The Dartmouth Aires have a ton of dudes, and they all seem pretty silly. But they demonstrated a solid music-group background, with volume and key changes all smoothly done as a group. Song, "Higher Ground" isn't my favorite, but it keeps the beat and excitement moving, and had an effective climax.
Pentatonix also sang a song that's not my favorite: "E.T." They started with a fun choral rendition before busting out their amazing bass and beatboxer. Seriously, he's amazing. Like, after they were done the other groups had their hands over their mouths, and some were probably thinking "we'd win if we had this guy, too."
(Quick aside, if I did not say so last week - Sarah is not a very good judge. She says she used to watch the show from her couch, and her comments are still the 'on the couch' variety: kind of vague and unhelpful.)
Messiah's Men is from Minneapolis, but really they are from Liberia? They say there's a strong Liberian refugee population in Minneapolis (Nan: Librarians?). Their bass is so low as to rattle your ears, but their song was very slow.
Sonos does some touring and put out a few records (this kind of experience in performance did not work out well for Cat's Pajamas). They usually use an electronic sound board to augment their voices and give their performance a techno kind of feel, but they won't here, because it's of course against the rules. They sang "Wicked Game," and showed that their bass and beatboxer could work wonders with just microphones, but that the three front ladies are not the epic lead needed here. Oddly, Sarah knows one of the guys in the group - used to sing with him in college. Is she going to be unbiased in the voting? America decides the winner, but the judges pick right now, and it's probably between Messiah's Men and Sonos to leave immediately.
And it's Sonos that's saved. Hope she doesn't get backlash. I don't think Messiah's Men has musical training, and the other three groups really showed theirs off. If they didn't have training, they are absolutely astounding, but it's difficult to compete on this level without it.
The Collective is from Nashville, but more importantly, it's headed by the runner-up country guy from last season who was amazing. He seems to have cobbled together a bunch of individual singers struggling to make it in Nashville, so I'm not sure how well this is going to work, since almost none of them have acapella experience. They sang "Rolling in the Deep," which seems like a song you don't want to mess with, since it's already a powerhouse, but they girl they chose for lead has a very distinct, somewhat strange, style of singing. Not bad, but different. The arrangement was well arranged, though, I bet I have my Season 2 buddy to thank for that.
Soul'd Out is a high school group from a small town. When asked, they say: "we're basically the real-life Glee". They ought to get royalties from that show. Is this a special high school? I don't know if my high school had this kind of talent. Listening to them in the video segment do a little bit of "Party in the USA," they seemed alright, but their choice to do "Age of Aquarius" and "Let the Sun Shine" was kind of awful. The chorus is intricate and ended up being too overpowering over the somewhat tinny soprano leads. The male lead started to show off some really good stuff, but again got drowned out by a screechy background.
North Shore is a group of 5 older guys that are the quintessential Jersey 'fellas'. They're pretty much the Sopranos. Only.... more Glee. That is an amazing show concept. Patent it. They are the more traditional barbershop style of group, they never fare well in this particular competition? They've been performing professionally for forever, but they say that the gigs are pretty much running dry of late. I don't know about you guys, but I've heard "Runaround Sue" a hundred times. Audience seemed to be impressed. They do have tremendous group synergy and performance experience, and that shows.
The Deltones are a larger group from the University of Delaware. The spent most of their video segment talking about emotions, but as they didn't spend any time explaining who they were, it was mostly lost. They sang so many different pieces of songs in the video segment, but picked "Feels Like Home" to perform on stage, which lacks any sort of excitement value. It was pretty much the one girl, and everyone else's part was supportive, yet fade to the background.
(Unfortunate for Messiah's Men, because I would have preferred them to any of these. They got put in the wrong group of four.)
As maybe we expected, Soul'd Out is eliminated.
