Goldskool – Site & Sand
Yeah, maybe those cranky old men were right. Maybe there’s just too much music in the world. Certainly, and there can be no debate here, most of it is terrible, and created by people who just want to pay the bills and nothing more.
You don’t need to run any fancy research programme either to find out that the majority of songs ever written, that most of them are about girls and cars, that the singer sings too many notes, and that half of all of them belong to Sammy Hagar. Dreadful!
The famous singers with the ability to frighten sleeping dogs a few miles away keep their best stories for the paperback ghostwritten autobiographies. But the brilliant Goldskool, nor do we have the time for that. Give us a real story, and maybe less of all of those singing bits in the chorus.
Goldskool’s “Site & Sand” is a fantastic piece of work, part storytelling session during a day-drinking session, and part hypnotic electro-thriller. The man in charge of recalling his younger days working on a construction site opts for that classic writer’s trick of penning down what he knows best. Fortunately, Goldskool also has a knack for finding the sublime and the tragic in everyday things. Much like Scott Lavene, there’s something charming and immensely entertaining about this approach. And, after all, who needs one more song about cars and girls where the singer reaches a G above C in full voice?
Erbagrama – Decidiamo poi
Everyone’s trying to be someone else, and that must be exhausting. It’s no wonder that people sleep late on the weekends, do everything they can to earn a holiday and, eventually, have some sort of nervous breakdown when rest is prescribed to them by a specialist.
Still, for many people, all that effort sure beats being honest. Revealing yourself is a scary thing. Living with your decisions and opting to acknowledge your mistakes and do better is a difficult thing, and the kind of subject matter rarely approached by rock songwriters.
But, at the very end of it all, what else is there besides the chase and the truth? Some, like Erbagrama’s songwriters, have figured this out, while the rest of us are still busy working on the details.
Erbagrama’s “Decidiamo poi” is a pro-mistake-making anthem, a song about embracing faults and adapting accordingly. But, even more importantly, it’s a wonderful-sounding, poppy alt-rock track where the undisputed melodic qualities of the Italian language are used to maximum effect.
