Good Scout – Break
There’s music meant to work merely on your imagination, delivering a message and, perhaps, helping convince you of the importance of certain issues. The 60s folkies were especially effective in this regard.
There are other styles, however, where the sound itself is meant to have a body as much as on the spirit. Metal is supposed to sound like someone using a jackhammer on your head. The moronic dubstep drop was supposed to rattle your stomach. And, shoegaze is supposed to overpower you like a tall wave of sound crumbling over you.
Good Scout offers a modern interpretation of highly textured sound. The guitars don’t so much play notes as vibrate like giant theremins, while the vocals hide in between the few cracks left in the mix. Break is a tune that fans of My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive will likely enjoy.
Jaws the Shark – Demon Dream
The more time you spend working, the less time you have to make money. That’s an old maxim that has served many in the rock world well. I doubt you would have ever caught Noel Gallagher or Julian Casablancas slaving over a guitar and a piece of paper in the wee hours of the night searching for the perfect line. Why write your own, when others have got it covered for you?
It’s only fair that things would work out this way. After all, John Lennon himself, the man idolized by songwriters for decades, once revealed that part of the secret to great songwriting was to figure out how to reassemble your favourite songs and avoid lawsuits.
Jaws the Shark are similarly slippery characters drawing from grunge’s playbook with their power-chord frenzy on Demon Dream. They’ve also acquired some of the blues-rock grooves that have made bands like the Black Keys and Royal Blood something of a recent sensation. And, they throw in a smudge of dreamy neo-psychedelia to throw every one of their scents.
