The Cherry Pies – What Have I Got
It’s quite a shame that people don’t share mix-tapes any more. Like Rob Fleming, the main character of Nick Hornsby record-centric novel High Fidelity might claim, creating a great mix-tape is a very delicate exercise. You are trying to reveal your soul, after all, through the medium of somebody else’s work.
Putting together the perfect mix-tape is not just about finding the right kind of music that truly expresses what you feel. Like any great production, it needs a bit of surprise. Sure, you can put some Springsteen. Johnny Cash or The Beatles there. But, this doesn’t have to be a classic rock radio show.
Great lo-fi singles are always a tiny little wonder. Songs like What have I got seem recorded in somebody’s bedroom, yet contain the kind of pop songcraft that would make any platinum-selling star jealous. What Have I Got is a relentless piece of murky bubblegum-pop, and if you were making a mix-tape, one of the highlights.
Odakota – Why’s It Take So Long?
The lovely thing about rock n’ roll is, among other things, I suppose, that it really is a place for the braggadocio, the braggers, and the ones desiring to embellish the truth to fit their vision of reality.
This is quite wonderful and not the kind of thing that the tight constraints of more respected styles like jazz and classical might be able to offer an ambitious young writer. This appetite for success and self-aggrandizing is seen as a virtue in rock, with people being able to truly reinvent their lives, or at least give it a fresh twist.
Alternative rock band Odakota’s Why’s It Take So Long? is a piece of self-mythologizing. Behind the clever chord progression, the singer relates his struggle with learning guitar techniques and balancing them out with his own poetry. And, you know what? He makes it sounds like Siddharta on the quest for enlightenment. Odakota really sell their story and, for that, they deserve our full attention.
