Mayflower Madame – Crippled Crow
The greatest actors were rarely able to entertain audiences any other way. Sure, a lot of them were asked to sing, but nobody ever liked it. Yeah, some of them can dance alright, but nobody’s too bothered if they never ever strut their stuff ever again. And, of course, some tried to use their notoriety as a platform to talk about more serious topics. Few people bothered to listen.
It’s hard to get anyone’s attention when you’re doing too much. Musicians ought to know this but usually end up failing. A typical rock band will have the guitarist playing solos at mind-numbing speed while the singer attempts to sing notes that only dogs can hear, while explosions go out in the background, while the drummers’ set gets flipped outside down.
Goth-rock bands know the thing that the greatest actors understand instinctively – they know how to sit still and move only when the tension becomes unbearable. This is what Mayflower Madame manages to do in “Crippled Crow.” The band’s sound is the equivalent of the all-too-cool who merely stands in a spot and doesn’t move a muscle. But when you feel you can’t take one more minute of that, the Norwegians kick into a noise rock mix that makes sense of it all.
EM_LEN – This is the way
I’m not saying that you should avoid getting an education or that you should ever stop learning. In fact, any additional information you can get in a field you are trying to master may be of help in reaching your goals. Study away!
But you should be really careful about what kind of information you feed into your brain. Chances are that if you really strive hard to learn, you’ll never be able to get rid of those stats, figures, and patterns.
Schools want you to do more. Almost every music school aims to teach you to play more notes, not fewer. They try to teach you to play notes that others can’t play, not the right notes. By the time you’re done studying, you’re ready to be a teacher, not an artist.
EM_LEN’s “This is the way” sounds exceptional, especially when it does less than it ought to do. The intro isn’t music. It’s sound bent and designed to make you feel cold and unwelcome. The vocals find just the right spot in the mix, tricks learned from the great gothic-rock and synth-pop records of the 1980s. You’re unlikely to ever get this from a book or class at Berklee. That’s just in too much good taste.
