Jet Black Berries and Fervents Reviewed
Jet Black Berries – Shadow Drive
The greatest generals of old knew that one thing remained true regardless of the enemy. Experience had taught them that you should never push someone, regardless of their supposed strength, into a corner. And, more than anything, you ought not to start poking them with a stick once they get there.
The same rule, of course, applies in all avenues of life. It certainly can be witnessed in art. But, to be fair, you’ll find it less and less.
In music, for example, the current state of affairs has made professionals have to zoom from one project to another. This, in turn, means that artists are forced to become workers and to disconnect whenever this feels necessary.
But it’s those bands that have been pushed into a corner, or have achieved this through concentration, nihilism, whatever it may be, that shine in this modern world.
Jet Black Berries are that kind of group. On “Shadow Drive”, they buy into the whole myth of ambitious, evil post-punk. Still, it’s not like they’re playing around. The band sounds like it’s given all that it could give on the single, and that if some disaster would have befallen them because of their efforts, that was something the musicians were willing to stand by. It’s hard to get this kind of commitment these days. It’s worth acknowledging and appreciating.
Fervents – #1
It only takes a week or two. All that you need to do is go away somewhere in the mountains or by the sea. Make sure it’s somewhere where the internet’s not very good and where the television set is too small to watch. And you’ll get it!
You’ll be driving down, the city will come into view, the traffic will start to pick up. And you’ll get that unmistakable feeling. You’ll feel cramped, tense, eager to escape. You’ll feel that the world you’re re-entering is just designed wrong.
Everything that’s too neat and sophisticated is wrong, including rock music of that variety. Fervents take their distrust of both over-wrought musical construction and modern Western societies and pour it into “#1.”
The song is short, funnily bittersweet, and places you in one of those perfect-looking houses that you see around Northwestern Europe. What does this world run on? Commerce and broken dreams, according to Fervents, a band making its displeasure with the state of things known.
