
Burn Kit – The House Went Cold
Like Father Ted accepting the Golden Cleric Award, some people believe that success is the ideal excuse to settle old scores. Get an award and tell everyone off who has ever wronged you or dared to question you.
In truth, however, being successful or merely being able to do something creative isn’t an excuse to be rude to the past, but it doesn’t magically wash it away either. Those who keep marching forward are forced, every once in a while, to take a look back over their shoulder.
Autobiographies and movies about successful people milk their disappointments and traumas, sure. But that is only because we understand how they must feel. Most of us have to get out of bed and deal with our pasts, and we never have anyone thank us for it.
Burn Kit’s “The House Went Cold” is a marvellous song about having to look back and notice all of the tension and even despair that was once there. Dressed in earnest modern rock sounds, Burn Kit creates a short story where the main character is the feeling of loss, of love and hope evaporating. These are feelings rarely put convincingly into words. Burn Kit manages to put them to music.
KEELEY – Trans – Europe 18
They have been warning us about the dangers that technology poses for musicians for many, many decades. But the robots haven’t exactly taken over in any meaningful way. For the most part, they’re just responsible for starting some minor trends that people forget about in a few months’ time. Want to make sure that your songs get forgotten quickly? Anchor them to a sound that is massively trendy.
And, on rarer occasions, technology has helped great artists achieve their dreams that traditional playing of instruments couldn’t have achieved. Take Kraftwerk, the greatest success story of the emergence of tech and pop music. All these decades later, the influence of German-based Kosmische Musik and Motorik Beats is still felt across the work of numerous artists.
KEELEY’s “Trans – Europe 18” is a Kraftwerk-inspired song about seeing the great ol’ world one train station at a time. There’s a romance to time spent with the sound of railroad tracks acting as a soundtrack. And that’s precisely what you find in KEELEY’s track. This beat is unstoppable. Meanwhile, the vocals provide the hallucinatory effect that really ties the song together. If this doesn’t make you want to go and buy a train ticket, I’m not sure what will.