Space Dudes – Loon
Genre: Folk rock, Americana, Alt Country
Similar artists: John Prine, Todd Snider, Hayes Carll
Lou Reed, in one of his trademark cantankerous states, advised people who really liked rock n’ roll to go out and die for it. Mr. Reed claimed that this would only make sense. Why not try and die for something pretty? People get themselves killed for all sorts of other crazy notions all the time.
Rarely has there been a more remarkable disinterest in human life these days. Rarely has the civilized world shown as much uncivilized interest in war over peace. It makes one think about what Ol’ Lou had to say and indeed makes one wonder why some would strive to become great artists anyway. Is the effort to construct beautiful works of art something that this world deserves?
Space Dudes’ Loon aims to relate the dirty story of the world in contrast with the beautiful art that has been created within it. Is all of this art medicine for a sick world or a way for the artist to retreat from it? Part confession, part finger-pointing, Space Dudes’ tender cries might be the reminder we all need not take any of the beauty around us for granted.
Collisionville – Heart That Just Won’t Break
Similar artists: Old 97s, Drive-By Truckers, The Replacements, Meat Puppets
Genre: Pop Punk, Americana
If rock music does indeed resemble a blood sport, then your band certainly does not want to get in the ring with country musicians who can play punk. The results are devastating. These are not only musicians who’ve patiently built the anger by resiliently powering through endless hours of playing earthy songs about the old red, white, and blue. They also have the playing vocabulary and extraordinary singing abilities that musicians who go straight into punk might not possess.
The so-called alt-country bands of the early ‘90s proved all of this. Taking their inspiration from rebellious country singers, as well as from the variety of garage-rock that was dominating the radio waves at the time, showed that great songwriting propelled at speed could work wonders.
Collisionville’s Heart That Just Won’t Break is a country-punk song written with perfect punctuation and grammar and set on fire by the light of a cheap cigarette. It’s a tune that sounds like the jam session that a professional country band might engage in after the paying customers have left home. It’s a heavy bowling ball of a song, the kind that flattens whatever it manages to catch in its path.
