Dewey Kincade and The Navigators- All Alone in This Together
Well, they do say that nobody’s properly dead and gone until the day that everybody stops talking about them, remembering them, living with the stories that they created. Remembrance is the one great connection to life.
But, I suppose, there are both good and ineffective ways of using remembrance. And, I’m sure, that music, and its various styles and subgenres, function in much the same way. It’s all well and good to talk about styles like the blues and soul, but are we really honouring them by using them?
The good news is that there are some who are still looking for guidance and a bit of happiness from these old styles of music. And, yes, there are some like Dewey Kincade and The Navigators still doing more than just talking about it. They’re keeping it alive by making it be music that helps and entertains people.
That’s why “All Alone in This Together” sounds like group therapy. The sound is that of a very confident blues-soul combo with a great, warm singing voice. But the songwriting dares to talk about us, right now, not some grand fantasy. It’s a song about loneliness and modern stress. And, as long as we keep talking, keep using the things we used to cherish most, we should be able to keep the whole thing alive.
Baker Island – Champion’s Visit
Chances are that you could receive your first-ever guitar for Christmas. It’s a nice-looking gift, but learning to play it will feel like a wholly baffling idea. Cool online searches won’t help much. You’ll be told that you need to invest thousands of hours to become any good. It’s at this point that you’ll begin to stress and to hate whoever it was that picked up the gift for you.
Worst still, if you’re not really careful, you may end up taking the internet’s advice and learning the complete collection of Steve Vai guitar solos. Not only will you have spent years of your life practising scales alone in a room. But you won’t get many people to want to listen to you.
Yeah, music takes a lot of practice. It’s good to know then that there are people like the ones who make up Baker Island, people who sound like they’ve built up beautifully curated record collections and only listen to the records of an underground bunker designed in case of Doomsday.
There’s no mistaking it! Baker Island’s “Champion’s Visit” is a gorgeous piece of pop music that would get the late Brian Wilson smiling. But it’s not made in a fancy studio, presumably. Millions weren’t spent on recording it. And, judging by the sound of it, you’d have a hard time convincing the musicians to leave their bunker to check any of those expensive studios. This is beautiful orchestral pop made on the cheap on purpose. A wonderful sound, and a true junkyard orchestra!
