Dan Howls – Bad Blood
Genre: Blues, Americana, Alternative Rock
I’m genuinely surprised that no more people considering becoming preachers as a genuine career path. The perks must be great and, after all, the preachers were the first rock stars. Having people hanging on your every word, placing life and death meaning on every little that you say? A fellow could get used to that kind of attention.
It feels only natural the first types of music that were to gain wide appeal, would share in the tradition of the crazed, fire-and-brimstone preacher. Robert Johnson’s paranoid delusions of hellhounds trailing him sound like a reinterpretation of the final pages of the New Testament. Then, Little Richard became a preacher himself, and Bob Dylan was treated like one. Do I need to say more?
We need fresh faces for our amplified, guitar-driven ceremonies. In walk Dan Howls. The Perth group has no good news to share with us on Bad Blood. However, the sound of their overdriven blues-rock and their visions of bloodshed and demise are difficult to ignore and, well, even a tad sexy. In the end, that’s the problem with the really good preachers. They make The End of Times sound positively appealing.
La Femme Pendu – Bela Lugosi est Mort (Bauhaus Cover)
Genre: Gothic / Dark Wave, French Pop
Similar artists: Chromatics, Chelsea Wolfe, Cocteau Twins, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nine Inch Nails
It’s fascinating seeing an artist read into the future. When Bauhaus released their very first single, and arguably most famous song, Bela Lugosi’s dead it didn’t only what a lot of rock music would sound and look like in the coming years. It tapped into an undercurrent of popular culture that gazed at horror themes entranced and amazed.
The past few years had all lead up to this. Mind you, these were times before the internet, where mystery still had a big part to play in the way that people understood their pop stars. David Bowie and Iggy Pop had moved to Berlin and began crafting cold, desolate soundscapes influenced by Kosmische Musik and Brian Eno’s sonic experiments. Punk music was mutating into something that barely resembled rock n’ roll. And, the times, it seemed was dire in most parts of the world.
La Femme Pendu’s French cover of the Bauhaus classic, here titled Bela Lugosi est Mort, greatly captures the essence of the song without needing to alter it beyond belief or quote it directly. Instead, this single, something of a Halloween classic, perfectly plays into the chilling repetition of the song’s melodies, drawing vivid pictures with the lyrics. It’s a good time to celebrate a bit of darkness.
