Salvador Dassi – Aficionados
Getting people’s attention online, the place where most music is consumed nowadays is a battlefield. Salvador Dassi certainly possesses a name that may have you click their moniker and wonder if you’re in for artsy rock, or comedic music instead. A brief ten seconds into Aficionados and you should get a better idea of which one that is.
It occurs exactly as one of the band’s associates answers our musical-related puzzle for us. “You know what’s missing from modern music? Drugs“. I was sold on those 10 seconds alone.
The song then begins in earnest, although not in a hellish hunt for class-A refreshments, but in a haze of post-60s jangly guitars and musings about Staying up late and drinking wine filtered through a kaleidoscope of backing vocals.
Aficionados is an extremely laid-back track about finding the world boring and, one would assume, escaping off to Dreamland instead, one where understated guitar solos can last forever.
bedroom-pop
Matt Badger – Black Stone
The indie-folk scene is certainly missing a few charismatic singers with velvety voices these days, isn’t it? Actually no. While, as opposed to other genres, it holds these types of characters in abundance, fans of this kind of music are also restless for something new once in a while.
That something may just be Matt Badger, a Seattle-native who is worldly and a good judge of a nice tune. His compositions are clever and expertly-arranged. There’s more than a hint of Father John Misty and similarly attired unshaven indie-folk mystics. However, while Badger can be witty and funny, he’s more interested in the wounded-heart aesthetic of folk.
Black Stone is a song whose lyrics seem burdened with the weight of the world’s misery, and with music that feels weightless. Passionate vocals get the piano and orchestra treatment, as Mr Badger stakes his claim as one of the more competent indie-folk singers around at the moment.
