MAYA – NURSING
In terms of how people feel about one thing or another, the truth matters very little. Most modern rock bands write songs like a diary of somebody slalomming through a minefield. At the same time, the vast majority of well-known rock bands continue to reside in first world countries where a good chunk of the population worries more about the increasing price of PlayStation games than food shortages.
But angst, depression, and tension are real things. Neither facts, nor giving someone who experiences those a talking down to will change matters. If you’re dreaming yourself in the mine field, that’s where you definitely are. And since most of us share each other’s dreams, you can bet you’re going to meet a lot more people who are carving their own way through the same rough road.
MAYA’s “NURSING” shares the pessimism of modern British post-punk and the love of big, power-chords-filled choruses of old-school alt-rock. MAYA offers a good, headbanging time all while describing times that have got the song’s characters at the end of their rope. If modern rock music feels like the nasty end to a party that went on too long, this British group is there to nick the jewellery and kick sand in the eyes of those who’ve allowed themselves to get tricked into this in the first place.
Dark Triad – So Far in My Mind
If there is, as many people would suggest, a song for anyone, it’s because the best songs are vague and open to interpretation. That doesn’t meant that they’re absurd, or that all tunes, like some Noel Gallagher composition, are merely a trick of fitting words together over a catchy, lifted guitar riff. Most good songs tell stories, or, at least, hint at stories.
But the author of these compositions have to be clever enough to let their songs go, and to let themselves out of the discussion. In order for listeners to dream themselves into the tunes and play them on a constant loop, some room needs to exist. At a time like this, when so many people are dealing with routine mental torture, it’s somehow nice to know that there are still songwriters who can create these dreamspaces for their fans.
Dark Triad’s “So Far in My Mind” is, firstly, a dark, but very balanced-sounding rock tune that brings to mind radio singles of the 1980s. The vocals, the song’s highlight, are cold, detached, and consistently make an impression. However, it’s how much that the song leaves out, how ambiguous things are allowed to be, that ends up being Dark Triad’s secret weapon. It’s precisely this that can make listeners who share a similar angst about the world and about their contribution to it, resonate and fill in the blanks.
