Julian Rybarski – This Tide Is Very Low
The old saying about walking in a man’s shoes, like all overused phrases and cliches, happens to be true. It’s something worth considering as you slip on your headphones, listen to a song that transports you to a dreamland, and imagine how good it must be to be the human being creative and clever enough to have been able to come up with that tune.
But depression does not discriminate; the rain falls down on the wicked and the kind, and, as I mentioned, cliches have a habit of telling the truth. The work is never done is another that you can add to the list, and the main lyrical theme of Julian Rybarski’s soulful, bouncy ode to self-loathing and crippling doubts.
“The Tide is Very Low,” the author assures us, but it’s not like you can hear it. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. This is a well-designed, fun alt-rock song that brings in soul influences and mocks the idea of being at your lowest ebb even if people think that you’re riding high. So what? Life’s a funny old thing. Rybarski’s got it all and would gladly trade it for less stress and a few more reasons to smile. It’s just a good thing that he put all of that into a song for us to enjoy.
mMoron – And Then What
There are musicians who you’ll always see dragging around a case with them, doing their best to get to one rehearsal or jam after another, never getting paid for any of it, and telling you that they’re just plotting ways to get better.
There are jazz fusion players, teachers and historians who are obsessed with the mathematics of music. They insist that, one of these days, they are bound to make an incredible discovery that will shake music as a whole to its core.
But, so what? And, as mMoron would say, “and then what?” These attempts mean very little without a bit of soul and intelligence behind them. And, frankly, you get the impression that the people working on all these sophisticated things are simply trying to keep life’s biggest problems at a distance.
mMoron hasn’t been able to keep the stressors away. But that’s loaded the artists with enough grief and bitter humour to write the gloriously minimalist “And Then What.” It’s a song about things moving around in circles and never seeming to amount to much. It’s so good that it doesn’t need many chords or fancy production tricks. It’s an existentialist lo-fi pop slam dunk.
