Admiral Fox – Pictures of Drones
“I’m a product of my environment.” Indeed, for the last year especially, if you were alive the greatest threat to your well-being were not just threats of physical violence and disease, but the endless barrage of bad news that would make a chanting George Harrison go into spasms of panic.
Rockstars are usually a bit too cool to express their fears directly. They play it coy. They write poetry. And they usually wear dark sunglasses while doing this. Only a few, like John Lennon, were able to marry pretty pop songwriting with desperate cries.
Admiral Fox is not beyond some desperate cries on Pictures of Drones, an indie-rock number that expresses the full extent of a man’s dread at the uncontrollable potential of modern technology used in welfare and the tension that will just not let off.
Otis Infrastructure – Wrinkle Town
The trouble with trying to kill rock n’ roll is that folks have hardly been able to find a cheaper substitute for therapy, now have they. And, you especially cannot kill the type of bands that are not too preoccupied with appearing cool and detached. You can’t really turn them into pop stars either (most of the time anyway). However, their earnest approach will always earn them loyal fans.
It’s interesting how songs that seem to function as diary writing eventually find their public. Bands can end up selling millions of copies of their albums and have virtually nobody remember them in a few years time, while groups like Otis Infrastructure are very likely to enjoy a local following for a long, long while.
Wrinkle Town feels like a song about watching people busy with their daily tasks while you have nothing to do. It’s a tense song about slow decay, the kind of thing poets have long tried earning their living doing. An orderly onslaught of anxiety-funk and whispered vocals, Wrinkle Town is one for the true believers.
