
Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys – Burning Building
Similar artists: PJ Harvey, Patti Smith, Cate Le Bon, Wolf Alice, Iggy Pop
Genre: Punk, Garage Rock
We rarely manage to hear good or catastrophic news unless they’re provided in a certain tone of voice. Just try smiling while you’re telling somebody that their house has been demolished, and you’re bound to confuse them for a while.
It’s not only the fact that we’re bad at accepting this kind of information. It’s also due to the fact that we’ve been taught how to drown it out. Isn’t modern entertainment just a way to block out uncomfortable voices in our heads?
Punk rock has a way of getting a message across in the shortest, most efficient way possible. It usually involves shouting. Pop music is all about dancing around the message. What if the two were to be mixed? This is exactly what Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys do on Burning Building, a preppy, garage-rock number that sounds like it’s disguising news about the world ending underneath a sheath of bouncy, colorful sounds. How’s that for bad news?
Forty Feet Tall – We Can’t Go Back To Normal
Similar artists: Rolling Backout Costal Fever, Post Animal, The Strokes
Genre: Indie Rock, Garage Roc, Alternative Rock
Nobody asks bands how they feel just before asking them to sign a recording contract. They should! It would save the music man with the suitcase and the musicians a whole lot of trouble.
In view of this uncertainty, musicians often tailor their work to suit the feeling that they ought to be having. Nowadays, normally, this equates to a breezy, something-for-everyone presentation.
But is this what record companies really want? If they could choose, surely they ought to pick the bands that are angry. It’ll be harder to sell their records, sure. It’ll make for better music, however.
Forty Feet Tall’s We Can’t Go Back To Normal acts like a mantra against the forced sweetening of recent events by the mainstream media. It’s an angry little indie-rock number about waking up and finding it hard to go back to sleep. Forty Feel Tall have chosen how they feel. They’re pissed.