The Mild Antics – Maybe You Will
“You can think long and hard. You don’t need imagination. It takes a lot of repetition to get yourself a reputation“. Those are the opening lines of The Mild Antics’ meticulously-worded song Maybe You Will.
There’s a certain vocal tone that we associate with truthful music and that the majority of us find poetic, in rock music. It’s not Ronnie James Dio or Freddie Mercury‘s operatic stylings. It’s the kind of tone of the Mild Antics’ singer, Neil Young’s tinny vocals, or Bob Dylan’s gold-prospector inflection.
Singer Andrew Szwejkowski makes it clear that he isn’t in it for his health, or for the glory of rock n’ roll. He and the band are just looking to write some good tunes and throw in a few clever lines. They can’t be much bothered with production values and such.
In their honesty, though, and possessing significant talent, they manage to create a very interesting, well-written song.
Employer – Modeans 2
Indie rock musicians are getting smarter and their record collections, digital as they are now, are getting larger every day. This doesn’t always work in the musicians’ financial interests. But, it certainly makes for interesting excursions into the mind of these young creators.
Employer, as strange as their song Modeans 2 may sound at first, are a product of their time. They play well. They sound like they’ve produced this record in their bedroom and it ended up sounding better than if they’d gone to most other expensive, well-lit studios. And, they draw from a wide range of influences.
Their carefully worded lyrics contain a dash of desperation and a spot of humour. The lead vocals sound like they’ve arrived exported from a Muse record. The backing vocal hum sounds like a herd of cows. And, the band play their instrument restrained, yet professionally, like musicians who once played in a post-rock group.
Like a computer-scientist going out on a speed date night, they might just have a few too many ideas for such a reduced format.
