Caleb L’Etoile – Inverse Living
Most artists dream of doing wonderful, remarkable things. Most songwriters dream that they’ll be able to transmute hardships into beautiful lyrics and a mess of sound into a hypnotising ceremony. However, all of them are human and have to find ways of dealing with their own limitations. It’s not that the aforementioned things aren’t possible. It’s simply simply that there are too many things in the world working to take the artist’s energy and focus away.
First of all, the great hardships that some of the best songwriters have been able to find inspiration in are enough to grind into dust most people. The vast majority of us, including me, wouldn’t be able to process such things, let alone document them.
Secondly, while it is true that music, especially given the rise of modern technology, offers nearly endless possibilities. But that easily turns into a problem when it becomes impossible to settle on just a few sounds to define the work.
Caleb L’Etoile did it. “Inverse Living” sounds marvellously hypnotising, using loops and clever orchestration to pull the listener closer and closer. Distance is important here because the artist has a secret to confess. This is a piece of music written for a best friend, Caleb’s dog, who has passed away. It’s music written out of heartache and recognition. That’s more than most modern pop songwriters manage to add to their songs and more than most would be able to handle. All of these things work together to make for a special song.
Mothers Pride – The Power of Kindness
Pop music had no choice but to be wickedly clever. It needed to hide clues in plain sight. It was born, after all, in a gulag of good taste trying to censor it. Pop music didn’t need to hide its intentions just across the countries represented by oppressive dictatorships. Back in the U.S., everyone assumed what Elvis Presley was singing about. But nobody could pin anything on him.
However, it’s late in the game now. And, there’s little to try and hide nowadays. Pop stars don’t wiggle their hips anymore. They have Only Fans channels where they invite their biggest supporters. There’s no reason to mask the real intentions of a set of lyrics when any cuss word can be used.
When everything is so loud and obvious, the most shocking thing to do is to be direct and earnest.
Mothers Pride’s “The Power of Kindness” is a song about exactly what the title says. It doesn’t pay to listen many times and to try and find the key to some dark secret. Not here. Swiss group Mothers Pride may sound like Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, with rich instrumentation and a heavy baritone pushing the music. But there’s cynicism or love of confrontation as far as I can tell. This is music about reconciliation. At a time like this, this is practically revolutionary.
