Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys – The Whale Song
Similar artists: Jungstötter, Hendrik Otremba, PJ Harvey, A.A. Williams, Emma Ruth Rundle
Genre: Gothic / Dark Wave, Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
Has the world ever truly needed poetry or their words? Yes! Well, certainly not in the way that they need the people who provide them with food, shelter or safety. It’s certainly more inclined to prize shamans, priests, and spiritual leaders who talk to them about an invisible world that they might one day join. But, in many ways, poetry is needed more. It is, after all, a mad antidote against insanity.
It’s also worked in these people’s favour that two people can never come to an agreement as to what constitutes poetry and even less what constitutes good poetry. It seems to involve words, a sense of seeking and a kind of crazed mystical discovery that must be transmitted to the world. It’s a language that some people can learn to hear, and a very small number of people can learn to speak.
Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys’ “The Whale Song” is a manic poetry reading. But it’s a pop song as well, one that does away with all the cliches of what a pop tune can be. Where’s the hook? Not in any chorus but rather in the intensity of the performance, which borders on mania. What does it all mean? Finding a definitive answer is not important. People recognize true joy, pain and pure frenzy. They react to it instinctively. And this is what Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys’ “The Whale Song” offers here.
Pamphlets – Rotterdam Verticals
Genre: Post-Punk
You don’t expect great folk music to be made from the bedroom of an apartment on the 26th floor of a high-rise building situated in the middle of New York City or Bogota. Similar, you wouldn’t expect post-punk to be written by people living in the Peruvian jungle or outside of a bubbling stream in Switzerland. You sorta imagine that modern artists are modelled by the things that they have around them.
And, you’d be right. Post-punk has made a giant comeback in recent years and is, perhaps, more than anything else, the sound that defines an era. It’s not only because it requires less fancy finger work or singing. There’s that too, sure. But it is especially due to the fact that the giant cities continue to eat up all of the land around them, and that change needs a soundtrack.
There’s just something about the countryside. Or, at least, that’s what Pamphlets must think as they’re producing the dynamic post-punk ditty “Rotterdam Verticals.” The song is built on pure tension, a steady, hypnotic bass line, and great lyrics that have the rhythm of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” By the end of hearing it, you will swear off urban landscapes forever and only stop to think about them when switching to your playlist of Pamphlets.
