People You Know – Blue
I suppose it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that there’s no good music left to be made. I assume that you can, technically, take out your calculator and decide that the odds are against this happening, considering just how many great songs have existed in the past.
But I also think that the people who do this fall into a trap. They want to embrace wanting to be miserable and hopeless. And, inevitably, they’ll be disappointed the next time, soon, when they hear something brand new and wonderful.
After all, the very best songs have that quality of feeling that they’ve existed somewhere, like someone in the heavens took some tunes off the shelf and gifted them to Johnny Marr, Paul McCartney, or Stephen Malkmus. People You Know makes that kind of music.
In fact, if there’s a great quality worth pointing out about the single “Blue,” it’s that it’s just like the mouth of a volcano, soaking up sunlight and answering with lava. People You Know sounds like a band that has digested all the great indie rock albums ever made, naturally offering their response. Familiar, intimate, “Blue” sounds like a response to the classics.
Awake & Dreaming – Something To Believe In
If you really stop to think about it, what else did The Ramones teach us other than believing in ourselves, and trusting that something better was bound to come our way if we kept our hands on the steering wheel and eyes on the road.
And, if you really stop to think about it some more, it’s only positive messages like the songs of The Ramones that survive over time. Sure, someone will dig up “Berlin” or “The Downward Spiral” from time to time. But that can’t last.
Like it or not, the world’s out there to be conquered. And it’s only the people who will themselves to do it, who put up with the discomfort required, are the ones who are going to do it. Awake & Dreaming is music for those kinds of people.
“Something To Believe In”, if sped up, would sound, not just in the manner of the title, just like a Ramones song. Of course, the band also brings to this singing that feels like it could belong on a soul record and modern indie rock ideas. But if you stop to think about it, Awake & Dreaming may have just delivered your queue to get up and get started on whatever it is that it smost important to you!
