Juju – Black & White
Similar artists: The Lay Llamas, Goat, Minami Deutsch, The Cult, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
Genre: Shoegaze, Psychedelic Rock
For my money, rock n’ roll isn’t in competition against movies, video games and pop songs for the attention of the general public. That’s not exactly the audience that ought to be targeted. In my mind, rock n’ roll is in stiff competition with books on esoteric knowledge, websites about wizards and witches and conspiracy theories movies.
There’s something mysterious and often times perverse about rock n’ roll. Or, at least, there should be. The fact that this kind of approach doesn’t make songs particularly appealing to audiences of all demographics is not lost on managers and producers. The vast majority of modern rock songs lack those elements. Still, there’s a large contingent of the of the public that is looking for precisely this thing.
What Juju’s “Black & White” is trying to achieve is to create a kind of ceremonial music while using psychedelic-rock as the jump-off points. Is it perfect? Are the stories real, or simple made-up tales meant to inspire a bit of positive paranoia in your mind? That hardly matters when it comes to rock n’ roll. This is entertainment, after all. And some people, like yours truly, are best entertained when they know something is hidden from them.
Grackles – It’s Coming to Ya
Genre: Blues, Folk rock, Psychedelic Rock
Music’s never a bigger luxury than it is right now. But, if you were born hundreds of years ago, you were lucky if you could hear it played to you. Back in Central and South America, music was something holy and fearful. It was played during town festivals where the king would get pampered and show his might. You might hear it if you were the shaman or holding his towel during a religious ceremony.
And, I bet it would’ve been the last thing you heard as they ble you to death if you were the unlucky loser of a fight in which the winner got to his life and the loser didn’t. Still, music’s never been a greater luxury than it is right now. Sure, now you can hear it everywhere and, in fact, you’ll pay good money to avoid it sometimes. But if you listen to it with the right intentions, it still colours reality like nothing else.
Grackles’ “It’s Coming to Ya”, with its voodoo psychedelic-blues sound, feels like something that could be played at a religious ceremony in which someone gets tossed in a volcano or has their neck chopped off. Sure, in those aforementioned places, they would’ve found the blues to be quite exotic. Kinda like how Italians feel about it now. But, I am convinced that they would’ve felt it, and got on with the ritual.
