Mia Mera – Wanted On Both Sides
There’s rock n’ roll, and there’s every other kind of music. And everything else that is not rock n’ roll gets to concern itself with the qualities of the musicians involved in playing the songs, the purity of the production, or the possible commercial appeal. Sure, it can do that, because it must justify its existence and market as having a point of interest with audiences.
Rock n’ roll, on the other hand, is best when it’s played wrong, and when songs deal with topics that shouldn’t even be thought, let alone mentioned. It’s a thing that makes you feel happy about being alive when it works, and makes you work with your imperfections. Mia Mera understands this and would like us to remember these essential truths.
The world is not a good place for artists to be in at the moment. Everything is going digital, and everything’s turning artificial. How about a good scream, then? Mia Mera delivers it with “Wanted On Both Sides,” a grungey exploration about our basic necessities, our soulful essentials, and also about all of the ways that we manage to suffocate those.
Your Friend, Death – Oh Come On!
Rock music is a great place for people who are able to put on a brave face on command. Perhaps this is the reason why so many of rock’s most famous musicians are, notoriously, undiagnosed psychopaths. It is, after all, a world where confidence and the ability to pretend can be richly rewarded. It is a world where make-believe helps to make checks arrive in the mail.
But rock music is also the place where you get to re-write endings. Has someone wronged you? Hang them in the town square in a tune. Got dreams of becoming kind? You can wear your crown between verses. Have you spent most of your life hoping to get back a lover that’s walked away on you? A rock song can make it all work out.
The excellently christened Your Friend, Death take a sad song and make it better for themselves on the deliciously catchy, and over-confident “Oh Come On!” The song’s lyrics start out as a blues about faded love affairs. But with each garage-rock riff, the band delivers a declaration of intent, a warning that as long as they’re writing the songs, things will work out precisely as they wish.
