
Ron Marsh – FEELING ALIVE
I’ve heard of people who live in Los Angeles or London and occasionally bump into their favourite rock stars on the street. I’ve even heard reports from people who swear that they see Michael Monroe in their Helsinki supermarket nearly every evening. Autograph opportunities aside that sounds terribly depressing. Can you really imagine yourself sitting next to Jeff Buckley in a queue while you both wait to order sandwiches? How terribly dream-shattering.
I know it’s not possible, but can we just pick up every rockstar that matters, force them onto Noah’s ark and row it out in the ocean until it finds itself stranded on an island somewhere? If we’re at it, let’s make it someplace cold and where liquor isn’t readily available. We all know how rockstars left soaking in the sunshine can get.
Ron Marsh is living out my fantasy of being a serious rock musician by way of the cold Alaskan fjords. By the sounds of it, he loves it, making my theory all the more noteworthy. “Feeling Alive” sounds like a musical journey of self-discovery, and twists and turns of the slide guitar or the grungey vocals feel like a welcome surprise. It all ends up sounding like vintage Pearl Jam making a goth-rock record. If those are surprises we can hope for, the U.S. government ought to force its elderly rock songwriters over to Alaska real quick.
Dark Archer – Zero to Sixty
It’s usually not driving long distances that gets you! It’s not being able to colour in the great monotony into something exciting. Each long drive is an opportunity to turn the trip into something meaningful, symbolic, or some curse to boredom and apathy.
I’ve always been fascinated and have loathed people who just listen to the local Top Hits radio station while driving for hours and hours. How can they be so easily amused? Is there nothing more that they want on their great adventure?
For those with a bit more romance in their soul and, possibly, raised on Springsteen songs about the great open roads, the sounds and the mission are essential. Life may be a highway, but only if you really feel like you have a place that you need to reach.
Dark Archer’s “Zero to Sixty” isn’t just loud, dynamic rock music that can accompany one such trip. It is a song about the trip itself. For Dark Archer, the endless highway is the only way out of a life lived while half asleep. Noteworthy is also the songwriting – a sophisticated blend of indie-rock attack and progressive musical ideas. If there’s freedom anywhere, it must surely exist in running away.