Bar Cats and Eric Johanson Reviewed
Bar Cats – I’m Gonna Buy This
Rock stars and those musicians hoping to become stars need to ensure they have on hand a great selection of strange relations, eccentrics and people who get it wrong often and on purpose. In fact, I would humbly suggest that the majority of great debut records by bands for decades now have been precisely about these sorts of characters.
Still, of course, once things start to click for the musicians, the instinct is to change the kind of company that they keep. Business folks, lawyers, and artists who like to talk about technique are their replacement. But what kind of songs can you write about respectable, dull people? Not many!
This is why Bar Cats, a band with clear musical potential, opts instead to mine the drama for “I’m Gonna Buy This,” a song about addiction, bad acquaintances, and love affairs that are doomed to be disastrous. It’s this kind of story that has enough drama to it to allow the expressive vocals and powerful lead guitars to take flight throughout the track.
Eric Johanson – Shake The Fever
There are many things that fall out of fashion quicker than it takes to properly acknowledge their existence. In fact, most of what you would call pop culture is genuinely thrilling people today and making them laugh out loud the next day because of how out-of-date and silly they seem. Nobody’s doing the Macarena nowadays except either for nostalgic or ironic reasons.
Yet, there are also things and, most importantly, feelings that don’t go away. People have wrestled with melancholy since the dawn of time, and the blues, more so than most art forms, has found a way of putting these feelings into sounds. Just as well, while computer precision makes many things easier, most would agree that hearing a musician wrestle with an instrument for control is something worth enjoying. Eric Johanson looks to step into these truths.
“Shake the Fever” is, as any modern blues-rock song worth hearing should be, a mix of very new and extremely old. The melodies, chord progressions and, yes, the feelings, are the same ones that Robert Johnson might’ve used. However, the vocals, guitar effects and production make this pop entertainment of the sort that won’t just become passe tomorrow.
