Emerson Bruno – In the Other Room
There’s a good chance that if you try to think of your earliest years and close your eyes to do it, you’ll hear in your mind sounds that you haven’t heard in years. Try it! Memories act on the senses every time.
And, because of that, the senses can also be used to manipulate us, to pull us in one direction or another. Some use this knowledge simply to benefit themselves, as advertisers or writers of Christmas jingles do, of course.
Meanwhile, others do it as a form of therapy, knowing which levers they need to pull in order to get you to relax fully, or to get you to open up about your real feelings. Those who, like Emerson Bruno, have taught themselves to control these elements have constructed a door into your past that few other things can open.
That’s the reason why you ought to celebrate Emerson Bruno’s “In the Other Room” and the feeling of warm nostalgia that it will most certainly bestow upon you. It hardly matters if the story of the lyrics is the same as your own. It’s the melodies, the groove, the convincing vocal delivery that have the studied effect of pushing you back into the past and offering you a safe landing. These things work for a reason, you know. And, you might as well go with the flow.
Awful Din – GTFO My Basement
The last singers and bands capable of lip-syncing their hits in front of crowds of upwards of 20.000 people are making the rounds, racking in the bucks, and ending each show with a “I guess you’ll never see and hear another one like me, will?”
And, while it’s fine to wipe the tear out of your eyes, or even to have them there in the first place, it’s all for the best. We won’t be truly free until all of them are off the festival circuit. We won’t be really free until we’re able to replace them with holograms or whatever is the cheapest technological equivalent.
But it’s for the best! The future belongs to individual obsessions and to bands like Awful Din. Future hit records will be made by people sitting in their basements or riding in their cars. Should Phil Spector get his wish and be reborn without a rap sheet, he’ll have to make do with recording four acoustic guitars playing at the same time on a phone speaker.
You get the feeling that not a lot of time was spent by Awful Din on the single “GTFO My Basement.” Great! The song sounds like it is filled with emotional instability; the tune is written instead of an angry text message. But, it’s also a great emo-pop ode to lost friendship and, perhaps, to some kind of madness. It’s enough to get you obsessed, and just the right stuff to make you forget about buying those really expensive tickets the next time Motley Crue rolls into town.
