CATBEAR – Darkness
I’m increasingly disturbed by the sighting of rock stars inside their local supermarkets during waking hours. Gruesome pictures of ordinary-looking people dressed in funny shirts that you recognise from, at some point, commanding the biggest stages in the world are making the rounds of the internet and robbing us of being able to enjoy the mystery of their artistic work.
Solution? Make rockstars have to do their grocery shopping at night. Either that, or force them to wait for deliveries inside of dimly lit houses while they stare out blankly into the distance. It’s what we expect and, after all, everything that happens during the nighttime hours is better. In fact, everything that happens while people are not around and while time seems to have slowed down is more interesting.
CATBEAR’s “Darkness” is a song that takes its energy from 80s gothic-rock and modern pop, and its love of detachment, distance, and enigmas from the nighttime. CATBEAR treats the music in much the same way as a stage director might use a mist machine. The artists want you to assume that there’s danger around every corner and after every sung line. We just hope that they’re right!
Talk To Her – PLD
Rock impresario Kim Fowley, a man whose talent for promotion was only outdone by his evil win-at-all-cost mentality, would start coaching his artists by asking them to walk across a room. He’d then ask them to repeat it over and over again. The goal, he said, was to make people recognise them from simply strolling a few feet and to make them appear arrogant but literate.
The strategy works, and can be especially effective nowadays when so many things, and the people selling them, are safe, predictable, and generally offer comfort instead of stimulation. Musically, like the one made by Talk To Her, is particularly well-positioned to arrest the attention of audiences and to keep it. But how is that best achieved?
Talk To Her’s “PLD” is the equivalent of a perfect fashion model scowl. It’s striking, unfriendly, and there’s a quality to it that makes you not want to look away. This is music intended for large underground facilities equipped with perfect sound systems. It’s music made to intimidate. It’s also music designed for dancing. The Italian outfit is searching for something primal, and had Fowley asked, surely, each one of the band’s members would know how to walk across a room.
