James The Fifth – Love Life
Genre: Art Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Lo-fi Rock
Similar artists: David Bowie, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Talking Heads, Roxy Music, St Vincent
Grown men attempting to make rock music. It’s the effort on which this website and many others like it are built. It is also a terribly funny, strange thing to want to do. Going out in front of an audience, plugging expensive musical instruments into loudspeakers, and trying to get the members of the audience to lose their minds to the sounds that the adults on stage are producing.
While some art-rockers have looked towards other worlds for inspiration for their dream-inducing works, others have looked towards the eeriness of the ordinary. For example, David Byrne and Brian Eno constructed music that took apart the rituals of rock music and almost mystical belief in the powers of the performers.
James The Fifth’s Love Life is designed to make you feel like an android that has just become sentient. It’s the nasty business coming to terms with all these feelings. It’s impractical having to balance all these thoughts about everyday topics. And, to an android who is just beginning to experience life, it may well sound a little bit like James the Fifth’s music.
Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band – Eyes Wide Shut
Genre: Indie Rock
Similar artists: Wolf Parade, Arctic Monkeys, Portugal. The Man, Iska Dhaaf, Woods, Saintseneca, Orions Belte
Pop music works in a cyclical manner. Of course, you may have well heard that before. But, while it is generally true that except for jazz and polka styles come and then return, the mood that pop music captures also changes. The alteration occurs in order to accompany the mood of the times.
After all, pop music and mainstream music are great indicators of what the world is feeling. You can’t serve sunny hooks while the world is grieving and can’t be somber while the world is waiting to party. You would have only needed to click through the news across the past couple of years to learn how the world is feeling at the moment.
Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band’s Eyes Wide Shut is a sweet, breezy indie pop tune about having it all and being totally depressed regardless. It is how most people in the Western world feel at the moment, and this aimlessness needs a soundtrack. The song swings through its verses and polished choruses like the perfect festival song dedicated to heartache.
