Posable Action Figures – Shank
Genre: Alternative Rock
Everyone still wants to be a rockstar! What, in this economy? Don’t they know how bad it usually pays? Haven’t folks seen the Behind The Music docs? Folks don’t even get medical benefits.
Still, being a rockstar appeals to two impulses that are very important in most people. The first, naturally, is the creative factor. This is important. However, it keeps a few people up at night.
More importantly, posing as a rockstar puts someone in a position of control over people. Over a beat and the sound of their own voice, singers suddenly become therapists leading audiences to where they want to take them.
Posable Action Figures’ Shank feels a lot like taking part in a psychodrama experiment. You’re meant to feel all of the discomfort as it is being described, to live, and then to get rid of it. It’s rockstar applied therapy.
Blair Gun – Lemondrops
Similar artists: Wire, Devo, Violent Femmes, Parquet courts, Black Midi
Genre: Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
Rock n’ roll was made by kids and sold by adults. Listen to it for a second. Aren’t the earliest rock tunes of the 50s or the early punk songs the kinds of things that could only come from the mind of an overly-excited child?
Then commerce steps in. Kids aren’t very useful here. The objective becomes to find people that can sell a product yet convince people that they’re not interested one iota in this aspect.
Is a rock guitar riff difficult to write? To paraphrase someone it’s either simple or impossible. It’s nearly impossible for a jazz or a classical musician. It’s beneath them. And, after all, if they’d really felt it in their bones, they would’ve been playing rock to begin with.
Blair Gun’s Lemondrops mixes the pure enthusiasm of guitar rock with the geeky nature of artsier pursuits. It’s cool and awkward at the same time. It’s free-wheeling and a little forced. It’s fun that you could package and sell. At the very least, it should get you to gently headbang along.
