There’s a reason why most music listener look back on recordings from 1950s and 60s and snicker to themselves. It’s not the production values that make those songs feel a little bit ridiculous. It’s not the playing ability of the musicians has improved, or that technology has developed to such a point to make old records sound truly bad.
What really makes the songs from the dawn of pop music so open for content is their… optimism. Most of those songs are written about real things (cars, girls, boys, going to the beach) and how good they are. They’re essentially modern North Korean patriotic songs.
badsoma, crafty indie-rock band made up of Los Angeles musicians have their finger on the pulse of modern culture, and they can barely detect one. Consequently, they’re as smart and as bored with the world as most of their peers are. The band feels the strain of the modern world. That is in many ways the theme of their EP “kicking and screaming.”
Nobody gets what they want seven-decades after the paradise described by early pop music. But, the best, can still add pretty colors to their own depiction.
The EP’s opener, “when no one’s around” is a melancholy-filled tuned that begins and ends with a sorrowful piano and advises the listener to “make something o yourself.”
But picking yourself up might just be the hardest hurdle. “the stranger” is existentialist philosophy delivered through great, but detached vocals and a groovy, indie-pop groove. It’s another tune dedicated to uncertainty.
As is “talk about me,” a song where the wispy lead-guitar lines recalls 70s radio-pop, and where the vocalists duel over the remains of a broken relationship. It’s the most instantly pleasing song of the entire album.
Where does this all lead to? A terrific crash, of course. “Burn Out” is the most honest composition of the entire collection, a tune about making yourselves available and suffering terrible consequences because of it.
The EP’s closer, “all I wanted to see,” is likely the closest that badsoma gets to a recording that fully encapsulates the band’s credo and strengths. It’s another sweet, but somber track about seeing all the boys and girls in their cars driving to the beach and feeling indifferent about it. This is modern life and, as it turns out, it’s where modern indie-rock comes from as well.
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