Jonivan Jones – Runaway Main
Genre: Alt Country, Folk Rock
It’s not unusual for new band members to congregate aroun a bottle and discuss what their sngs will be about. Once enough of the bottle has been downed, the really good ideas start being spit out. Write songs about love? Those are the kinds that get you on the radio. Write songs about common problems like having noisey neighbors and leaky showers? Maybe write a concept album about Dungeons & Dragons characters?
Those are all frequently heard suggestions from new musicians. The only things, however, that pop songs of all varieties ought to be written about are sex, murder and the apocalypse. And, for the most part, the best musical genres focus on these topics exclusively. It is only years later once these genres have fallen out of favor that they too have to settle into producing cute numbers about love and leaky showers.
Jonivan Jones has the right idea on the single “Runaway Main,” a country number that feels like a page ripped out of an updated list of apocalyptic prophecies. The ramshackle acoustic guitar and the whiskey-stained vocals aren’t designed to make friends. This is music about some kind of end, one that won’t be pleasant or easy to comprehend. It’s country music as it was intended, terrifying and entertaining.
Andrew Savage – Another Restless Life
Genre: Folk-rock, Indie-rock
If you’re reading the articles and statistics, you may have heard that people are lonelier than ever. This is especially true of well-developed countries like the U.S.A. In fact, more than a third of the people asked for these studies say they routinely do not interact with another human being for an entire week. At least, not in life unencumbered by technology.
Now, if you’ve stepped into that real world lately, you won’t need any statistics to tell you that. Unless you’re a wealthy rockstar, an Arabian prince or a beauty queen, you may have faced down loneliness yourself. But how many friends do you have online? How many forums, group chats and Whatsapp groups are you a member of? It seems we’ve never been more connected and further apart.
Loneliness is the starting point for Andrew Savage’s “Another Restless Life.” This is music that’s first experienced as a series of heartaches before being rediscovered in a song format. It brings to mind 90s emotional alt-rockers like Counting Crows. It dares to ask who we really are when we are truly alone and how much of what defines us is the relationships that we build with other people.
