Negative Players – The New Rage
Stephen Morrissey’s opinion on a lot of topics shouldn’t be taken as gospel. Who knows where following his advice in the letter will get you? But he is most certainly right about two things. First of all, yes, meat is murder, and there’s no getting around that fact, no matter how much you like to stuff your face with Spanish Jamon. Secondly, yes, the news merchants conspire to keep you scared.
It’s a new industry of terrorism, and, for the most part, we play a role in founding it. The ones busily working on it are journalists dedicated to the art of creating fear-inducing material. It’s all kind of silly when you watch it rarely and from afar. But it’s nothing like that when you get up close and see the people who these stories inspire. Why, I just had a conversation with a friend who is scared to death about the 15 Minute City, even though he barely ever leaves his neighborhood as it is.
Negative Players make highly intelligent music. There’s no debating that fact. The melodies are strong, the orchestration is subtle and sophisticated, and there’s plenty of emotion captured in “The New Rage.” Maybe this is why the topic affects them so much. People are just looking for a reason to go berserk, and your local news stations are providing them with the reasons to go nuts. Before they know it, they’re at a power-metal concert or storming the palace gates. It’s all rather sad and funny, and Negative Players capture it all.
Dylan Rockwell – False Dawn
It’s only natural that you should become greedy for life. But the things you choose to become greedy over will, in many ways, also define the quality of your life. Pleasures of the flesh come first for most people, but those conspire to shorten your lifespan and worsen your mood while you do it. Accumulating wealth and power will be your next impulse, but is that where it’s at?
Reading the biographies of some of the world’s richest men is often sadder than it is illuminating. Many of them did not have much to live for except for their wealth and their reputation. It’s hard to find a millionaire and/or career politician who enjoyed music and poetry or who had a great sense of humor. These are the things worth getting greedy about.
People do need some poetry in their lives, whether they realize it or not. And the sound will be subtle, gentle, and half-sipered. It will sound nothing like construction work or like Finnish power metal. It will sound something like Dylan Rockwell’s achingly beautiful “False Dawn,” a song so warm and light in size that it may appear to be melting away as you listen to it. Music like this is something worth developing a habit for.
