Peyote Radio – Side Effects
All of your favourite musical artists, we are told, had to struggle. How do we know? It’s in every press release. It’s featured in every article that they ever give. And, their self-published autobiographies could just as well be titled: “Remember we worked for this, you know?”
But none of them tells you that, inevitably, they fell out of love with the genre of music that they have to play about three decades ago, that their wife wants to put in a new swimming pool at the end of this tour, or that they’d rather watch footy on the telly rather than play shows.
Do rock stars mean it, and is it important? Well, how can it not be important when there are bands like Peyote Radio who sound like they might break into your house at night and force you to listen to their new album played live in your living room if you question them?
Sounding like Guns N’ Roses of the mid-’80s, before the lawyers came in, and before the band members figured out that they weren’t a punk band, Peyote Radio performs “Side Effects” like the gear might need to be auctioned off tomorrow, and the lead singer will be forced to move into the penitentiary. Yeah, they sound like they’re not holding back, like they love what they do and hate the world that tells them they ought ot consider doing something else. And, when you want this, why would you want to hear some bored rock star play hits for the thousandth time?
Aura Bora – I Wanna
There aren’t more things in this world that are treated with a greater degree of seriousness than punk-rock. Why? Well, the people who like it are, for the most part, hopeless romantics. They still want to believe that it actually means something.
Call them uptight if you must. But they put a lot of work into defending those ideals. Regular fans of regular pop stars won’t be upset when their favourite singer opts to make a country record and sell the songs for advertising soft drinks. Punk fans might.
Keep this in mind when you give Auro Bora your full attention. There are, I suppose, two things that are the most important for punk fans when it comes to their music – the honesty of it, and for the people making it to be on the level. This band has it.
Auro Bora’s “I Wanna” is disarmingly charming and imperfect in just the right ways. It’s a song that feels like it started out as an angry threat against the world and ended as a list of reasons why staying mad as long as there are people worth meeting and things worth doing, simply is not an option. Few things are more punk-rock than that, and few lo-fi punk bands are as fun as Auro Bora.
