Celeb Car Crash – Pretend We Are Fine
Almost Famous is practically required viewing material for anyone interested in playing in a band. If you remember the Cameron Crowe film, what do the members of Stillwater really want from the young journalist that is trailing them? To make them look cool.
Celeb Car Crash have certainly chosen a name that will get them recognized, and may even get them a few enemies before playing a single note. That’s great. Can’t buy advertising like that. Can’t trade anything for cool like that.
Music-wise, they are less committed to acting chilled. Rather, they are all in on a sound that we, in particular love, but much of the world may have moved away from. The Italian group on their single Pretend We Are Fine sound like the post-grunge groups like Silverchair or Days of the New.
“They must have a singer with a good set of pipes then”, I hear you say. Yes, indeed, there’s excellent yarling accompanying the group through their dark, grunge-pop sonic fantasies.
Stardog – She Said
Beyond music inspired by glaciers and by movies about wizards with long-flowing beards, Sweden has been producing two excellent types of music in recent years. One is flawlessly sweet pop that the Swedes have always had a knack for creating. The second is nasty punk rock that seems made by disenchanted youth forced to roam the clean, straight city streets in search for some sort of excitement.
Stardog sounds like a band that is very fond of the Stooges, and very distrusting of a metronome. They play music like demented children planning out the best way to loot the local liquor store or Systembolaget for anyone who’s had the misfortune of having to learn the term.
It’s ugly rock n’ roll created on the strength of a minute guitar vocabulary. Oh, but it means business! It’s less than three minutes long, but by the end of it, the singer sounds slightly out of breath, like someone who’s been forced to dash through the streets with a couple of bottles of vodka in their pocket.
