prchr. – Ghost/Chicago
Genre: Alternative Rock
The folks that get greeted by websites and magazines as musical revolutionaries are, usually the ones that marry daring ideas with familiar formulas. There’s no way around that fact. All of the musicians that could only get their music sold in small, chic, underground music shops, or placed on similarly-minded websites, for the most part, got enjoyed only by a select few.
In other words, intelligent songwriters know that they’ll need the kind of sound that will make audiences cheer in unison. Like a general leading an army, they know that until the flag has been planted, victory is not certain. In order to be a successful artsy rockstar, one has also to be a successful pop star.
prchr.’s “Ghost/Chicago” has a particularly impressive knack for combining cutting alt-rock dynamics with personal, eerie musical experimentation. Like the best rock music of the last decades, it’s the energy that prchr. brings to the recording that makes it stand out. After all, the very best rock n’ roll has always been built on the illusion of creating something new and daring. prchr. sells that idea well.
Andrew Huston – Tip The Scale
Similar artists: Wilco, Queens of the Stone Age, Band of Horses
Genre: Surf Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Alternative Rock
The world is full of crashing bores. And not even their mothers want them home for Sunday dinner. At the same time, the world is now full of extremely confident people who, for the most part, happen to be excruciatingly boring. Blame that on the self-help movement and our feeble pop culture.
There’s no reason why music wouldn’t be the same. It’s not like all of the eccentrics, the comedians, and the geniuses decided to write pop songs in 2023. The majority of them are making money. And, if they’re consistent at doing that, they also know enough to stay away from the dying horse that is the music industry.
Still, rays of hope do shine through our windows occasionally. Andrew Huston is as confident of his gentle alt-rock of “Tip The Scale” as a man about to fly out with his family to see them perform at Wembley Stadium.
But there’s a weirdness to the way that the songwriter does things that he has the decency not to hide from us. Humorous and able to deliver nice melodic hooks, Andrew Huston is a man that even their mother might want around for Sunday dinner.
