Chill O’Connor and ELROD Reviewed
Chill O’Connor – BORED OF ENGLAND
Dear reader, if you’re one of the people reading the Alt77 reviews for a long time, you will know that I have consistently and unapologetically poked fun at the British Isles whenever I’ve been handed the occasion. Yet, today, I sit before a somewhat changed man having spent the Summer driving on the wrong side of many of Britain’s roads.
Here I was imagining that Britain was merely a place where angry drunks congregated in tiny bars to escape the weather, and, instead, I was greeted by delightful, respectful, semi-sober people enjoying the modern hot Summers.
But before I have you packing planes over to Old Limey, I’ll direct your attention to Chill O’Connor’s “BORED OF ENGLAND,” the other side of the coin and the kind of reportage that you’re, likely, more familiar with these days.
This is a modern, jangly, indie song about the promises of the big British cities and about the last decade spent making most of the inhabitants, and some of the tourists, truly miserable. It’s a funny song about a joke that, for some, hasn’t moved beyond the punchline.
Is England boring? Not all. You’ll just have to avoid Manchester, London, the M1 and the horribly sugary cider. If you’re unable to do that, at least there’s a song with some compassion coming out of it.
ELROD – Howl
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness… And on and on, and so, it goes. And not only do kids study that poem, but still feel in much the same way about some Revolution that won’t ever come. And the very same thing goes for rock music, regardless of how long it’s been since the rock star singing the songs was handsome, filled with talent and capable of providing confident sound bites for interviews.
Things move around in circles. The past becomes the present. And so on and so forth. The only things that really change are the wiring, the weight of the technology that needs to be used to capture all of this, and the people who get to hear the poems and songs.
ELROD’s “Howl” sounds like an inventive, daring lo-fi production effort. It’s certainly a modern invention. But at the heart of the song there’s also an echo of emotional grunge odes to being misunderstood and misjudged. And there’s also a feeling about the world never quite being able to get itself right, something that will echo again and again.
