LOC DAWGS – Glue
If the alternative rock and metal bands of the 1990s understood anything, it is that you can’t deliver songs about difficult topics to an audience before you upset your listeners a little bit. No, you don’t need them to riot or start writing you threatening letters. What you need to do, however, is rattle them, give them just enough to feel uncomfortable, make them feel about some of the worst instances in their lives.
Getting audiences to squirm and consider phoning their therapist in the morning is a really nice way to acquire admiration. But that’s provided you have a strong enough story to tell afterwards. Here, as well, the grunge bands understood the importance and of theatricality and of dynamics. Powerful guitar riffs need to be met by sweet vocal harmonies. Sweet melodies also need to be balanced by dissonance.
Here’s a song that has all of those characteristics. We always look for new music to substitute or enhance what we already like. Fans of Alice in Chains’ sound and song topics will warm to LOC DAWGS’s dramatic single “Glue.”
Well-designed musically and able to swim the depth of the human consciousness, the song deals with issues related to chemical addiction and employs superb Staley-Cantrell-like vocal harmonies and striking guitar riffs to get the point across. There’s ugliness followed by beauty in this. LOC DAWGS are able to get the listener uncomfortable and are willing to soothe them back toward comfort afterwards.
Cleg Shartley – 1996
Nostalgia is a powerful thing. It’s call is powerful, but that doesn’t mean that you should always fall for it. If you really let it move you once, it might never let you go. Choose the moments you want to slip into nostalgia carefully and strategically!
From film-makers to therapists, from songwriters to advertisers, the people who really need to sell you something know the power of nostalgia. They just need to tell you to imagine a scene from your childhood, and you’re there.
But the real question is, what are you doing there when your imagination has carried you over? If you’ve returned just to collect things about which to complain, you’re better off being on your way.
If, on the other hand, you’re here for a party, for some jet fuel that you can add to your modern life, then you’re welcome in. Cleg Shartley’s “1996” is not just a trip down memory lane accompanied by sad violins. Nah, this is a danceable alt-rock track quoting good times and great parties. Shartley, here, sounds like a 90s version of Berlin Bowie, and that’s just fine. The funky guitars chug along, and the chorus rings out like it was made to be played by radio stations that have figured out how time machines work.
