Kitner – Junebug
Genre: Folk, Indie Rock, Emo
I have a theory, among many other silly thoughts, that you can’t truly begin to fully enjoy modern music until you’ve spent a night alone, in the cold, lost and broken-hearted with a song ringing through your ears.
Music, as many songwriters have attested, is a great accompaniment to troubles and heartaches. It’s best to get accustomed to this feeling early. It may not help make life easier, but it will certainly help frame the songs written about it in a rarer, more expensive frame.
Kitner writes songs as if just having returned from one of these forays into the wilderness. Junebug is not merely an indie-folk song about loss. It’s a song about the inevitability of loss. It’s beautiful, hopeless, and sounds like the work of a young poet who has been struggling to find his apartment keys for the past hour.
Jane Leo – The More You Know
Genre: Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
Similar artists: St. Vincent, Arctic Monkeys, The Kills, Karen O & Dangermouse
The pop charts are a bloodsport. Every musician looking to get on them is looking to get a leg up in any way that they can. Preparing a loyal fanbase for your near-retirement years works if you’re willing to make artsy records in foreign languages. Preparing your own retirement fund requires getting the world’s attention quickly.
Back in 1977, the year to which this website owes its highest amount of debt, seemingly every pop band on the planet looked to change their tune. The art-house and prog-rock people embraced pop. The pop folks tried to make new wave. And the new-wavers looked to make punk.
It only makes sense that bands would try to dig into the cooler rock sounds of the time for inspiration. Now, the question is how well they succeed. In the case of Jane Leo, the results are convincing. The more you know is a mixture of The Kills’ gloomy, spectral guitars and the Arctic Monkeys’ gigantic modern indie sound. These are threads Jane Leo wear well.
