Carambolo – La Vida No Es Mascota
Similar artists: Portishead, Radiohead, Gustavo Cerati, Juana Molina
Genre: Latin Rock, Alternative Rock
Life doesn’t owe you anything, sadly. And, it certainly doesn’t owe you or anyone else any great revelations or insights on why things are the way that they are. Getting those is an act of theft, and life will stop, and nothing will get you to fail. These sorts of secrets aren’t designed to be shared. The ones who have them have stolen them.
We all instinctively know how difficult these life lessons come into someone’s possession. Still, we look upon some people as keepers of those. We expect that our favourite artists, for example, will continuously return to us with new secrets. We expect them to be better. But just like tourists who travel to holy sites only to find out that they can’t find anything holy about them, we are in for disappointment.
Carambolo’s “La Vida No Es Mascota” is hypnotic alternative pop music. There is an unspoken deal here. The artist has come to these realizations by a process of taking themselves into a dream world and somehow coming out the other side fine. But to show us what’s been found, they need us to do the same. Using a mix of Latin grooves and Bristol style trip-hop, Carambolo knows which door takes you down to the dreamworld.
Thunder Boys – Sorry Jars & Shooting Stars
Similar artists: Shakey Graves, The Marshall Tucker Band, Thee Oh Sees, Blaze Foley
Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
How much do we really need psychedelic rock nowadays? Arguably more than ever. How much do you want to hear what’s going on in the real world? Wars, social turmoil, Argentina’s inflation rate reaching 1000% pretty soon. That’s hard stuff to handle and even harder to dream through. It’s the stuff of nightmares, alright.
Since psychedelics have fallen out of favour and drinking magic brew only ends up getting you committed, sensible folk look for sensible solutions. Some save their money to travel to India, where blokes in funny clothes teach you to meditate. Others go to neo-Christian organizations where meditation is replaced with praying. Corporate people call it mindfulness, a kind of meditation that can be done while handling paperwork.
What about music, then? You can certainly get lost in that if it has the right ingredients. Thunder Boys’ “Sorry Jars & Shooting Stars” contains the right ingredients for dreaming, for escaping reality, and for making up a new and better world in one’s head. It’s built on familiar psychedelic-rock sounds that certainly stir the ship in one direction. But, as you’re listening to the song, you’ll notice that the ship is still going, nobody is at the wheel, and the band are most relaxed having it be this way.
