Kuwaisiana – Gentrification
Look, I know what many of you think about punk-rock music. You think that the genre’s songs, which are supposed to be all so powerful and driven by righteous anger, are either about nothing or that the musicians spend all of their time talking about vague concepts like “freedom” and “rebellion.” I hear you, yes.
But in many cases, do musicians have their hearts in the right place? Well, most of them have their hearts reaching for their wallets and opening them widely, you’d probably say. Most punk bands that created a career for themselves did it while making sure not to leave any chance of upsetting those who offered them a career in the first place.
Finally, punk music is, at least, clever, yep? These are people who are able to talk about society’s ills while writing the kinds of tunes that kids will want to sing along with. There has to be some brilliance in blending these two things. Only you’d chime in; there haven’t been many songs that reached so many people in ages.
Kuwaisiana, on the other hand, are looking for a fight, are clever, and don’t care if you can’t whistle along to their songs. “Gentrification” is more than a trendy protest by kids pretending to be in a band before their dads get there to work in finance. The Kuwaiti-American band uses the idea that most of us are familiar with to talk about how identity gets systematically erased in the real, modern world. There’s no room for distinctiveness in a modern world ruled by those who created their empires by erasing other civilisations. That might make you upset. Good! That’s what we used to expect punk rock to do.
Log Flume – Elevator Up
It’s ironic to consider that for all the fortune that Paul McCartney has accrued to his songs, it was also he and his pal, Lennon, who were left in disbelief when they found out that you could copyright the songs you’d composed. Naturally, as all kids must do, they assumed that songs simply float into the ether and that musicians borrow some from one another. They weren’t exactly wrong.
Nowadays, in a bid to stay relevant and produce hit records, every single pop star on the charts will employ at least a team of half a dozen people to write one song. Some of them get money and a writing credit. Most of them just get some money under the table. But are those songs floating about, the ones that children whistle in the playground any worse?
The members of Log Flume have been asking themselves the same questions about the potential of nursery rhymes and picking up on a few wicked ones for their immensely pleasing single “Elevator Up.” Yes, this sounds like a kiddie tune adapted to punk rock. But isn’t this what only the best bands ever did? Log Flume’s job, really, is to provide the muscle, the technical finesse and the cheeky smile. Why turn making a sandwich into a brain surgery procedure?