Grady Strange – Light Up Luvr
Genre: Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
The best way to make some people your friend and others your enemy is to try and confuse them. Now, this is easier said than done. Most folks are confused enough already, scrambling to make the choices that others recommend for them. However, if your effort is genuinely bewildering enough and difficult to ignore, then it is likely that enough people will love you, and many still will hate your guts.
That is, essentially, the difference between a cult artist and a mainstream, heavy hitter. The love of the audience that endorses your work will need to be proportional to the hatred of the people that would like to see you hung. Rattle them hard enough and you’re guaranteed to be in people’s thoughts for a long time.
Grady Strange’s Light Up Luvr is mighty confusing. It sounds and looks like Bob Dylan organizing a burlesque show for aliens. However, this is not merely the sort of bizarre material that might serve to make Grady into an internet star. There’s real songcraft at play here too. But, it is camouflaged underneath modern surrealism. It’s the kind of music you’d expect Salvador Dali’s nephew to be making. Neat stuff.
José Leguina – Home with Me (feat. gamlebyen)
Genre: Folk / Acoustic – Rock / Punk
People look for conflict and they don’t even know it. Take rock music, for example. The sort of combative, spirited songs that might have shocker parents back in the 1990s can’t be found on mainstream outlets. Supposedly, they present a gloom, dangerous picture of the world. Pop music, on the other hand, works to present an unrealistic, but enchanting vision of reality.
Still, people seek out strife. This is true for all aspects of their lives. So why wouldn’t be so when it comes to entertainment. Horror movies get made en masse. Frightening political figures are used as boogeymen. Preachers yelling about hell fire’s temperature have numerous backers. And, even Halloween songs, get a spin once a year.
People search for stories about strife, because, ultimately those present a more rational view of the world. José Leguina adopts an evangelist tone for his single Home with Me, but there’s nothing holy about the subject matter. Over a pulsating, menacing circus-like waltz the writer uses his pen to make sense of the decadence of late nights spent in bars over which doom seems to hover over constantly. Just as in these places of ill repute, there’s conflict brewing in the air. Folks always return to these stories, because they understand these the best.
