
STEREONAUT – Thrill Me
Genre: Americana, Rockabilly, Classic Rock
I search for rock singles in the same way that 1970s rock musicians would search for cheap thrills on the Sunset Strip. If you keep looking, there’s no telling what you’re going to get. Sometimes you’re offered something that, for 3-4 minutes, lifts you up to the sky. Other times you get a nasty STD, or something similarly repulsive.
Every guitar play, I would imagine, can play a blues riff if needed. There’s no shortage of those, but when done right there’s little that compares. The blues-rock licks still feel like smoking a cigarette before school. Can’t buy these kinds of thrills.
STEREONAUT do it just right on Thrill Me, a single that feels like doing something wrong, getting away with it, and then doing it again. The slide guitar is a soundtrack to getting out of town before the law arrives, while the vocals act like the bragging of a fable ne’er do well. Can’t teach no computer to do this.
Programmique – Dissolving View
Genre: Post-Punk, Noise Rock
Nick Hornby confessed he didn’t like Captain Beefheart’s music. To him, like many, the music of former Zappa protege turned cult-leader, made no sense. Then, one day, he realized that he will unlikely have a single day feeling as bad and uncomfortable as what Trout Mask Replica seems to describe. That’s an interesting way of putting it.
Music is usually made to comfort and console. For that reason, music that sounds like someone having a nervous breakdown should also exist and offer a kind of counterpoint. If you’ve ever had to visit the dentist, face pencil-pushing bureaucrats, or negotiate the price of fruit with a Greek, you know that it’s not the Beach Boys that is playing through your head.
No, it’s something more akin to Programmique’ Dissolving View. It sounds like a rock band being thrown down a flight of stairs mid-song. It sounds like a computer trying to write a funk song and running out of scales. It sounds like a nervous breakdown and we enjoy our breakdowns documented.