Collateral Beauty – Thirteen
Genre: Hard Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Alternative Rock
Similar artists: A Perfect Circle, Three Days Grace, Nine Inch Nails, Static-X, Linkin Park, Stabbing Westwar
Rock music is a very useful form of psychodrama. This is music that, often, encourages the audience to act in the same traumas, anxieties, or dreams of ambition in which the authors get themselves involved. It’s a warrant to go nuts for a short, controlled period of time.
Most people need this. Even new-age thinking, or cults act upon similar ideas. A modern human being can’t help but have a lot of negative energy stored inside of them. Releasing it helps them achieve more. Releasing it helps them feel better.
Collateral Beauty’s Thirteen feels like a dress rehearsal for a planned drowning. This is dramatic rock music. It sways like a ship being hit by the angry sea from all sides. It’s a good representation of the world these days, regardless of where you happen to be when you first hear the song. Collateral Beauty encourages a confrontation with your inner fears. It should help to live those out.
Kim Curtains – More Lizard Than Leslie
Genre: Pop Rock, Lo-fi Rock, Indie Rock
Similar artists: The Pastels, Pixies, Sweet, The Vaselines, Mud, Primal Scream, Suzi Quatro
Nowadays they teach rock n’ roll in music schools. What a strange thing to consider? Quite in the same manner, Warhol and Basquiat are dissected by art students in the same way that they would do for Rembrandt or Van Gogh.
There’s no denying the importance of rock music and of modern art. There’s also no denying that, regardless of the commercial downswing on which those have been, plenty of people are still looking for ways to get themselves involved and immersed in those forms of expression.
But, can it really be taught? At its best, a rock song should sound as fresh as springtime rain. At its best, the production values of rock songs should be almost entirely unimportant. This is what the DYI psychedelia of Kim Curtains’ More Lizard Than Leslie sounds like. It’s not music recorded in a studio, made under the supervision of an A&R man, or even commissioned by a major record label. It’s fresh and full of possibilities. It’s an accident that can’t be faked.
