Every new generation’s version of pop music was louder and faster than the one before it. Every new generation had its own shock artists, people willing to tread the line between what was acceptable and what was not. And each new generation dug into record store crates for music that could scare their parents, those representing the previous guard.
Now there’s no use in trying to be louder or more shocking anymore. There’s no use in digging through crates when nearly all of recorded music is readily available. Now’s the time to close our eyes, open our ears and honestly ask ourselves if the pioneering pop artists didn’t just have it right to begin with. If those notions are on your mind, Mighty Joe Castro and the Gravamen’s retro-delights of “Between the Lightning and the Thunder” may be just what you need.
Listen through the right speakers to a Buddy Holly song, or Bill Haley’s “Shake, Rattle, and Roll”, and honestly tell me that music that can capture a greater, weightier groove? This is what Mighty Joe Castro is trying to prove through 10 musical experiments, through a rock n’ roll voyage in search of life-affirming thrills.
Still, this ain’t no cosplay of a 1950s band. Mighty Joe Castro writes songs for people who need a bit of relief this very moment. You can hear it on the melancholy-filled opener “Can’t We Just Start Again?”
And before you just weeping a tear, the chugging “Embers in the Ash” praises the one who’ve embraced the struggles, and who’ve been made stronger because of them, while “Dominoes,” with its lyrical guitar riffs, is a song about refusing to accept the sins of previous generations.
Nah, Mighty Joe Castro and the Gravamen don’t make music for those that are trying to relive the Golden Age of Rock’ n’ Roll. They’re writing soulful songs for the people who are giving everything that they have to the struggle of living through these times.
These are the kinds of songs that Buddy Holly or Johnny Cash might feel obliged to write as a way to answer our collective anxieties. You’ll hear it both in the old-fashioned orchestration used on a song like “Automatic Amnesia” but also in the nightmarish fairground atmosphere that the singing creates.
Sure, there are songs like “The Future Gets Put Away” or “The Dying Breed,” where the writing does suggest that even the Kings of Rock n’ Roll wouldn’t be able to abstain from shedding a tear because of this mean and confusing modern world.
But the band ends it perfectly with a country song of hope, and, coincidentally, the late Norm MacDonald’s favourite tune. “I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be a Diamond Someday)” captures the spirit of “Between the Lightning and Thunder” and the idea that someway, somehow this all has to make sense. How did the old song go? “I’m gonna grow and glow/’Til I’m so blue and perfect/gonna put a smile on everybody’s face.” Mighty Joe Castro and The Gravamen certainly do just that with this record.
