
Pretend Collective – Children in the Trees
Childhood is the great reservoir from which people drink once they’ve become adults or, in unfortunate scenarios, a source of trouble and anxiety for the remainder of one’s life. Worse still, this is one period in which one’s choices are limited. It’s not really like kids can decide to be better, wiser, fitter, happier all by themselves.
What they do have is all their own dreams. For those who haven’t entirely forgotten them, these dreams are the foundations on which to build a life later on or the material that an artist seeks to move closer to the truth. The importance of childhood is understood by practically everyone, so few listeners will have trouble casting their minds back to that time.
Pretend Collective produce a song about innocence and the early seeds of rebellion on “Children in the Trees.” The musicians do their best to let their playing and song’s arrangement match the dreamlike wonder being described in the lyrics. The callback of the backing vocals ends up being the hook of the song. And, if nothing else, Pretend Collective may help put you in a good, albeit reflective mood, wondering about the dreams you had and how you may work to get those back.
Asian Passerby – Take a Hike
Musicians who can’t write melodies either give up or join an extreme metal band where these sorts of things aren’t required but frowned upon. The fact is that pop music, and any of the subgenres it’s helped start, feel pointless when the audience has nothing to sing along with. Have you ever seen a singer trying to teach an audience to chant a line from a song and have the audience fail miserably? I have. It’s a wonderful sight.
Pop music that doesn’t have strong melodies is a bit like philosophical novels by Camus or Sartre. It’s fun to talk about them and pretend that you’re smart for liking things that others don’t. But if a brave, knowledgeable critic bothers to pour over them, they’ll realise the works are crap. Camus or Sartre wrote novels where nothing happened because they couldn’t do any better. Songs that don’t have a strong melody are written by people who aren’t capable of doing any better.
That’s not a problem for the Spanish pop-punk group Asian Passerby. Their highly theatrical “Take a Hike” is written with melodies that can be sung in mind and with ideas for a stage show. The music pays debt to the likes of Panic! At the Disco and Asian Passerby has been inspired by the right ideas. Keep bringing the tunes and the energy and, soon enough, great crowds ought to be chanting the refrains.