Ailbhe Reddy – Last To Leave
Genre: Lo-fi Rock, Indie Rock
Rock bands are just like travel brochures. They both present an exotic reality and suggest that this should be enough to make you happy. Finding it, however, you’ll learn won’t be cheap or easy.
Furthermore, I found that both exotic travel and pop culture work on a FOMO basis. Nobody likes to say that they’re doing nothing. Nobody likes to say that they’re not having any fun. Not when everyone seems to be having all the fun.
With this kind of weight of expectation, entertainers know what they need to tell their audiences. Songs about tremendous parties, enviable riches, and exciting times are always going to be in vogue. How can anything else replace them?
Ailbhe Reddy’s Last To Leave is about being the life of the party and learning to eventually hate it. It’s a tender indie-folk number, with the words coming in almost as a whisper. This song is enough to make you lose your faith in rockstar parties as the pinnacle of a life well lived.
Kentia – Malabar Hill
Genre: Indie Folk, Indie Rock
What musicians really advertised when they revealed themselves to the world was a new way to look at life. This form of enlightenment, it was implied, was held only by a few people. The music was a taster.
Now, when musicians and other celebrities show themselves to the world, it is to sell products that are meant to make their fans more like them. That is, at least, the promise. It’s an industry of hope.
Only by acquiring these products can you be as thin, fit, or popular as your celebrities are. Only when you buy a ticket to their course will you learn the secret to move up in the industry in which they’ve been successful. There’s not a lot of time left for dreaming.
Kentia’ Malabar Hill is built like the dreams of old, with vividly colored dreams and the sweetest melodies. It’s not music to take up as little time and space as possible. It’s music that invites the listener to move on it, to breathe the air, and to tell others what they saw.
