
Liminal Shade – Lucidity
The majority of bands tattoo a great big sign onto their sound that’s supposed to let those interested, at all times, know what kind of genre they play. Some are less subtle than others. Metallica named themselves after the style of music that they intended to pursue. Other bands promise that they’ll never stray from the formula. Angus Young once famously decried a musical critic who’d had the gull to say that AC/DC had made the same album thirteen times. It was, in fact, fourteen times.
The great musicians, however, are those who’ve dedicated their lives to the creation of living, breathing sounds and know that there are no limits. They also know that apart from the most stereotypical examples of genre-defining artists, there is little separating one style from another. The great artists chase feelings and concepts and aren’t bothered about what genre they may stray into.
Liminal Shade’s “Lucidity” might just be the quietest and most tender, angry goth-rock song that you’ve ever heard. You get the feeling that the intention that originally governed the writing and recording of this was to create something that flowed at great speeds and threatened to chop you in two. The song still has the same effect, but a moody, dreamy atmosphere is preferred. Indeed, Liminal Shade draw dreams, and there are no colours missing from their paintbox.
Settle for Sleep – Fences
The one rule that governs pop music is that it always has to change. It can never sit still, and it can never remain the same for too long time. It must be surprising, must reinvent trends and, preferably, should annoy those whose version of pop music happened a long time ago. Like a movie star reaching the twilight of their lives, pop music must never show its age.
How do you put together a catalog of all of the things that can go into a pop song? You cannot! The best that you can hope for is to work by elimination and jot down all of the things that are not part of pop music at the time. Loud, distorted guitars and gritty screaming were the absolute antithesis of what could be played on the radio. But pop music swallows that which is vital and makes it its own.
On the surface, Settle for Sleep’s “Fences,” is a song that is inspired by the production and sounds of modern rock across the past few years. But the band opts to go further and uses musical elements once thought appropriate solely for metal music in a pop context. This is an aggressive, emotional song delivered with a straight face and with complete confidence that this is a pop single that we’re dealing with. It’s these sorts of risks that end up creating trends and Settle for Sleep is right there with it. Metal might return to the pop charts very soon, but not in the way most might assume.