Bad Flamingo – I Won’t Let You Die Young
Genre: Folk, Indie Rock
The cowboys who starred in ye ole Western movies were the superheroes of their day. With one bullet, they could take out a horde of enemies, and with one wise word, they could change a miscreant’s life. They walked funny and could roll a cigarette effortlessly with just one hand. Oh, what a life to have!
The Western movies that still get made nowadays, however, are focused on tragedy, in particular, that of the heroes of these pieces of cinema. If there’s any glory to be had, it is shared with an unstoppable sense of tragedy. If the character has qualities, they are certainly upset by their main faults and, more often than not, an obsession with death, usually their own.
The image of a cowboy bravely facing their own fate is one of the images that could help you properly create the visual stimuli for enjoying Bad Flamingo’s I Won’t Let You Die Young. As always, the duo creates their world from the choices of things they wish to leave out. That includes their identity and a lot of the instrumentation that could have weighed this song down. Instead, this is the old death knell following a failed gun battle or the moment of silence after the priest has tossed the last hand of dirt.
Ben and the Bloodshots – Bourbon and Bowties
Genre: Blues, Alternative Rock
Reality leaves a lot to be imagined, of course, and the past is almost always remembered through tinted glasses. The shade through which it is viewed, however, depends heavily on the nature of the person looking back. Music works similarly. Most likely, you either remember old music to be much better or much worse than it really was.
The truth is that modern music, even though it receives, generally, far less attention than the sounds created in the past, is often created by better musicians, with a clearer view of what they want and who use better equipment. Even devilish, mischievous tunes can be sung by people who’ve researched enough of both Mephistopheles as well as music playing to be able to produce a powerful, long-lasting impression on their listeners.
Ben and the Bloodshots’ Bourbon and Bowties belongs to a modern-established tradition of creating drinking songs a la Tom Waits with precise playing and pristine production. These may be tales of demented and damned characters. But they are made to sound like the musical accompaniment to a high-end action game. It’s nocturnal music made by people who spend their days studying their craft.,
