
Ring Finger No Pinky – Few Dollars More
Genre: Grunge, Classic Rock, Alternative Rock
You wouldn’t exactly know it from the rubbish that’s constantly in the charts, but all over the world audiences are getting smarter. Collectively they’ve acquired a great deal of knowledge after seeing practically every trend come and then go.
That’s the reason why everyone’s a critic nowadays. Ask anyone leaving a movie theater about their opinion of the production they’ve just watched, and they’ll always give it to you. Nobody hesitates or stutters on excuses about this not being their line of expertise.
It only makes sense then that the next generation of musical terrorists would be stealing inspiration from every genre like pickpockets on the day the townsfolk get their wages. Ring Finger No Pinky’s Few Dollars More sounds like the Birthday Party if Nick Cave had had a strange interest in rap, or Twenty Pilots if their interest was in scaring their audience senseless. Either way, it’s good.
Break the Robot – Taste
Genre: Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
Could Hunter S. Thompson have been anyone other than who he turned out? Sure he could. In fact, the future father of gonzo writing spent his youth fashioning himself as a future Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald, tirelessly copying their greatest work as a means to achieve some of their balance.
Then, when opportunities to work as a writer, usually paid to cover conventional events for news publications, he adapted his style and weirdness around the tasks with which he was provided. He infected the system from within as it were, treating the Kentucky Derby, the U.S. elections, or the boxing fight for the Heavyweight Title of the world as if being asked to write a thesis on psychedelics and degeneracy.
Break the Robot use similar energy on their single Taste. They are what might happen if Hunter S. Thompson deviant devotees decided to start a power-pop band. There’s something perverse and inviting about the sound of the group, like someone with unmatching shoes asking you up for dinner when you haven’t had a bite in days. It follows in the great rocking tradition of bringing excellent melodies and a genuine sense of weirdness together.