Concrete City – Night Tremors
Genre: Post-Punk
Similar artists: Hot Snakes, Wolf Parade
Guitar riffs are a special thing. Most of them, unless you’re busying yourself learning Joe Satriani and Steve Vai’s oeuvre, are easy to learn. Try not to get Breaking the law on your first lesson.
Yet, when aimed in the right direction they can cut through any mix, on any speaker. They’re terrifying. Some guitar riffs will get stuck in your head and will be harder to dislodge than embarrassing childhood memories. Every composer aims to create something as memorable.
Concrete City base their single, Night Tremors, on powerful, opaque guitar riffs that you could certainly make an effort and learn on your first lesson. Good luck, coming up with something as good though.
Concrete City masterfully bind together simple rock elements to bring to light the terrors that, for some, occur in the dark. They work with tension in the way that a good horror movie director might wield their camera lens.
Ms. america – Panic Overload
Genre: Grunge, Garage Rock, Alternative Rock
Similar artists: Drug Church, Violent Soho, Nirvana
Ms. america look to do the incredible and interject some fun into their grunge fixation on Panic Overload.
Grunge in many ways is classic rock for people who couldn’t be bothered to learn guitar solos or the money to buy expensive, good-looking clothes. It’s classic rockers trying half-heartedly to make punk.
And, as important as grunge was for the history of popular music, it often came under criticism for one thing. People complained that it had no sense of humor. They also complained that the color palette used wasn’t very expansive. Still, watching videos of Kurt Cobain smashing guitars and purposely messing up the simplest of guitar solos, reveals an exquisitely active funny bone.
Ms. america attempt to make grunge fun and nearly, dare we say, danceable. Panic Overload is instantaneous, kind of silly, and powerful. Ms. america have taken the exuberance of pop-punk, detuned it, and added a distortion pedal.
