Nick Moon and Mutual Shock Reviewed
Nick Moon – Bonfire City
Nick Moon’s a star already. No, don’t just rush over to his Spotify page to see how many listens he has. Nah, it’s not exactly important how many social media followers he has amassed. These are things that only concern the record companies that might want to hire Mr Moon.
He’s a star because he and only a few others like him understand why most people like rock music in the first place. Maybe it’s the revival of so-called Indie Sleaze that has sparked this Revolution.
But the word is out. Moon knows that audiences want two things: rock music that you can dance to, and the feeling that something unsafe might happen to you!
That’s why “Bonfire City,” a playful little post-punk number blended with LCD Soundsystem-like electro grooves, is purposely designed to sound and feel like the music played at a show in part of town that you’re typically told to avoid. It’s the music for a show where everyone in the audience and on stage is dressed impeccably, and where every new part is an excuse to dance.
Mutual Shock – Charlatans
When’s the last time that you read the results of a survey and it revealed anything good about the world? It seems that, at the moment, the only reason to gather the data is to use it to tell us how bad things are getting.
The most unsatisfying part about this, of course, is that no matter how badly the numbers reflect on decision makers, you know that some politician will just twist them to their advantage.
But I think that the stats don’t capture the full picture. I think that people are angrier than the numbers suggest. And I base this assumption on the fact that the vast majority of songs in the past 12 months, and certainly the ones coming out of the U.S., reflect this growing dissatisfaction.
The Revolution’s going to have a lengthy soundtrack. Mutual Shock’s “Charlatans” is certainly one of the tunes featured on the compilation. The moody, goth-inspired sound certainly fits the murkiness of the times, and the lyrics are used to point the finger at all the politicians stirring the world wrong and for whom some kind of judgment has to be imminent.
