
Haley and the Comet – Fair Heart
Most pop singers spend a lot of time disguising the things that they lack and drawing attention to the ones that they do best. Pop stars tend to either contribute to good songs while otherwise being quite dull or have a marvelously entertaining personality without being able to deliver songs very well. With all things being equal, record execs and managers tend to prefer the folks lacking personality and, therefore less likely to cause them trouble.
The trouble is that if you repeat this recruitment process enough times, you end up with not a lot of people you’d like to have coffee with. Interviews with modern pop stars are, most often, painfully dull to the point where their publicists have to invent funny anecdotes to help them and us alleviate some of the pain of hearing them. Safe to say that there aren’t many eccentrics left in this world.
Haley and the Comet’s “Fair Heart” is something of a rare proposition in pop music – a wild performer with a knack for a classic pop melody. “Fair Heart” could have easily been the kind of song that 1970s soft-pop band would’ve used as a single. Or, in another lifetime, it could’ve been the sort of theatrical, combative song performed by PJ Harvey. Doesn’t really matter. It’s both those things and Haley and the Comet’s qualities that help it be this.
Josh Quat – Another Parade
Many of the great rock stars of the 1960s went crazy, joined cults, and/or prepared for the inevitable Apocalypse. That was a lot of work. They learned new skills. They learned new scales, practiced on new instruments, and introduced new philosophies into their music work. At the end of all of this, however, the audience had just one question to ask them – “Can you use that guitar of yours to make us dance and have a good time?“
It’s natural to want more. It’s only natural to want to learn more if you’re an artist. You can go to school, practice your ear-training, your scales, and your intervals. You can learn to play Egyptian reggae, classical Finnish and ancient gypsy music. And that might seem impressive but audiences will ask you just one question: “Can you use that guitar of yours to make us dance and have a good time?“
Josh Quat has listened to enough modern rock to understand that the goal remains to be able to make the kind of songs that can make people dance and that can be featured in action thrillers and coming-of-age comedies. “Another Parade” is a song inspired by Queens of the Stone Age and Arctic Monkeys. And not by the deep cuts, either. This is music made to be played in front of large gatherings, in front of people who just want an excuse to dance.