Charm Bracelet – Your Ad Here!
Making the entertainment of strangers your hobby or profession must, to most people, feel like an insane thing, especially in this day and age. How dare you stop people who are busy on their way to work or the supermarket to ask them if they want to hear your song? How dare you stop someone walking around, gloomy mumbling about the state of the world, in order to show them a pretty picture that you’ve drawn!
It may seem egotistical, even maniacal, to have those kinds of ambitions. But the world, secretly (and sometimes it’s a secret even to the people in the world), is waiting to rejoice in the gifts of talented artists. And, while it’s never been proven that statistics and surveys work in actually getting to the bottom of what audiences really want, there’s one sure-fire, proven method. If the artists manage to lose themselves in the work that they’re making, chances are good that audiences will follow suit.
Charm Bracelet operates using bright, shimmering guitars and gentle singing that works more as a sound effect than as a propaganda tool. The band’s sound is light and fragile. But as you first hear it, and notice the group members’ involvement, what is most striking is how it feels as if the musicians are actively working to hypnotise themselves, to collectively shift their attention to a wholly different mental space. It sounds like it’s working. In fact, it’s working so well that it’s hard not to fall under the spell yourself.
Mister Zach – Me or My Shadow
Most people can’t smile about it, or even admit that they were wrong. People end up in jungles somewhere, forced to chant all day long at the feet of some guru wearing a toga and telling his followers to only consume fruit and learn to digest air. People end up holed up in therapy, spending their last paycheck for a session. And, more than likely, folks end up saddened and bitter about their experiences.
The vast majority of artists have stuck with their work, in part, because they were trying to vanquish some kind of monster. But only a few have a sense of humour about the size of it, about how sharp its teeth are, or about how bad the chances are that they’re going to win. Still, they’re the ones that people will listen to and, consequently, the only ones that can tell us about those nasty creatures and the fights with them.
The first thing you notice about Mister Zach is that the artist’s music is very well crafted. It sounds, nearly, like a Sting or Peter Gabriel composition from the 1980s, written after listening a few days straight to 60s pop. But, listening closely to the lyrics for “Me or My Shadow,” you get a new kind of appreciation for the song. It’s not just the struggle that’s being described here that makes it interesting, but the fact that, like an old vet that’s seen terrible combat, Mister Zach can smile while recalling the gruesome details.
