
Ryan Fischer – Commercials for Heaven
Genre: Indie Folk, Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
When asked to describe what a would-be rockstar needed to possess in order to “make it” in the music business, KISS-mastermind, and international cosplayer Gene Simmons was frank. Whoever wanted attention needed to ask for attention. In trying to do this, nothing was off the cards.
This, naturally, is something one would expect a musician who has spent most of his adult life wearing demon make-up to say, but there’s some truth to that. Was Jim Morrison a great poet? It’s debatable. He certainly did not shy away from dropping poetry recitals on unsuspecting stoned-out hippies. I’d like to believe that the world is a better place because of this.
Indie-folkie Ryan Fischer writes songs as if digging through a dictionary that he needs to return urgently back to the library. Fischer asks for attention, and that’s the first process in establishing Commercials for Heaven as the work of a serious poet worth the consideration and admiration of the mainstream music world.
amm – Less Alone
Genre: Bedroom / Lo-fi Pop, Indietronica, Indie Pop
Technology can be blamed for a lot of things. People like to talk about how music fans nowadays have no capacity to retain information for long, or sit through any song longer than 60 seconds. People like to complain about the death of the album, and about how truly great musicians have been pushed out of an industry that no longer needs them.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Among other things, technology has brought us a new kind of pop star, one that doesn’t need approval from a record label or endless series of tests on various segments of audiences. It’s the era of the lo-fi bedroom pop star. For the critics that loved the kind of shabby cassette demos recorded by strange artists in their bedrooms, this all for which they’ve waited patiently.
San Diego’s amm sounds as if countless hours were spent perfecting her vision of pop music, but without the distractions and mixed signals usually provided by a major label. Less Alone is a bite-sized piece of pop from an eccentric and charismatic singer-songwriter. It’s a tune that is short enough to bypass the audience’s incapacity to concentrate, and powerful enough to become a door towards her work and vision of the future.