T.Barber – I’m So Tired Of Being Lonely
Similar artists: Kurt Vile, Kevin Morby, Jeff Lynne, Wilco, Cotton Jones
Genre: Alt-Country, Indie Rock, Indie Pop
We, would-be modern producers, are absolutely spoiled. Older musicians like to make fun of kids making music on their laptops. But, their jokes are usually made out of either a sense of jealousy or simply because they misunderstand just how easy and affordable modern recording technology is. In other words, what would have cost you millions of dollars during the 1970s and would have weighed several hundred kilos, can now fit into your backpack and costs only a few hundred dollars.
But there’s beauty in the struggle, of course. The folks that did use the recording studio as an instrument back in the day created their best work out of necessity. The beautiful, slightly over-the-top recordings produced by Jeff Lynne or Todd Rundgren were made by people forced to listen to their own music for hundreds and hundreds of hours. There’s a particular atmosphere created by these kinds of conditions.
T.Barber’s I’m So Tired Of Being Lonely is a pretty folkish number treated to the same kind of studio treatment that a modern Jeff Lynne or Todd Rundgren would provide. This is a simple song blended through production techniques meant to give it a shimmer of every color in the rainbow. It may be pushing things a bit, but your brain won’t have any way of fighting and being enchanted by this.
Robert Connely Farr – Shake It
Genre: Blues, Indie-rock
In 2022, people making the blues can either appear and sound like the coolest folks in music or the most boring and out of touch. It would only make sense. The great canon of rock music is, after all, built fundamentally on ideas taken from blues music, often without properly crediting the originators.
On the other hand, the blues is easy to play. Take a walk through any big city center, and you are likely to hear, at least, a couple of hacky bands apathetically covering Stevie Ray Vaughan songs. On the other hand, take a listen to most of the true rock hits of the past decade, and you’ll notice that they’re still based on the blues.
Is it all the mysterious feel that some possess? Perhaps. But, also in the swing, the intensity and the ability to bring the blues sound to a modern context through the use of appropriate production techniques, as in Robert Connely Farr’s Shake It. A song built as a love letter to vintage blues, featuring a minimalist arrangement, there’s nothing on here that wouldn’t please the modern ear of a radio listener.
