Plastic Nancy – Beware of the Dog
Congratulations! You’re capable of teaching your brain to perform extraordinary tricks. One of them, if you’ve managed to keep yourself from going completely insane, is to phase out the colourful images and drown out the loud sounds of advertising. You can watch about a thousand ads each day and not even realise that they entered your world for a second.
Rock fans are known to try and sharpen this particular skill. They are people so suspicious of the lure of corporate-endorsed, commercial pop music that their ears can’t even hear it anymore. On the other hand, it’s quirky, bizarre, or mean-spirited songs that immediately get them to raise their eyes, prick up their ears and pay attention.
Plastic Nancy is the kind of spaced-out, retro psych rock that, if you’re a rock fan, you’re likely to immediately recognise as something you should be concerned about. “Beware of the Dog” channels Roky Erickson at his most strange and melodically pleasing. Humorous (check out the cute bischon on the artwork), but played with meanness and intent, Plastic Nancy is music that promotes a positive, almost balanced kind of paranoia.
Babe Rainbow – Waterfall
If you really want to prepare for your future, you best put down your textbooks and run out into the world. You’re likely to come back with an ache in your back and a hangover. But the experience will do you well. You have to find out which part you’re playing.
In fact, this may be the most important thing that you can do with your early life. It’s unlike that you’re the person you think you are. It’s possible that you’re somebody else and the sooner you realise it, the better.
The people who know exactly who they are, what works best for them and how they can contribute to the world are, generally, the happiest folks on this planet of ours.
Babe Rainbow’s musicians decided about seven albums ago that they’re modern hippies. That was all well and good, and I confess that I am a fan of the band. But there are many who camp out on a beach for a Summer and never do it again because the sand gets in their trousers and camera phones have a hard time underwater.
This band, instead, is committed to its mission. For their latest single, “Waterfall,” they take their role to heart, delivering music that is as warm as the Sun over 1967’s Haight-Ashbury.
