Square Tugs – Vodka, Lime and Soda
Genre: Punk, Alternative Rock
Similar artists: Circle Jerks
In recent decades, the music industry, as far as rock styles are concerned, hasn’t exactly died, but it hasn’t been dancing the can-can either. The lack of security when it comes to making a living out of being a rock artist has separated the true faithful lovers of it, from the ones impostors hoping to get a foot up in the world.
What playing rock music does offer you, cliche as it may sound does go beyond money. The possibility of freely expressing oneself in front of an audience would be unheard of in other eras. The likeliness of meeting similar-minded people increases exponentially when you’re out presenting your music. And, the joy you might bring not to yourself, but, to a few devoted others is beyond explanation.
Square Tugs, a project started as a tribute to the Circle Jerks, sound those kinds of lifers. Vodka, Lime and Soda is a fast, bruiser of a punk-rock tune. It seems to represent the group just as they are, a bunch of hard-living, hard-drinking people looking to get their kicks out of throwing power chords around.
Grant Armour – Forgotten What You Look Like
Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
Music can act as very interesting medicine, the kind that has an almost immediate effect. People always talk about their favourite songs soundtracking their lives. But, really, music does more than that. It gives them an understanding of their life’s shape and meaning.
This is all the more important in an age where most people’s connection with anything higher than themselves comes courtesy of someone on a website interpreting their Zodiac sign, or recommending a paid guardian angel.
Some music exists so that it can stick to life in its quietest moments and give it a direction. The modern psych-rock, melancholy trip of Grant Armour’s Forgotten What You Look Like sounds like that. It’s the kind of tune that you’d expect to be played in one of the trendiest bars in town, where nobody dances by moving their feet, but just by swaying their heavy eyelids back and forth.
