NORMANS – Anti Crusoe
Lo-fi Rock, Indie Pop, Alternative Rock
People hate poets if they happen to know them. People love the poets they never got to meet. Perhaps, it’s all a matter of separating what is vital, from what is frivolous. Most people sweat and toil for their meals. To them, it must feel unfair that someone should even dream of writing down visions to earn theirs.
Maybe it’s also a matter of only appreciating something once it’s reflected back, not experienced directly. By most accounts, some of the greatest artists of all time were despised by their acquaintances and family. Usually, this was for sound reasons. The lives of the same artists, however, are now dissected by scholars across the world.
Matt Reid and Michael Perry Rudes’s project NORMANS sounds like music made by people who don’t get on with the families and created for folks just like them. Anti Crusoe is a defiant anthem of egocentrism delivered with the confidence of a Nick Cave or Iggy Pop preaching to their fateful believers. They may, indeed, turn out to be “the kings of rock n’ roll island” but they’re unlikely to get invited to Sunday dinner by their relatives.
Beaten By Hippies – Torpedo Bay
Genre: Stoner Rock, Alternative Rock
As long as there are rules in the world and people, especially youngsters, are forced to live by them, rock n’ roll promoting loose morals, and dangerous behaviour will have a built-in fan base. Give me an enemy and I will point a scene out to you.
It’s all cyclical. We get a few years of safe, generic music. Then, the world gets a few bizarre characters infiltrating the airwaves and creating legions of fans across the world. Then, the powers that rule that these things are a hazard to public safety, and conspire to have these people banned somehow.
Beaten By Hippies don’t sound safe/ And, they certainly don’t sound like the kind of music that hippies might fancy. Torpedo Bay is a blast of gruff vocals, forceful guitar riffs, and the kind of raw power that made alternative rock a force to be reckoned, both artistically and commercially, back in the early 1990s. There ain’t much like these evil kicks.
