
Crash Test Dummies – Sacred Alphabet
Genre: Alternative Rock
Preachers, cult leaders, and dictators have always fascinated rock songwriters and the people who make their clothes. These figures are captured in many songs and shows. Often they’re the ones on stage.
What are they supposed to look like? You won’t need to squint the eyes of your imagination for too long. You probably imagine them as standing tall, wearing a uniform, and certainly with some kind of smart hat. They never smile to show approval, only to give weight to the things that they claim.
What do they sound like? Well, they’re loud for a start. But, you’d assume that they’d also have to possess a deep voice that seems to ring out from the very depths of the Earth. Listen to recordings of Leon Trotsky and Mussolini, and you’ll know they wouldn’t have made it in the Age of Radio.
Brad Roberts of Crash Test Dummies was a singer blessed and cursed to be unable to hide the resounding bass-heavy vocal tone with which he’s been born. Sacred Alphabet sounds like a Biblical song, a preacher casting aspersions upon the flock. How could it not sound this way? There’s fire and brimstone being cast from every corner. Why not? It’s the voice that could’ve launched a thousand cults.
Bang Bang Jet Away – Ill at Ease in Mixed Company
Genre: Folk
The everyman quality of movie stars and rock heroes is overrated. Frankly, the reason why it’s so often mentioned is just so that fans won’t get too anxious about all the differences between their favourite star and a regular person.
The truth is that few, if anyone, ever want their stars to be ordinary. Why pay money to see them when you could literally get the same kind of entertainment from your next-door neighbor or the people you meet on the bus?
The folks dangling an acoustic guitar and feeding it their own creations can either be very boring or very exciting. There’s no room for in-betweens here. If the 1960s taught us anything, it’s that music audiences would rather witness a damaged genius wielding a guitar.
Bang Bang Jet Away’s Ill at Ease in Mixed Company is paranoid-folk music, the kind of tune written by someone that sells everything they own, moves to by the beach, and then spends all day long locked up in a room where the windows have painted over. It’s beautiful folk music about terrible but undefined things.