
Burp. – Monkey Man
Similar artists: Remo Drive, The Chats, Mom Jeans, Hot Mulligan, Modern Baseball
Genre: Skate Punk, Punk, Pop Punk
Good taste is rare, but good, bad taste is even more so. We all know who are rock musicians who possess incredible skill. The great singers and great guitar players could’ve found a job playing music in just about any era. Top songwriters will always find a way to get their tunes heard.
Because of the fact that we are all aware of these things, it gets awfully dull keeping up with all of the new artists who are obsessed with musical perfection. There’s only so much that you can sing about when your voice can easily slide between registers or when you are adding lightning-fast solos. Everything else deserves a bit of bad taste.
The kind of topic covered in Burp.’s Monkey Man requires a grimey, kitschy exterior. It is, after all, a song that covers a powerfully philosophical topic, the idea of learning to live with one’s anxiety. For these purposes, only the grimiest sounds and worst recorded vocals would do. That’s the way that you can trust that the artists are honest about what they’re saying. Plus, there’s enough good-sounding music out there to last us a few centuries.
Ella Clayton – Foolish Man
Genre: Indie-pop, Southern Rock / Red Dirt
Wherever you are living in the world, you can be certain that you are always surrounded by highly-private, strange people doing bizarre, strange things. Yes, the Western world has become rather obsessed with sharing intimate details online. Media, acting as its mirror, has done a lot to normalize kinks and weirdness.
But don’t be fooled. There will always be a reason to keep certain things behind closed doors. That’s what certain people need. And those are the kinds of things worth writing songs about. Few people, however, know these topics intimately enough to be able to attempt such writing.
Ella Clayton sounds like someone hiding a secret on Foolish Man. It’s not so much what the singer says but what she omits. Just like a ten-mile stare signals someone’s involvement in military conflict, Clayton’s vocals tell the listener that the artist has likely been through a lot during her young life. The very best songs leave a lot to be imagined.