Gus Englehorn – Thyme
German footballer Toni Kroos, recently retired. Upon being asked what the most tense moment of his playing career was, which included numerous tournament finals for club and country, he assured the interviewer that none qualified. “I don’t get nervous. Not ever. That was my gift.”
Seeing the Bavarian pick a pass over 50 metres away with perfect accuracy for a couple of decades straight makes you want to believe him. But you do have to also believe that the midfielder picked the right career for himself, one in which confidence is a pre-requisite for success.
Would he have had any success in the arts? Not with that attitude. Confidence and a winner’s mentality are reserved for the kind of music endorsed by football hooligans and biker gangs. The real artists who carry around guitars split their time between being nervous wrecks and dreaming of imaginary worlds.
Gus Englehorn’s “Thyme” is brilliantly imaginative, tense, outsider music made for festival crowds. It’s not one step of this song that doesn’t feel like it was not made under pressure. Still, at the same time, just as the backing vocals excellently punctuate the word “Thyme,” you can imagine giant beach balls flying up over the crowd. It’s a weird stomper, a bizarre earworm, and proof that always staying calm only works in more conservative lines of work.
RAINSONG – falling home
I ain’t shrink, and certainly not even some kind of amateur psychologist. If I were, I wouldn’t be wasting my time writing music reviews, but instead, I’d be cashing checks from rich heiresses and trying to decipher those recurring dreams where they’re a poodle having to pull a sleigh through London Town while an assortment of former high school colleagues stands around laughing at them.
Still, I’d like to venture out into this uncertain territory and say that this time that we’re living in is all about the “I”, and it’s all about pleasure. And it seems to be making everyone terribly depressed. Even Marquis de Sade, Oscar Wilde and Lord Byron would be incognito visiting my office asking for an explanation and some happy pills.
RAINSONG’s “falling home” is the opposite of modern pop music. It’s not about the ego but about nature. To really enjoy this surprisingly catchy shoegaze song, first, you need to get lost not just in the sound but in everything around you. Once you’ve dissolved and calmed your nerves, you can begin to appreciate it. This is kind of like Indian meditation, but the sitars have been replaced with distorted guitars and their feedback noise. I gladly offer it as a prescription.
