Dark Dazey – Leapfrog
Sometimes good music is enough. And, most of the time, it’s actually fine to just enjoy mellow sounds coming out of the speaker designed to make you feel good and hopeful about life. I know that it’s not what a lot of music writers of the past would’ve liked to believe, or tell their readers. I know that the emphasis in rock music is to make everything new seem to be a giant unstoppable revolution.
Sometimes the Revolution happens on the inside first and is spurred on by the kind of advice that your granny may have given you. She probably told you that if love doesn’t solve everything, it certainly helps with most things. She probably advised you to lean on friends and loved ones in times of trouble.
Her voice might sound as clear as yesterday when you listen to Dark Dazey’s “Leapfrog.” Yeah, there’s no screaming here, and no lyrics about how we all ain’t got no future. No, this is sweet, folk and country-influenced pop music about falling in love with someone and cutting your connection with those parts of the world that don’t care about what’s good for you. “Leapfrog” is the sound you need right now and you shouldn’t feel bad about it.
Cormac Looby – Boundto
You do see it in the eyes of people as you walk by. And, strange as it may seem, when I travel, I most often see it in the eyes of the people who’ve had the good fortune of living in one of the world’s most developed countries. That it is a sense of foreboding, a hopelessness about the future, the idea that nothing’s going to be alright ever again.
But you don’t hear them say it. Just make conversation with these people for a few minutes, and they’ll politely tell you that things, more or less, are the same as they always were. It’s almost as if they can’t bring themselves up to say everything that they feel within a brief conversation. Perhaps this is why we need truthful pop songs nowadays.
Cormac Looby is a pop music poet. You can hear it not only in the clever use of language on “Boundto,” or even in the fact that he captures the zeitgeist with this single. You can, especially, tell that what I am saying is the truth from the bravery of Looby’s songwriting, the willingness to share the truth within a four-minute conversation conducted in song. “Boundto” is a special song and a product of its time.
