Max Simon – New Moon
Acquiring success in any field is a delicate dance. To do anything meaningful, you can’t just rely on one skill. That must make immensely talented people feel cheated.
Take music, for example. Isn’t it enough to possess the ability to sing wonderfully, play an instrument with virtuosic abilities, or arrange pieces of music for multiple instruments? It’s helpful, but not enough. You need to be interesting, as well.
Max Simon is lucky. But that doesn’t mean the musician ain’t working. “New Moon” is a game of two halves. In the first, Simon reveals himself as a dreamer. The intro sounds like a folk song about imagining being part of much more interesting times than the ones in which you actually are.
But in the second half of “New Moon,” Max Simon is comfortable enough to show us that talent is helping his ascent. Here, the band breaks into a Southern-hard-rock and Simon’s vocals start resembling those of early 90s Axl Rose.
You can go far on that kind of combo. Simon’s a dreamer who knows and can replicate the kind of tunes that sound good on a car radio speeding down the highway.
San Carol – pay no mind
You have to feel sorry for the highly trained musicians who have been taught that the only music worth making is the one that exhibits tremendous musical complexity. It’s not just all of the hours that they might have wasted in producing this kind of material. The saddest part is that, likely, they’ve also been trained to only listen to these kinds of compositions for their own enjoyment.
On the other hand, from the 90s DJs sampling one single measure of a James Brown beat to Beck’s chop-and-paste approach on “Odelay,” the use of tiny, powerful sounds has always thrilled the audience. It stands to reason. Do you stop to read the words in an advertisement whose slogan is 100 words long? Or does the 5-word sentence printed out in bright red colours catch your eye?
San Carol knows how to catch your attention. “Pay no mind” is that rare shoegaze-inspired sound that grabs you from the very first seconds and keeps you glued. It does so with the power of simple tricks that stand out, work with your imagination, and make you want to play them back again. San Carol’s tune brings to mind the alternative artists of the 90s who remade pop music under their rules. It resembles the best strategies.
