
Chemical Therapy – Daddy’s Girl
Genre: Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
Studying pop trends is a bit like measuring the life of the drosophila melanogaster. How much time do you have to spare? Musical trends zoom past us at incredible speeds and crash into other trends like never-ending toppling dominoes.
Is chopping up beats still a modern thing? Is blending The Beatles with rap still something that would surprise Ringo Starr? The fact is that by the 1990s, the likes of Beck or The Beastie Boys seemed to have accessed a veritably new place in music. Like alchemists, they could blend elements together and come up with sounds nobody had ever heard before. At least, not together. But to be the best at doing that nowadays means having to fight an algorithm that possesses tireless energy and resources. Beck’s copy-and-paste style predicted the future, but humans were less involved in it than we assumed.
It’s fascinating hearing Chemical Therapy’s “Daddy’s Girl,” and not just because it is a good, snarky pop song. But it’s interesting to hear this 90s futuristic pop-rock sound so old. Like The Jetsons, Beck was wrong with some of his predictions, but people are still dreaming of flying cars. Still, Chemical Therapy know this and doesn’t only appeal to your sense of nostalgia but also to your love of The Beatles. There are some hooks here and a fun, flaky attitude that may well make you want to play this on repeat for a while.
Eades – Fade Away
Similar artists: Langkamer, Wet Leg, Yard Act, Geese, Courtney Barnett
Genre: Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
Rockstars don’t age. Neither do musicians that don’t quite achieve the same level of notoriety. But, before you decide to sell your beaten up Ford for music equipment and decide to go searching for your own Peter Pan-like dream, make sure that you know what you’re gonna get. Try to meet old musicians. Try to interact and have conversations with them.
You’ll notice that playing music and dressing up in funny clothes as stunted their growth. Don’t you have any of those characters on your perimeter? No problem. Just pick up a rock biography. You’ll find people who routinely make the worst possible decisions when it comes to their families, their finances, or their health. It’s funny, and, yes, it’s tragic.
What’s the other side of the coin? Eades’ “Fade Away” has just caught it. Here’s a song that doesn’t brag about living without responsibilities but looks at the days after the party has ended. What of all the people who had plenty of fun but never got the platinum records? It might not be so tragic if the ride was, indeed, fun. As for the tune to “Fade Away,” it certainly might be fun.