when the chord progression changes to something much more graspable and conventional in a way, and stronger, over underneath that melody. And then it all kind of makes sense. So you've got to have the light to have the dark, right? You have to have the contrast. To be pulsating rhythm section. Like I said, we're in four four. So there are all these moments in the song where that one, two, three, four just gets rammed over and over again. The chorus, namely, where you have a snare on every single beat. And before, it was in a really slow cut tempo. It was like half-time, I mean. And so then it's speed.Heads up, so pure, so rare, right? And it just bam, bam, bam, bam. And it's just like the blood is like rushing and pulsating in your head every time, bam, bam. And then when he goes back to the next verse, that kick on every beat continues with a half-time snare. So there's this cool feeling of like quickening and also a like overwhelming slowing down. But it's almost like he's caught in a trance. And there's also a contrast between this and a section where the drum groove becomes syncopated, where you have stresses on off beats, not on those down beats. And so you can really feel the difference there. And when that happens is when the other chord progression comes in. So I might as well talk about it now. So instead of this, creating all the strange harmonies we have, so pure, so rare, to witness such a monthly goddess. This chord progression is like a flat three, a four, and a one. It's one of the best ever. Another theme in this song is desperation. I feel like you can really hear the desperation in the bridge with this totally sick guitar solo. So good. The way he's playing it, the way sliding into notes, it sounds kind of like he's wailing, right? Very desperate and going higher and higher, higher. But also the pitches themselves. It's just so fraught. So you have this dominating C sharp in the bass line that just keeps hitting over again. All right, it's up and octave. So we have, nah, I can't slide. But so what's happening here, this doesn't sound like it fits. Why I think it's so desperate is because it seems like it's trying to reach some kind of resolution. And it's hitting all these notes that just don't quite make sense. You know, it's just reaching above where it's trying to go, or it's not quite making it. It's trying so hard. And then at the second part of the bridge, it actually finds resolution and then you get a feeling of relief. And the guitar even kind of sinks down, like finally, like, ah, right there. Now we get resolution, that beautiful major third. It's the same melody from the very intro of the song. There's also a theme of escalation, I think, in this song. One of the ways I feel like the escalation is expressed musically is in the section where everything sort of breaks down after the bridge. And it's kind of very tribal drumming. And things have really built up by then, right? But the Maynard is singing through some kind of vocal effect, and he's singing very intimately. He's seething, I tell my soul, right? And he's leaning into every single word, like it's his life depends on it. You know, one chance, one kiss. It's really, really intense. But there's like this feeling of like something's about to explode, you know, like everything's being kind of kept inside. Tribal tribal drums, so cool. And then it does explode. And one of the things that carries all of this throughout the song is his vocal melody. From what I can tell in the chorus, his vocal melody is always just two or maybe three notes in the pentatonic, minor pentatonic scale. So in the first chorus, so pure, maybe so pure, kind of sinks down. So pure, so rare. So just these three notes, and that's the first degree, the flat seven, and the five. That's the upper part of the minor pentatonic scale. Then the second time, he kind of moves everything up to a different part of the minor pentatonic scale. Oh, before I keep going, isn't it so cool the way that the first chorus just melts into the next verse with the lyrics. So pure, so rare to witness such an earthly goddess that I've lost myself control beyond compelled to throw this dollar down, wow, wow, wow, before your holiest of altars. It's so great. So anyway, the second chorus. I'd sell my soul, myself, I'd sell my soul. So now we have the fourth degree, the flat three, and the one. So that's the first part of the minor pentatonic scale. It's possible that you may not even notice that he changed the notes, and that's because there's like this trick you can play on the brain. If you have a melody that relies on certain stable notes in a scale and certain tense notes in a scale, if you just shift that all up to a different spot in the scale that also has the same type of stability intention, you can kind of fool people. I'm sure he wasn't trying, but you can accidentally make people think that they're hearing the same thing, but it's actually a different melody completely. It just has the same thumb print in a way. One thing I didn't mention is there actually is a passing tone sometimes in between these notes in the pentatonic scale. So he goes, there's that raised sixth, which makes it all sound very Dorian. He mimics that same passing tone, but in a different place in the scale when he goes to the upper part of the scale. So it's almost like you could find the mirror image of each of these notes in the other part of the scale. So it kind of feels like things are escalating because as the final chorus repeats, everything is bigger in the song, and Maynard goes up higher than he ever has and in a more definitive way, and he's also singing in a different way, right? Now he's gone from one chance, one kiss to just like belting and almost screaming a little bit. I'd sell my soul. And no longer is he following this pattern that has all these kind of emotive notes. Now it's just the fifth and the tonic over and over again. The tonic and the fifth are the most stable and certain and definitive and most orienting places in the entire scale. So it makes sense that he would instinctively go to these two notes to definitively declare, finally, for the last time, I will do anything.The next song is Rose and it is arguably my favorite a perfect circle song. I think ultimately it's about reclaiming personal power. I could definitely see how it kind of tells a story of a victim and an abuser or a predator and prey. But then the prey or the victim stands up and says no more. And then there's the statement of intent and also just the right to exist. I will. I am. This song I think is kind of modal. I don't know it doesn't really feel like it has a key. It kind of moves between these three different modes. We'll get to that in just a second, but I will say this song is once again in a meter in three. I think this song is in three, four, occasionally with an elongated measure of four, four, just to kind of throw you off a little bit. The main theme of this song melodically starts out just in the bass. What I love about this theme is how it develops throughout the song. But I want to save that for the end. It starts out with one of the coolest sounding song in Drose. I've ever heard. The guitar sounds shimmery and detuned with a significant delay, super dreamy and mystical. And there's a tambourine and the tambourine is actually hitting on beats two than one than three. So it's not hitting on every down beat. So if this is our tempo, it's going this guitar part, which I've approximated on the piano, combined with his voice, kind of outlines a frigian scale, which is like minor, but even darker, because it has this very ominous, menacing flat tune. So you can hear that. And then we have, put those all together and you get, and frigian has this kind of menacing sound to it. So I think it's the right mode to paint the picture of what's happening. Don't disturb the beast. Don't let it see that you're scared, don't let it see anything vulnerable about you. His melody is centering around a relationship that's very important in minor type scales, which is the flat six to the five. They're just a half step apart, and he's using it to sort of flip his voice over. Don't disturb the beast. The flat six wants to resolve to the five. That sort of its direction is, so there's this very satisfying quality to this. They have this magnetism to them, but also the way that he's singing it, this flipping is just like really animalistic, I don't know. That flat six is about to become something else when it moves to the next mode. If you think about this section, don't disturb. As like being in the presence of the power and control of this abuser or this predator, and then you think of the other sections as the passivity of the victim, it makes a lot of sense. Every time he talks about compromising himself, he's in this space. In this song, it's just like in the hollow, there are some of those spreads, sus two chords, as well as add nine. Those are very similar chords, but essentially we have a ninth, which is like I said before, sort of just pass the octave. One of those examples is this, hey, really quick, I just want to correct myself. This pattern, we have this D sharp and this E right next to each other. With this chord, we have the D sharp and E next to each other, also creating this really tense spot when he goes like this. As the video continues whenever I play this, I really should be playing this, which makes things feel like they haven't resolved, it's so beautiful, I love that. Here's how it would sound like if it were resolved. You can also hear the effects of a sus too, right before that. You can also hear it again in the bridge with the guitar solo, where it's going, there it is again, and then when the drums come in, they're so kind of tribal and trashy. I would say that this part is the chorus, it's hard to say though, but the guitar and the vocal have this sort of calling response relationship. Guitar comes in right after him on this very distorted G sharp. It kind of sounds like it flares up, like a beating heart. At some point that guitar is singing, let's say singing, playing that note even higher, an octave or two up, and it sounds way more powerful or desperate, I'm not quite sure which, but there is definitely an uptick in energy and and manner to singing that way too. It's right after he sings when push comes to pull, comes to shove, who else allows the way he says shove. It's so great. It starts to feel so triumphant at that point. The major third above the E, which is kind of where we're oriented at the time, and together with that word, we have a full major triad, and so that's really not how things feel here. Very different feeling.You hear that? It's got a warmth to it. It's got a vulnerability to it. I also just got to give another shout out to the drums. I just love them so much. I think they're so creative, you know, the part where he's singing, I think the second verse and you're getting these these like super up tempo hi-hats against this really slow, tregy, tribal groove. During that part, we have It's just so great. Lots of tombs. I love drums with lots of tombs in them. And then we get to the guitar solo. Just so beautiful. And that also sounds similar to kind of those Romanian scales or the harmonic minor modes. He's just doing five flat six one. He's just skipping seven so there's like big jump, but so beautiful. So I mentioned before that this theme develops. So as the song goes along, this theme is being kind of maybe not passed around through instruments. It's mostly just the guitars doing it, basing guitars. It goes away of course when we get to about compromising. We don't have it there, but it's always there and we're here. And you start to hear the guitar playing it in different ways. You start to hear it chugging more. It's more rhythmic, which is really cool. So that's enough to add variety to the theme. But so far Maynard hasn't sung it. He reclaims that theme for himself. And even that part is cool because he deviates from the melody, right? Like he joined up with and he's like no longer will I lay down and do your thing, right? And he sings along with the guitar and everything is moving along with it, but he is on top. This part is so great. Now this is our familiar flow. Maynard flow. Dear in the headlight shot down and horrified. So that's in three against a different kind of three. Once again, but then the end of the song is him just conquering the theme completely. The very last repetition where he's singing kneel down, gun shy, martyr, pitiful, eye rose, eye roar, eye will, eye am. The whole song is now following this theme exactly. And this theme does not start on the down beat you have. So it's only on beats two and three. So now we get everything kind of obeying that rhythmic device. Oh my gosh, this beautiful string outro. So this is Paz playing violin with a guest playing viola. I thought it was a whole string quartet, but maybe it's just overdubs of these two string instruments. It's so gentle and it feels like peace after maybe a lifetime of struggle, of finally being free and content. It's like the end of a fairy tale, but you know, like a really real fairy tale. And the chords are so gentle, no longer are we dealing with the sound of fridgian or the sound of minor or these dominating. Now things are major chords, you know, a chord progression that we've heard before feels like a beautiful little classical interlude. It's so, so cool and unexpected after all of this. And I love that. I love how willing they were to kind of experiment and pull from the talents of the folks in the band. This is such a gorgeous moment to hear strings against what we just went through. It is really incredible. Thank you so much for watching. And next week I'll be publishing a video on the next three tracks, which are Judith, Arrestes and Three Libros. It's quite a, quite a lineup. This is kind of selfish, but if you also love Rose, will you please tell me and leave a Rose in the comments? You know, it's definitely not something that people talk about. It's not a song that I ever hear people talk about. So I'm curious who else has felt really impacted by that one. Until next time.