Hobsons Bay Coast Guard – Tidal Wave
Genre: Surf Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Garage Rock
Similar artists: Beach Boys, Bananagun, MGMT, Thee Oh Sees
Somewhere there’s a concert being played all day long on a sunny beach. The musicians are top-notch. The songs being played all feature beautiful melodies, and they make people happy.
That concert is playing in the mind of Brian Wilson. Sometimes he shares those aural hallucinations. But he’s learned not to be too generous anymore. It leaves his myriad of admirers having to prick up their ears.
With no antennas in the mind of the great man, his fans make approximations. What might that concert sound like? How pretty would those melodies have to be? How much reverb should they slash on top?
Hobsons Bay Coast Guard’s Tidal Wave is a beautiful Beach Boysesque tune treated to the indie-rock production excesses of 2022. It’s slim, slinky, and sounds like fit teens dancing around on a beach. It’s fun, melodic, and turns the reverb settings to 11. Really, is that how far they’ll go?
S. Ward – Roots
Similar artists: Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, Fat White Family, Weyes Blood, Serge Gainsbourg, P J Harvey
Genre: Post-Punk, Folk
The range of the voice largely determines what kind of success a pop song will enjoy. Having all of us heard enough radio, we are trained to hear the voices meant for hits. And we easily recognize the voices fine-tuned for drama, poetry, or comedy.
This setup has not always been this way. Tenors are, by far, the most in-demand vocalists in pop. They can easily hit high notes. This singing sounds youthful. But, it has been this way, largely, since Elvis Presley.
Baritone voices used to be the dominant force. You don’t hear them often in pop. Still, a good baritone is often associated with manly themes such as death, war, and love.
S. Ward rolls deep into his baritone on the folksy yet thunderous Roots. A song reminiscent of Leonard Cohen’s early acoustic meditations, it’s a song meant to touch the soul and make it weep. Its poetry couldn’t have been represented by any other kind of voice.
