Soup! – 6=3
If the better groups of the 1960s made guitar music in a beautifully circular way, where the song’s best ideas seemed to return and tease listeners strategically, post-punk created sharp, unnatural rhythms complimented by abrupt messages. Naturally, this attracted a lot of artistic types.
Out of the groups that challenged the classic rock format the most were bands like the excellent Killing Joke and Gang of Four. Much of their music can best be characterized as funk music that you can’t dance to about political topics with which you are unlikely to be familiar.
Soup! are a band that carry that post-punk flag with great gusto. They challenge not only the audience’s expectations for a rock song but typical band/song spelling with 6=3.
Clever tricks aside, the four piece’s playing should thrill just about any post-punk aficionado. There’s a great charm to this band’s critique of the world and in their ability to unpack and reassemble rock sounds.
Neckscars – First Time, Long Time (feat. Jon Snodgrass)
Nothing really happens by accident in the world of rock music. The people responsible for the plotting and the scheming usually like to pretend that everything is a giant coincidence. After all, every single one of the great rockstars of old, even your Reeds, Morrissons, and Cobains dreamt of fame and fortune once.
The trouble is that once they found them, they were left unfulfilled, and, usually with never more frazzled than before. There was no way and the only solution was to adopt an air of nonchalance. Rock became cool, and as time went on more and more uncaring.
Neckstars don’t sound or look like a band concerned with being liked by the kids wearing shades and smoking cigs behind the school. They know that only music that is painfully honest, and emotional has the potential to change an audience for the better.
First Time, Long Time, a song featuring Jon Snodgrass, finds the quartet mourning the loss of a friend and disguising little of their heart. It’s working-class Springsteen-punk, and it’s the truth.