Greenteeth – Tiny Pill Box
Genre: Shoegaze, Garage Rock, Alternative Rock
Similar artists: Smashing Pumpkins, The Strokes, Radiohead
Just like putting on a magic show, modern songwriters face the difficult task of deciding just how much they want to reveal and how they want to leave to the imagination of the crowds. This is a very delicate calculation, and there is little room for error. Make themselves out to be too mysterious, and they run the risk of having none of their audience members understand what they mean. This will translate into losing the connection and, eventually, losing their attention.
The other option is to be as direct and earnest as possible. While these are qualities that are appreciated in almost all areas of society, this is not one that one should necessarily aim for as an artist. After all, rock music, in particular, is constructed so that it represents an alternative to the grind of day-to-day activities.
Greenteeth’s Tiny Pill Box manages to find a good balance between the ordinary and the mysterious, between psychedelic sounds and pure garage-rock sleaze. For the most part, the reference points for the songs are guitar groups of the 90s and early 2000s, the last periods where this kind of music dominated radio. And, Greenteeth brings a similar vision as well as considerable writing and production know-how to try to achieve the same results.
Black Paint – Born Again
Genre: Noise Rock, Grunge, Alternative Rock
Art mimics life and can be either extremely difficult or very easy. If you are among the minority that finds itself in the second category, what are you going to do with all of your freedom? How are you going to spend your time that is running out? And, what is so important to you that it you’d be willing to put yourself in the line of fire?
If we’re being honest, for the vast majority of people, the answer is “nothing.” Eating potato chips, watching Netflix, and drinking beer is all the excitement most of us can handle.
Music is not very different. Nowadays, the pesky involvement of record companies is felt much less often. Hell, you don’t even need one to record and release successful music. Yet, most music is predictable and safe, the equivalent of spending your Saturday nights with a bag of potato chips.
Black Paint’s Born Again showcases the talent of musicians that desperately wish to stray away from the safest choices that they could make. Their music resembles early Nine Inch Nails with an added garage-rock groove for good measure. The vocal melodies and the riffs suggest that they, too, could have shot for a big pop single. But, it would have been all such a waste.
