Song: Long White Cross

Artist: Pluto

Songwriters: Matthias Jordan, Michael Hall, Michael Franklin-Browne, Milan Borich, Tim Arnold

Album: Pipeline Under The Ocean

Release date: 2005

Genre: Alternative Rock, Indie Rock

Key: A

Chords in Key:

Long White Cross is written for drums, bass, electric guitar, synth, and vocals. It opens with the drums, bass, and guitar playing the opening riff which revolves around four diatonic chords, including a plagal cadence between the last chord in the sequence and the tonic chord as the first when it repeats. The bass guitar uses overdrive to give it a more gritty, punchy sound more associated with electric guitars. This makes them almost sound like one instrument in the first four bars unless listening closely to the short crescendo on the guitar chords in each bar and occasional guitar flourishes where the two instruments become more distinct for brief moments. After the intro, they become easier to distinguish.

The same pattern is used for the verse, with the vocals entering in bar nine after a brief glissando or downward pitch bend on a keyboard. Halfway through the verse, a tambourine is added which helps to keep the feeling of forward motion without changing the chord pattern. The next section could be described as a post-verse. It uses the same chord pattern but adds harmony vocals making it feel somewhat like a chorus. There’s a short instrumental break before the extra layers are removed for the second verse.

The chorus begins on chord VI and ends on the tonic. It does not have any real sense of a traditional cadence, despite using the tonic and the tonic from the relative major in this sequence. This makes the chorus feel less certain and less strong, despite an overall rise in the song volume created by layers of backing vocals, distorted guitars, and a subtle descending melody on an electric piano (which continues in the next verse). When it returns to the verse, while not having the same bombastic nature as the chorus, the return to the tonic as the first part of the sequence has a stabilising effect. The final chorus has the drums playing double time to build tension before the end.

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