Positive Chaos – Bowl Me Over
There’s only one greater fear than that we’re all dancing toward a terrible end. The greatest fear that most of us share, and few of us want to admit, is that this isn’t really the end at all, and that if things are getting worse, it’s not because it all leads towards an infernal conclusion. You can certainly write songs about The Twilight of the Gods, Hitler’s bunker, and the loss of all hope.
But it’s harder to write about centuries and centuries of bad, mean, unimportant times. This is something that only a handful of modern rock musicians understand. However, the ones that do, like Positive Chaos, are also taking the time to look in the mirror and ask themselves what’s to be done about it. If nothing much matters, then what should we do with the things that we cannot live without?
Positive Chaos’s “Bowl Me Over” feels anthemic, and not only because the moody verses crash into grand alt-rock choruses with gang-vocal chants. This is a song about being replaced, becoming obsolete, and feeling unimportant. It’s a song about all these things, but also about the liberating power of realising that nobody can actually decide any of these things for you. It’s only fitting, I think, that Positive Chaos opts to use this, by now classic, alt-rock sound to tell this story.
Bleu Grave – Television Tell Me What To Do
The big problem with rock music is that every single one of its young listeners will eventually go through some spiritual crisis because of it. And, that’s if they’re lucky. A good chunk of listeners will just move through one emotional emergency to another and develop a great, gnawing distrust of the world.
Of course, this is just how things go. Once you show people a universe, even if imaginary, where there are no limits to freedom, how are they supposed to react? Once you advise listeners that they should live their lives as they see fit, naturally, they will freeze up because of the weight of expectation.
Bleu Grave is just another in a long list of rock groups mourning our collective potential. Sure, there is a possibility that everyone who has really tuned into a rock song to become a great poet, artist, or lover of the world. It’s far more likely, however, that all of us will just end up doing as we’re told.
The television set, even in 2026, remains the global logo for brainwashing. It doesn’t even matter that the sales of TV sets are at an all-time low. Bleu Grave’s “Television Tell Me What To Do” is a post-punk lament about being led into every bad decision, and about there being no real authority, no true guide. Songwise, this feels like a tune that someone should’ve got to years ago, which makes it a potential classic.
