Like A Motorcycle – 122 Hours of Fear
Genre: Punk, Post-Punk
Many of the greatest bands and their activity goes undocumented. Take my early punks for example. We met often, made a lot of noise, wrote bewildering songs. Then, somehow, we stopped as do a lot of garage bands. There weren’t even demos. Our oeuvre came down to a few poorly recorded rehearsals and live recordings. Oh, how those make one wonder.
The only difference between my groups and The Screamers is that the latter were spectacular and inspired numerous other groups. They managed to do that in spite of never getting around to actually recording an album. Blessed with a tremendous musical vision and the contribution of one of rock’s greatest ever frontman, Tomata du Plenty, The Screamers were synth-punk’s first and greatest proponents.
Like A Motorcycle take on the task of covering the performance-punk group’s most famous song 122 Hours of Fear. Gone is the fast-paced menace of du Plenty’s vocals, replaced by a tense, but dreamy post-punk performance that does well in capturing the song’s storytelling. It also helps showcase the fact that The Screamers didn’t merely have good ideas that rarely come to fruition, but were potentially great songwriters. Here’s to Like A Motorcycle for scratching the back of one of punk’s greatest bands
Kim Curtains x Carolyn Dillon – Dark Blue Mood Ring
PREMIERE
Genre: Lo-fi Rock, Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
The biggest movies in the world are strict genre pieces. Exploitation movies, gangster flicks, superhero pictures, cheesy romance stories. The greatest t of these make little attempt to create stories that will appeal to every possible demographic. The very best aim to recreate the atmosphere, stories, and thoughts of the original films in those genres, and nobody complains about it.
Pop music has had a different trajectory. This is a place where a genre is hot for a second, before being usurped by something different. For that reason, record labels often talk about being ahead of the curve. Magazines and music sites have always talked about the sounds of the future. And, whenever a new technological development is introduced, it has to be used by the music industry in one way or another. This is how you end up with dubstep and poorly animated pop videos from the early 1980s.
There’s nothing wrong with genre pieces, regardless of how old or small those genres are. Retro horror-pop certainly has some proponents, although few artists dedicate their entire career to the goal of making this kind of music. It’s a shame though as Kim Curtains x Carolyn Dillon’s Dark Blue Mood Ring demonstrates. Beautiful melodies, 80s new-wave synths, and the great interplay between the singers help make this a real holiday treat. Best served with a pumpkin latte.
incredible review! thanks so much!! -kim curtains
From the way that Kim Curtains’ “Blue Mood Ring” opens with bass and guitars that somehow warble like a worn VHS desperately seeking tracking, I knew I’d be into it. Love the layered vocals with their ghostly listlessness that sounds like it could accidentally trip into nihilism but never does – just leaves you with that tension. It’s like a sweetness with the dark clouds of cynicism just hanging outside the window.