Natalie McCool – Show Me What You’re Made Of
Similar artists: Lorde, Tall Saint, All We Are, Skia, Christine & The Queens, Caroline Polachek, CHVRCHES, Haim
Genre: Indie Pop, Alt Pop
Is pop music stardom linked with talent? I’m sorry, no. I could throw a rock into the street, and chances are that it’ll land on the head of someone that can sing like an angel.
Guitar virtuosos? Those are a dime a dozen. Incredibly skillful bass players? They’re probably out working on a cruise. What about drummers? Nobody seems to know, and everybody’s fine with that.
Talent can be important. Much more important, however, is how well someone can convince an audience to feel a certain way. Those who manage to do this usually become stars regardless of all other factors.
Natalie McCool’s Show Me What You’re Made Of is pop-rock music designed and tailored for this age. It’s crafted to create a line of communication with an audience yearning for this kind of consolation. The fact that there’s also talent involved doesn’t hurt, either.
Kerala Dust – Future Visions
Similar artists: Nicolas Jaar, Darkside, Bob Moses
Genre: Indie-pop, Indietronica
Musicians are supposed to be like friends who’ve traveled to places where you will never manage to go. They’re supposed to have all these stories that would otherwise sound incredible. They’re supposed to have all this knowledge that is otherwise hidden from most of the world.
That is, at least, what we want them to deliver. The moment that a musician is described as just another average Joe, secretly, we turn our back on them. If we wanted that, we’d just visit the pub, not buy their merchandise, hoping to be touched by some of the magic that they command.
When comes to picking records, to who can we really turn? The most clever musicians figured out a while ago that how you play an instrument isn’t all that important. What sounds you borrow, however, is vital.
Kerala Dust’s Future Visions sounds like a poetry recital over a DJ set of records only found on vinyl and bought from Czechoslovakia before the split. It’s supposed to appear cooler than we’ll ever be. And, in many ways, it succeeds.
