HÜGGE – True Love
HÜGGE sounds like Kings of Leon do after a few too many pints of hometown moonshine. Sadly, those are recordings that we’ll never hear on account of the American band being too cheap to splurge on an engineer to track their barn rehearsals. But we just may have something better and equally as diabolically sounding.
There’s a real danger that if you live in one of the nicest, cleanest, safest parts of the world, some of those qualities will rub off on you. Sure, that should scare you of typical dangers and save you years of therapy. But there are things you won’t be able to do. You’ll never be a stunt driver, a poker champion, or a crazy punk rocker. Not unless you fight really hard for it.
HÜGGE comes from the inexplicably Shangri-La-like Denmark. The band’s name pokes fun at this, but the band refuses to let this dictate what they’re going to sound like. “True Love,” for the most part, is demented garage rock. But it’s not enough for there to be a big racket in the rehearsal. The band wants it to spill out to their neighbours, into the street, and on the radio. Would playing this on Radio Copenhagen at noon really disrupt traffic? There’s only one way to find out.
Membership – Shower
If you’re tired of reading Nordic murder mystery novels, I entirely recommend picking up some music autobiographies. But resist the temptation of going after the obvious ones. You know how the Keith Richards one is supposed to go. You know that the KISS guitarist has nothing good to say about the other band members. Nah, if you want real drama and a confession of murderous instincts, you need to look elsewhere.
Pick up the autobiography of a folkie from the Love & Peace generation, or the life story of some country & western musician, and you won’t be disappointed. Routinely, these stories include violence, drug use and a grotesquely misanthropic view of the world that you would never have assumed from the cheerful songs. In fact, why couldn’t these troubadours have written tunes about these things instead?
Find a thing that really bothers you and write a song about it! It worked for Mark E. Smith. And this is the approach that Membership takes on “Shower,” an admission of just how crazy being in the presence of someone can drive you. Musically, Membership does endorse emo-rock tactics you’d expect, but throw a few wide curveballs as well. You’re unlikely to find indie, alternative, or post-rock fans complaining about this. It’s a good thing that the band opted to write about something that they know.
