Fragile Creatures – Bad Smell
Humour’s not just a tool used to get a date or to build a career of speaking from a stage to strangers desperate for a bit of entertainment. It’s a survival mechanism. It’s something that might make life’s experience more tolerable, a trick by which you can dust yourself back up.
You can’t write great guitar-pop without possessing either a good sense of humour, a terrible addiction to romance, or both. Just listen to Fragile Creatures, and try to picture the musicians as misanthropes who never leave the house. You can’t, can you?
There are a million great stories that you’ve never heard. Most of those stories, in fact, have never been told. The people who’ve lived them are hiding them away. They’re too ashamed to speak. They’ve been through too much and can’t muster the ability to smile anymore.
Fragile Creatures write with empathy and humour on “Bad Smell” about a single mom forced into the cesspool of modern dating. But the way it’s sung, you’d think that these are the observations of the band’s own singer. And aren’t beautiful melodies part of the same human traits that create the ability to see the upside in anything? Fragile Creatures have plenty of those, and the Beatlesque vocals are married to alt-rock, Pixies-like dynamics. It’s easier to see a silver lining once you have all of those things active and working.
Batterfly – powdeRoom
Everything doesn’t always have to mean something. Sure, it’s trendy for bands to make a fuss about their mission. Everyone has a political issue that they wish to support, a fantasy realm that they want to make real through their songs, or some musical style that they believe needs saving. And while all of these may make the band seem more interesting, will most listeners care beyond the quality of the songs?
Batterfly are, unashamedly, a large-sounding, hooky pop-rock band with a lot of confidence. There is, as of yet, no great mission that the group wishes to accomplish beyond making memorable singles. And while this is a rare story, it’s one that also fits with some of music history’s most cherished and successful acts. Frankly, if you can give audiences the right tunes, everything else feels besides the point.
“powdeRoom” finds the duo more confident than ever. With a bravado and the hooks that call to mind groups like Oasis, or the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and a production style that allows the group to court modern success, Batterfly is proudly a singles band. “powdeRoom” is an instant thrill, jumping from one hook to another without wasting time, or losing focus. It’s hard to argue with these kinds of earworms and difficult to ask for more depth when the surface is as satisfying as this.
