daidrum – The New Witch Annie Izzard
Genre: Folk, Psychedelic Rock
It would only make sense that, after years of wandering in the wilderness, guitar music would return to its old ways and purpose. Once a method to tell stories and a way to congregate with something larger than the musicians themselves, perhaps, of a spiritual nature, guitar music later became commerce, before nearly flittering out altogether.
In his excellent book, Season of the Witch: How the Occult saved Rock and Roll, Peter Bebergal talks about early rock musicians’ desire for hidden wisdom, for a powerful communion with their audience, and for art that channeled something otherwordly.
One of the best groups to do this was Fairport Convention, a folk-rock band from Britain. While their contemporaries were busy raiding old blues archives, these Brits were digging deep into the sounds and myth of British music. It was a fertile ground that was quickly and bizarrely left deserted by future musicians.
daidrum’s The New Witch Annie Izzard may well be the missing link that we were missing. The song mixes traditional folk sounds with the kind of gloomy, mysterious glow that often lies beneath the surface of this type of music. The ballad may tell the story of supposed witch-burnings, and just like the source material, it’s a work of welcomed questioning in an age of cold certainty.
Salvo – The Most Evil Person on the Face of the Earth
Genre: Pop Punk, Indie Pop, Alternative Rock
People, ourselves included, tend to romanticize the importance of punk and its younger, more demented brethren, post-punk. Many of the musicians who ended up doing the most for these genres wandered by mistake. That’s true! However, the willingness of these groups to take the disintegrating carcass of what rock had become and reshape it is, by and large, what is worth celebrating.
The early punks may have transitioned to new wave in the hopes of chart success and bigger revenues. For the so-called post-punk gang, there was no such hope. Its legacy was for it to be both admired and reviled, like some strange, misshapen creature.
With that in mind Salvo’s excellent single, The Most Evil Person on the Face of the Earth sounds like a fresh attempt at corrupting the values of retro rock n’ roll from within. “Nobody on Facebook ever had so few friends as me” Salvo confesses and there seems to be little reason to doubt this. This is Born under a bad sign, for kids that probably don’t like you, or anyone for that matter.
