Good Juice – Never Backing Down
I can’t help it! It feels immensely satisfying to watch (and, of course, to hear) big corporations try to sell AI-made music to the masses and, for the most part, be wholly rejected. Sure, there will be exceptions. Some late-night, minimalist EDM may still be sneaked through the doors of clubs where people love to move, but hate to listen too closely.
Still, even for styles that require a simple beat, a common chord progression and uplifting lyrics, AI can’t cut it. In truth, neither can armies of corporate-approved songwriters.
Good Juice prove that the “X Factor” in any convincing rock effort is charisma. This might mean that the performers appear as joyful and hopeful, or miserable and dejected, but that, either way, they must make us, the audience, believe them.
Good Juice’s “Never Backing Down” is expertly crafted, minimalist classic rock. There aren’t many pieces that make up the whole. But that’s rather the point. The duo knows what kind of dynamics and what sort of hooks ought to work. And they deliver a sunshine-feeling garage-rock that has to reach the world while it’s fresh, strong, and can move audiences.
Karlmer – Blackout
There are plenty of car chase scenes in action movies. In fact, try to make one of these kinds of films without it, and the audience is likely to notice right away. That’s, perhaps, why, especially, old heist films felt obliged to try and film some automobiles chasing each other around.
If you ask me, however, none of those make any sense. Not, at least, until someone figured that you could use rock music to soundtrack them. Car chase scenes that do not use rock music are very much the equivalent of filmed plane battles over an entirely blue sky background. They don’t make any sense.
German band Karlmer understand the potential of classic garage-rock. The power it holds, when used appropriately, is to make you feel that you could get out of your chair right now, do something incredible, change your life, and get away with it.
Karlmer’s “Blackout” feels like the perfect music for a car chase scene, or for a clear epiphany about the specific ways in which you must change your life. The band achieves this by playing their hooky power chord progression with the intensity of people who’ve just found out that the bank’s going to repossess their instruments and close down the rehearsal space. Let’s just hope that a good director is listening and will put this piece of music to good use.
