A Deer A Horse – Committed
If you’re reading reviews of the pop records made by the world’s trendiest stars, you’ll notice debates about what is in and what is out. They’ll be talking about the pop stars who are moving forward and about those who have lost the plot. You may even read about 80s-styled hi-hats being used in innovative pop songs and about how boring the 80s-styled production values of other modern records are.
It’s hard to keep up. But, fortunately, you don’t have to. There is an alternative to all the clever tricks and dazzling tech. It may be an admission of primitivism, but guitars still sound really good nowadays. And, angry songs about people that the singer doesn’t like are nearly always good. If you get the singer to yell into the microphone, that may just things over the edge.
A Deer A Horse isn’t really concerned with what’s going on in pop music production nowadays. But that’s because they don’t need to be. “Committed” sounds like the music of a punk/heavy metal band that means business. Like L7 before them, this is music meant to attack the audience’s senses from the small, dark clubs to the large, well-lighted festival stages. A Deer A Horse is investing everything in hard-hitting, combative music and there will always be a market for that.
Omsk – Das Nichts
German is not the language of love. And, that’s not merely French propaganda talking. That’s grammar rules, behemothic word length and the time needed to acquire the language from scratch talking. If French is the language of moustachioed Romeos trying to kiss the necks of frightened, scared maidens, German is the language of engineering.
German is precise and unromantic. It contains a marvellous amount of details in just one sentence. It is usually used to tell you to go someplace and do something. I speak a little bit of German and only use it sparingly for fear that I will be deemed too pushy and aggressive. That would just ruin my reputation further.
That is why when someone writes a love song in German, they mean it! This is not like English or French love songs, where the writer can just throw out 30 such songs every month. This is serious business!
Omsk’s “Das Nichts” is a song about love, dissolution and despair, and the songwriter means it. There’s no time for cliches here. The punk/garage-rock moves things nicely along and has an uncharacteristically bouncy beat for Teutonic rock. The vocal delivery is great and reveals a mean that’s nearly gone mad from the heartache and has developed a sense of humour from all the madness. And what about the chorus? It hits you straight between the eyes and makes you want to hum it back. Heartbreaks, on the rare occasions when they’re confessed in Germany, are a serious business. And, on Omsk’s recording, they make for great punk rock, too.
