Elizabeth King – Living In The Last Days
We live in a time when the Western world, for the most part, has decided that traditions of all types are better left in the past. In the same society that we live in, ageless wisdom is disregarded, culture and faith are reduced to being talked about as mere superstitions, and the values of celebrities, the figureheads admired by millions, seem to change from one day to the next.
Rock n’ roll, though, has never had any time for such thoughts. After all, at the very heart of the matter, here’s a music that was born out of blues, country, and gospel, then given a proper shine by young men with long hair and guitars.
Protest songs nowadays are ready to find enemies everywhere, but few seem to consider the possibility that humanity’s devolution is simply meant to be. Elizabeth King’s Living In The Last Days may be a soul number, with a video shot inside of a church, but the message of the words is as strong as the angriest of protest tunes. Mrs King’s voice just glides with fire and with sadness offering a touching statement. I know that we’ve been trained to only hear out specific messages and drown out the rest, but maybe we can do ourselves a favour and open up our ears wider. Elizabeth King gives a great performance.
Perfectparachutepicture – The Stream
Most of us who’ve received assistance from music in dreaming ourselves into all sorts of adventures demand our life to be an exciting one. For many people, though, the truth is that, sometimes, just getting through the day is enough of a victory. Why I know people that have never been able to hold down a job for more than a few weeks at a time, and with whom Heaven knows what would have happened was Bucharest, not a busking market for weed and other such goods. But, I digress.
Perfectparachutepicture’s The Stream sounds like prog-metal with all the majesty taken out of it. It’s a tune influenced by a great riff, good groove, and tight vocals, and one that fully reflects the disappointment of modern living and the desire to escape such fate.
If the prog-metal cheese-mongers would be writing this story, the solution would, obviously, involve sailing away to some distant land created out of pure imagination. Perfectparachutepicture seem to know that for them, there is no such luxury and confront their problems straight on. As Keith Richard famously announced, clearly, if an issue can’t get solved by a guitar, it’s likely not that big of a problem.
