Scott von Ryper – Pulse
Genre: Shoegaze, Garage Rock, Alternative Rock
There’s pop music that can be described, and then there’s pop music that forces repeated listens. Both of those have their merits. For example, many of the cutting-edge punk, new-wave, and hardcore bands of the 1970s are best enjoyed as a concept. Those are great bands to speak about, and, usually, stories abound involving their antics. A good tale about those groups might be sufficient to get an understanding of their work.
Then there are the songwriters that live and die by the pairs of ears that they can get to perk up. These kinds of folks, like the writers of the Britpop generation, know that indecipherable lyrics might get the art crowd involved, it’s the pop hooks and big choruses that tease the arrival of great success.
Scott von Ryper is aware of this. Pulse is the kind of guitar pop tune that one might have heard back in the 1990s. It’s glossy, pleasant, and invests a good deal in its choruses. This is guitar music that makes a bid to be a friend and companion. It’s music for relief that requests repeated listens.
Mark Lewis Heavenor – Young Boy
Genre: Americana, Indie pop
Rock music and the crafts associated with it are a show & tell kind of business. You can’t describe happiness, or command someone that they should be excited. Just look at the budgets big record labels are willing to pour into pop stars who end up disappearing as soon as they lift their fingers off the scale, and tell me I’m wrong.
Tenderness, out of all the feelings, that modern music ought to give you is the hardest for a recording artist to achieve, and one that, usually, slips in between the lines. Just in the way that real intimacy takes time and a bit of sacrifice, so too does the music that hints at similar values.
Mark Lewis Heavenor manages to convey this on Young Boy through the delicate, hypersensitive lyrics. But, it’s the video clip meant to promote the song that’s the real winner. A brilliant short movie, every bit as pop-oriented and as avant-garde, the video is the kind of work that may end up defining an artist’s career. It demonstrates tenderness, not merely speaks of it.
indie pop
