L O V E I T V I O L E T Featuring Johnny Sanders – WOODROW PERCHED BEHIND THE HIBBING’S SPRINGBIRD HOTEL (Album Review)

The band LOVEITVIOLET has a new 14-track AI-assisted album, WOODROW PERCHED BEHIND THE HIBBING’S SPRINGBIRD HOTEL. LOVEITVIOLET’s frontman, Johnny Sanders, admits that the title’s a mouthful.

The album was created in part by running prompts into Suno, the AI music generator. The  album’s first track, ‘WILL? VII’, was created by the prompt, ‘avaunt guard techno modern scary spooky ambient music…’

The prompt specifies a unique atmospheric blend, calling for diegetic sounds like church bells, footsteps, and birdsong. The instrumentation is equally eclectic, featuring kettle drums, harmonica, and fuzz-bass electric guitar. Despite its minimalist roots, the track manages to evoke a spooky quality, eventually shedding its quiet beginnings for a distorted, high-energy finish.

Lyrically, the song’s conscious. Initially, it’s framed around questions, all starting with the phrase, ‘Will’. The lyrical persona asks, ‘Will many starving babies cry for Mama’s flag to suckle tonight?’

Another question speaks to missing children. In the end – with no more questions asked – the song finishes with the repeated refrain, ‘That’s all we’re saying’.

The female vocals are initially soft and ethereal, drawing the listener in with an engaging presence. However, as the track progresses, the vocal line recedes, allowing the instrumental energy to take center stage. The atmosphere shifts from spooky to high-octane as heavy distortion and driving percussion move to the forefront.

The whimsical ‘AMERRYTICTOCKKKGRASSY’ follows. Again in avant-garde style, but this time going for a postmodern ambience, the prompt asks for a ‘Black Man singing’. The instrumental palette expands further to include the resonant toll of a cathedral organ and the whimsical pluck of a toy piano. These are layered alongside a Moog synthesizer and the returning thrum of kettle drums, creating a rich, textured arrangement.

The track opens with a slow, choral introduction featuring a pleasant male vocal. To fully grasp the lyrical depth, however, one must be well-versed in American pop culture. The verses weave in references to icons like Roseanne Barr and baseball legend Honus Wagner, while maintaining a self-referential wit – at one point, the song even meta-textually acknowledges its own lack of a rhyme scheme.

For ‘PACKAGES’, Johnny Sanders has ditched the avant-garde term as well as kettle drums. The prompt asks for ‘Slowly played jazz’, the Black singer now replaced by a ‘sixty year old black woman singer’.

In terms of instrumentation, you get a ‘grand piano, deep, loud, melodic, versatile acoustic upright bass, muted with a solo, church organ in the distance, swelling, beautiful, deep minor chords, bush drums, tiny bells’.

Despite the track’s lethargic pace, the piano and bass lines emerge with striking clarity. This sluggishness is pushed almost to the point of absurdity before a sudden tempo shift transforms the vocals into a rhythmic, speech-like delivery. The vocal style is remarkably fluid, transitioning from soaring melodies to spoken-word poetry.

Lyrically, the song takes on the tone of a homily, referencing ‘Uncle Ollie’ and addressing a loved one who is presumably away at work.

What returns on ‘TOUGH DECISIONS’ is the avant-garde phrase as well as kettle drums, tiny bells and acoustic upright bass guitar. Other instrumentation includes the full electric bass and saxophone solo, with the last words of the prompt, asking for ‘Africa, Nigerian’.

Another important thing to note is that the song also follows this style: ‘half sung and half spoken word, folk/blues/ jazz/fusion/electronica music’. The track’s atmosphere is incredibly loose and languid, adopting a rhythmic ease often found in Caribbean-influenced vocal performances.

Lyrically, it’s an unsettling song. We hear that ‘they took their mother’ and ‘kidnapped their brother’. Then the question that I think unanswerable: ‘How many Europeans have been sent back across the friendly sea?’. 

Moving away from the Nigerian link, ‘SHOULDERS’ asks for ‘Folk music NEBRASKA STYLE’. The prompt further instructs for the song to be sung slowly. The singer this time is a ‘young white man’ who’s given a ‘deep strong, slightly ragged, but clear voice’. He’s backed up by a young woman whose race is unspecified.

Under Johnny Sanders’ specific direction, the track eschews traditional percussion in favor of a delicate, stripped-back arrangement of tiny bells, acoustic guitar, and harmonica. Although the instructions called for a deliberate, slow-tempo vocal delivery, the sheer resonance and depth of the performance provide a heightened sense of presence and power.

Lyrically, the song has some romantic reflection, the lyrical person saying later on, ‘Honey, so cheers to us and many future decades to Aisle Seven cream’.

Returning to the African link with ‘IT’S THAT TIME’, LOVEITVIOLET also returns with toy piano, churchbells, synthesizer and theremin. This time, the African link sees Johnny Sanders asking for South Africa’s ‘Soweto African choral group’.

At its core, the song explores the passage of time. I found myself deeply empathizing with the narrator’s lament that time is not on their side. Curiously, the AI – Suno – seems to have made a meta-textual error by vocalizing the song’s creation date directly into the lyrics, an accidental inclusion that breaks the fourth wall of the composition.

We meet a ‘Young White Man’ once more in ‘SOMETHING TO RIGHT ABOUT HOME’. He has a ‘clear slightly high slightly raspy and slightly quivering voice’.

According to the prompt, the only instruments here are an acoustic ‘Martin six string guitar and a harmnica’, but there’s a kick that I find remarkable. Lyrically, song’s partly comical. The lyrical persona confesses to catching a glimpse of Twiggy hitchhiking, but never picking her up because ‘We mistaked her for a yield sign’.

‘QUEEN MAGDALENE KOPER’ is another song instructed to be slow. The singer and piano player is a ‘sixty year old black woman’. She’s backed by two women whose races are unspecified.

The arrangement circles back to its roots as the acoustic upright bass and tiny bells return. This foundational sound is further enriched by a lilting harp and a clean, jazzy guitar, adding a layer of sophisticated texture to the final mix.

Lyrically, the lyrical persona here speaks of Magdalene at a nieghbor’s birthday party. She’s portrayed as something different than most.  

The acoustic upright bass guitar and tiny bells are still with us in ‘LISTON’, another whimsical song. Prompted for ‘Rockability mid tempo’, other instruments in the song are the harmonica, church piano and saxophone solo.

The lyrical persona reflects to their addressee the time they were kicked flay ‘up those gangally steps’, while the addressee’s infant wept. The reflection later on proceeds to the addressee’s aunt fixing them a ‘grubby meal’. Then, with almost zero warning, we hear of Sonny Liston’s jaw ‘stuck like glue to the canvas’.

 In ‘RING AROUND POTOSI’ – ‘Very slowly sung and played’ – you get a low-fi style rock ballad, with, just to name two instruments, upright piano and Martin Six string acoustic guitar.   

A young woman – race unspecified – sings a close ‘two part harmony’.

‘NORTH SIDE FUNDRAISER’ follows. Here LOVEITVIOLET has opted for the simulation of a ‘Classic big arena rock and soul sound of a live concert’. The singer is a middle-aged ‘black man with a strong, slightly deep and raspy, but full melodic ranged voice’. He’s backed by two black women whose age ranges we’re not given. Among the instruments available are drums and the electric guitar.

Like in a live performance, you have the singer say, ‘Throw your hand in the air… the other one clasp your neighbor’. It’s a lively song, instrumentally as well as lyrically: the lyrical person says there’s no word such as defeat in their dictionary.

There’s some cynicism in the song, and I’m always game for some lively cynicism: consumerism and Uncle Sam seem to be under attack here – you have to spare a thought for the two!

The avant-garde phrase returns in ‘TROUBLES WITH MUGGLES’. The prompt asks for fusion electronic music ‘played fast tempo’. The lead singer is still a black male, but this time he’s seventy-years old.

Also, Black is a backup singer as well as the boys’ choir. In terms of instrumentation, you get a ‘noisy echoing electric blues guitar’, clarinet and Martin guitar, just to mention three.

This is an easy-going song – a kick and percussion song. The lady singer seems to be a serious mood, but the tempo speeds up when they lyrics speak of a new journal entry. We hear, ‘Today is… Oh six twenty twenty five’.

‘CELLOPHANE SUMMER 75’ is ‘Slow Rock song’ prompted to feature a ‘Thirty two year old white man with clear pure and strong, but gentle voice’. There is an undeniable charm to the gentle interplay between the vocals and the instrumentation. However, this softness is so pervasive that it eventually becomes cloying, bordering on a sense of sonic nausea.

According to the prompt, the man plays two instruments: acoustic guitar and harmonica, and is backed by a woman whose age range and race we’re not told.

Lyrically, it’s a song that harks back to the ‘summer of seventy five’, when ‘none of us drive cars but we claim we are all right tonight’. This lyric reminds me of ‘I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker’ by Sandi Thom. (The song harks back to seventy six, where the ‘head of state didn’t play guitar’ and ‘not everybody drove a car’.

The voice and instrumentation being gentle, the lyrics of ‘CELLOPHANE SUMMER 75’ see the lyrical persona comment that ‘the girls we could’ve treated gently, but we were so scared’ – a touching thing to say!

‘YOU KEEP II’ closes the album. The lead singer is again 32-years-old, White and from Patterson, New Jersey. His voice is deep and rich. It’s slightly ragged and quivers, but is ‘clear with wide vocal range’. He’s without backing and plays two instruments: a Martin guitar and harmonica.

Though not explicitly requested in the prompt, the track functions as a duet, with the male and female voices alternating parts throughout. This structure creates a compelling friction: while the lyrics lean into homily-style reflections, the tone is at times salty – you hear talk of ‘son of a bitch’, whereas there’s the mention of ‘sweet potato pie’.

SCORE/Good: There is much to love in the minimalism here, though its over-extension leads to a sense of sonic nausea.

Kudos are due for the multiracial exploration of Black and White artists, but this inclusivity feels incomplete without the representation of Asian musicians or other global cultures.

The lean nature of some of the prompts creates a vacuum, often leaving the identity of backing singers undefined. This raises a final, crucial question about the creative process: we know Suno generated the music, but did it also author the lyrics?