
Sheebaba – Big Bull
Genre: Gothic / Dark Wave, Lo-fi Rock, Alternative Rock
Similar artists: DEVO, Placebo
Not enough has been said about the obvious connection between a country’s terrible cuisine and problematic history and its potential to produce great art. This theory is particularly poignant in the arena of alternative rock. Get proper food, care, and shelter in your formative years and you are bound to be stuffing your record collection with mainstream pop.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just that the improved living conditions throughout the world, create inflation of pretty pop music.
Thank the heavens for the Germans then. Sure, you’ll be able to eat off the sidewalks in the most important cities there. But, the food you’ll likely be having won’t be worth the effort. Besides, your friendship with a German will unlikely include stories about each other’s grandparents.
Sheebaba confirm that the greatest, weirdest music is still to be found in German, as exemplified by Big Bull. This could as well be the work of exchange students in the U.S.A. required to produce a definitive work of their time there. Sheebaba produce rock music that is disassembled and stuck back together with the strange level of detail that only Germans could produce.
Itch Princess – Someone New
Genre: Dream Pop
Somewhere in an Eastern Europe town, or on a farm in North America, there’s a kid locked in their room. They’re looking for an escape through modern music that speaks to them. Most likely, they wish they were someplace else, or, at the very least, that they could speak to their favorite musicians. Surely, their heroes would understand their predicament.
How do I know this? Because this is precisely the story of so many modern musicians. To them, records of David Bowie or Kate Bush seemed to simply have been beamed down to them by some benevolent god. This wasn’t music to enjoy. It was a life companion worth treasuring.
The world needs art-pop stars to treasure and this is what Itch Princess looks to produce with Someone New. This is pop music, make no mistake about it. But, it is made, clearly, for people who have no knowledge or interest in the charts, or the trends. Itch Princess looks to be an outsider’s pop star, and many will feel happy that they’re being looked out for in this way.