Opheliah – Remembering Me
Most serious bands get a career of 10-12 albums. That’s how long they have to try to make something great. Most of them fail, leaving fans to assemble a properly great album based on the singles that they have released through the years. They then break up, return after a few years and play the reunion circuit gigs for as long as time will allow it. That’s just the way it works.
The bands that get it right on the first try are few and far between. Even then, their first try is made up of sounds and songs they’ve accumulated in 5-6 years of practicing in their rehearsal room and playing to five drunks at the local watering hole. This is why the bands that really get it right on the first try are the subject of both admiration and envy by all of their counterparts.
Opheliah is a new band. Their band members assure us of it. And, if that’s true, and if “Remembering Me” is, indeed, a debut single, these musicians must be added to the list of the great and the envy-worthy. “Remembering Me” sounds like it must’ve started out as a bit of a joke song about regretting having insulted your elders. But by the time it’s over, Opheliah manages to bring to mind the ’60s British folk bands as well as modern indie-rockers from Yankee Land. They do it all very competently and might not need 10-12 albums to say their piece.
pâle regard – Usage Unique
Everything changes, and most things go away. Your life choices and, indeed, your preference for certain styles of music may be based on how anxious this idea makes you feel.
If the answer is “a lot,” then the best thing to recommend is some pop music about fast cars and making money. There are plenty of these around. And I am told that the best ones help you forget about life for a while.
On the other hand, if the answer is “not at all,” your best bet is to get music that will make you feel as if you’ve arrived early to a yoga class or as if all the meditation sessions have paid off and nothing in the world can bother you.
French group, pâle regard are visionaries. The band’s music mixes both the most serene and the most anxiety-inducing ideas. “Usage Unique” is built with a dreamy kind of production and the kind of stacked-up looms that suggest you might be playing a music file of relaxing nature sounds. But the lyrics talk of a fast-spinning world in which most things are made to be used once, thrown away, and gathered in great trash piles. It’s all about coming to terms with the world being drowned in our junk. By the end of it, you won’t know whether to go back to meditating or to join a pro-environmentalist group.