
Stephanie Losi – What Happened
Genre: Folk, Americana
Rock stars walk, talk, and lie about themselves in a certain way. It must be true. After all, that’s the only way that I’ve seen them be presented in the numerous films and television shows about these characters. This is why on the rare occasions that someone has the gull to make no effort to stick to those principles, it’s easy to feel like you’re being witness to someone cracking The Code.
Perhaps the “Alt-Rock Revolution” didn’t have much to do with music at all. Sure, the very best groups that came out of that period were comprised of music geeks and avid record collectors. The real change, however, was in the fact that these were not people who would’ve been picked by a Svengali producer putting together the new hot thing.
Stephanie Losi’s “What Happened” sounds like a carefully planned short story set to music. It feels intimate, it ignores many of the rules used in modern pop music, and it has no interest in overseeing itself. Once you get over these things that may have been implanted in our brains from thousands of hours of pop star inoculation, you are likely to be rewarded with something much greater.
Born Days – How To Disappear
Genre: Indietronica, Indie Pop
I’ve always suspected that professional musicians all keep their cables coiled in a certain way and that they can tune instruments in mere seconds. I’ve always suspected that their undeniable professionalism might be the reason why all of their records sound the exact same way. Born Days doesn’t care about those kinds of conventions or about sounding the same as someone else.
Most people will only ever hear the music that is being played to them on the radio, by television stations or in advertisements. They’ll require the same kind of vetting for everything else that enters their minds. Because of this, we sometimes forget that art, even pop art, has no rules that are required to be followed.
Born Days’ “How to Disappear” could be called a modern interpretation of goth music, but that might give the impression that these sounds are following a template. They are not. Instead, because they are created using a DIY approach and charming naivety, they sound unique, like someone unable to follow a map who reaches a far more interesting destination.
Thank you for the wonderful review! I appreciate your listening with open ears to music that bucks the rules and formulas–and I love your description of “What Happened” as a short story set to music. Telling stories is part of being human, no matter what rules we spin our tales to. -Stephanie Losi