Badgers – Supposed To Know
Similar artists: The Dandy Warhols, Tame Impala, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Murlocs, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Lo-fi Rock, Garage Rock
Rock stars undergo all sorts of medical procedures once they hit the big time. None is more common than the surgery that ensures dark sunglasses are permanently glued to the head of the famous musician. It’s painful and scary, sure, but once done, Lou Reed will be smiling from a cloud up above.
Unnecessary, you may say? Shows what you know. A tremendous amount has been achieved by simply looking cool in no other place than in the competitive world of rock music. Why The Rolling Stones, notoriously, got their best record deal by simply staring down the head of their record label through dark shades.
Badgers’ “Supposed To Know” is built upon a kind of cool, psych-rock intimidation campaign. This sounds like music made by people that spend most of their money on nice clothes and hip hairdos, people who listen to nothing made after 1968, and folks who know a thing or two about retro rock.
Bad Year No Mercy – To Live & Die On the Moon
Similar artists: Guided By Voices, Hard Girls, Antarctigo Vespucci, Mac DeMarco
Genre: Lo-fi Rock, Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
For a style of art that boasts its love of mavericks, innovators, and wild characters, modern rock is painfully conservative. It doesn’t require much effort to understand where a typical rock song will be headed after its first few seconds. And it takes even less time to realize what kind of audience the musicians are trying to appeal to.
Rock has become predictable because it’s been bought off. Most bands that make it big are financed by their parents, went to art school, and recorded in fancy studios, all while taking their ideas from better groups that came before them. Any room for the nonconformists? Not if they can help it.
Bad Year No Mercy’s “To Live & Die On the Moon” sounds like the work of an inspired artist determined to do things wrong on purpose. It sounds recorded on absolutely no budget at all. And it’s more interesting than the vast majority of projects that receive gigantic financial endorsements from record labels. It’ll get an audience, I’m sure, and won’t have to thank any trust fund for it either.
