Jfarrari – Try
Listen, it’s only natural for fashion to change and the heroes of those fashion trends to change along with time. Back in the fabled 1980s, Simon LeBon, singer of pop sensation Duran Duran, once told reporters that his lyrics were influenced by more obscure poets, like T.S. Elliott. I’m sure he meant it. On the other hand, do you think anyone in Duran Duran has not seen competing pop sensation Japan and has not taken ample inspiration from them?
The thing about art, good or bad, is that it has to serve a purpose for someone. It can be that you listen to black metal to wake up or get some bizarre sexual thrill from looking at Jackson Pollock, CIA-sponsored ink-blot paintings. It doesn’t much matter. As long as an art form is alive, it gets chewy up, eaten up, used up by the world. The fact that many younger musicians casting their glance back to 1980s goth-rock or post-punk means that the music still means something.
What’s cool about Jfarrari’s “Try” is that this doesn’t sound like music made by someone from a scene for people from the same scene. This sounds like 80s new-wave gothic rock. But it also sounds like pop music. In fact, it sounds like a piece of pop music that has been absorbing records by The Cure, checking out what The Drums did with that sound. It also sounds like someone is processing through pain while using these sounds. What does that all mean? That people will continue to get depressed, listen to The Cure, and try to make up their own music for the foreseeable future.
Desvelo Club – Guardias Del Tirano
The news of Donald Trump winning the presidency in the U.S.A., the first time it happened, was met with a lot of fury by punk-adjacent musicians. They tweeted, posted and vlogged furiously. And, if you believed Green Day’s Billy Joe Armstrong, a new glory day for protest songs about authority. It was to be like the militant hardcore punk songs of the underground in the 1980s.
We are of course, still waiting and, in that time, Donald Trump was won another election. That’s not even the worst thing that has happened, in this writer’s opinion, if you consider the wars, diseases and natural disasters. Don’t worry, though! Protest songs have been written, played and delivered to the people who needed them most. They just haven’t been endorsed by big American bands and the record companies behind them.
One such protest song, filled with punk energy, venom and a bit of humour as well, is Desvelo Club’s “Guardias del Tirano.” It’s a protest song arriving from the epicentre of trouble, the beautiful Venezuela, a country that for decades has inexplicably been tremendously rich and completely bankrupt at the same time. Desvelo Club’s music comes out of the very essence of punk. But, the quartet know their pop music history as well. Nobody will listen unless you entertain them. And “Guardias del Tirano” is a mighty catchy song. Unlike their North American counterparts, Desvelo Club have skin in the game and is willing to risk it. The best we can do is hear them out and pray for peace, respect and understanding all over the world!
