Hide and Shine – Detroit Rising
Similar artists: The Jayhawks, Wilco, The Replacements
Genre: Americana, Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
There are some places that, even though you may have never travelled to, you know what to expect. Too much popular culture has hitched its wagon to those places and to their enduring myth. There’s London, which has beautiful songs about the working classes and terrible weather. There’s Paris with its asylum to artists and its foul-smelling streets. There’s Berlin with its acceptance of new ideas and rejection of sanitation laws.
The more a place gets name-checked in songs, the more you’ll know what to expect when your plane finally lands on those fabled shores. And, because so many songs have been written about places like New York City or Paris, the moment a songwriter decides to integrate them into their own songs, they know that they must tell the truth. Lies won’t fool anyone.
Detroit may be a sore industrial wasteland-size memory to most citizens of the U.S.A. But it is also a symbol of freewheeling rock n’ roll. Hide and Shine’s “Detroit Rising” picks up on both this myth and the one about the wasteland and provides a suitable soundtrack to both. This is a rocking number, the kind that might’ve once resonated in the garages of Detroit, but it is one that comes complete with a tender voice, a sort of plea for understanding from unforgiving time.
Surfing For Daisy – Acrobat
Genre: Folk-rock, Country-rock
There are a few things throughout this life that are bound to disappoint you and even lead some people into the pits of despair. England will always be terrible in a World Cup. Don’t expect much from American presidents or their management of Middle East conflicts. And, of course, only love can break your heart into a million little pieces.
You don’t really get told these truths when you’re old enough to learn them. But everyone comes to them one day. This is the reason why all of these things are captured in great pop songs. Love, naturally, is the theme most often explored. Many of the people who add their words in a bid to describe what it feels like sound like they know the depth of the misery it creates around it.
Surfing For Daisy’s “Acrobat” is an angry little folk-rock number with love as the prime reason for the disappointment and resentment that moves the singer’s voice. And it’s quite an impressive voice, indeed. While the lyrics and song construction don’t formally announce their intentions to avoid cliches, it’s the singing that really drives this song forward and convinces you of the true misery of love.
