Queen Bonobo – Summer Drift
I wonder if I’ll be looking back on my life and worry that I wasted a good chunk of it away on listening to records. Not music, but records. Things made by employed musicians, craft producers, and marketers basing their work on strict statistics.
The attention span of those looking to be entertained in 2021 is shorter than ever. The trends and studies confirm that. The three-minute single is making room for the 30-second chorus. Sporting events are considering changing formats in a way to get the attention of the youth. And, through it all, everyone seems to be yelling for a bit of consideration, usually in a bid to sell peddle their goods.
It’s hard to cure your restless mind, but one way of fighting it is to turn towards things that are made organically, with little mind paid to commercial considerations. Queen Bonobo’s Summer Drift is sophisticated, eccentric, and demanding. It requires you to soak it in, but just like meditation, the results are brilliant and unexpected. Summer Drift is a zero-waste single, with no lick or melody out of place or added by accident.
Left on Tenth – Dogrose
Modern artists have always had to beat the odds. Sure, everyone starts with giant dreams, but the respective industries with which they get involved rarely are willing to give them anything for free.
It turns artists into crafty, resourceful, would-be cheats capable of utilizing all the tools they have at the disposal in a bid to grow their chances. Once in a while, they hit the jackpot. It leaves the industry reps who have spent considerable resources wondering just how they might have made such poor choices.
Left on Tenth’s DYI effort for their song Dogrose feels like the kind of single that a record label might have spent a fortune and the efforts of an army of execs, producers, and marketing execs to help create. Instead, this little rock combo recorded everything in a garage under no supervision. It sounds just about as tight as a swampy blues-rocker can get, and pro record labels should feel they need to reassess their strategies once more.
