Almamor – Far Apart
Don’t know ambition. It’s done more for your record collection than an army of producers, managers and fashion consultants ever could have. In fact, a close and unemotional investigation could likely reveal that ambition always trumps talent.
That’s a strange thing to say nowadays. In the era in which Spotify’s CEO has advised groups to release professionally recorded singles with the frequency with which one has coffee, bands have been trained to make music quickly, efficiently, and to ditch dreams of everlasting glory.
Thankfully, there are still bands like Almamor knocking about, and taking inspiration from the more sophisticated, carefully-developed prog-rock sounds that have ever been committed to tape.
Yes, Almamor’s “Far Apart” reveals great ambition. The group’s sound is a kind of Muse-like, hard-edged prog-rock with Southern-Eastern flair added to the mix. The vocals soar, the arrangement takes the listener to unexpected places and brings them back to Earth safely. It’s certainly not a rushed three-chord ditty, and this is all because there are still bands that are aiming for the stars.
Maw Sit Sit – Walking Journey
Nearly every fan of pop-rock knows the beautiful, and ultimately tragic, story of The Beach Boys. It starts with a group of siblings singing harmonies and earning great sums of cash to do it. The story leads to nervous breakdowns and deaths. And, it doesn’t stop until every creative resource has been exhausted and the band is forced to play the hits every night to people plagued by bouts of horrible nostalgia.
But in an alternative universe, maybe the group could have turned into something resembling Maw Sit Sit. Maybe the Wilsons and their cousin would’ve looked around, decided that they’d accumulated enough finances to aid them through their whole life and had moved back into the garage while taking inspiration from the punk-rock being developed in the mid-1970s?
Dreaming won’t achieve anything. That’s why you can hear The Beach Boys going garage-punk and moving to France on Maw Sit Sit’s “Walking Journey.” The song has the power and barrage of loud guitars that would’ve made Johnny Ramone nod in approval. It also has lovely barber shop quartet-styled melodies, together with a fantastic sense of naivety and excitement. Those last two are the ones that simply cannot be faked.
