Vini Vicious – Cadillac
Genre: Similar artists: Idles, Fugazi, Nirvana
Bands like The Rolling Stones or The Doors hinted towards how wrong things could go at a rock show. Their music and attitude seemed to suggest something vile, evil, and impossible to marry with the idea of the pop star at the time. But, it was a mere suggestion.
It took pop music several decades, a lot of chemical adventuring, and a few personal mishaps of the people involved, for the music to truly sound that way. Punk music, and especially those that followed it, knew what they needed to destroy. And, they knew that having the guts to tear pop music’s pretty posturing apart would get them a lot of attention. To some, taking apart the mold of the three-minute single and beating it beyond recognition is still tantamount to a sacrilegious act. For others, this kind of music doesn’t deserve any better.
Vini Vicious’ Cadillac presents the Israel group as exciting sonic terrorists. They’re a band looking to start a fight. They’re unimpressed with an audience liking them. Vini Vicious have heard enough rock records to know the point where they can break. There’s the spirit of Iggy and The Stooges captured in Cadillac, a vague idea about seeing how far things can go. And, above all, it’s an exciting sound, one made for people who’ve heard just enough pop music to know that they deserve something better.
Savage Republic – Nothing At All
Genre: Hard Rock, Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
Rock music was made by special people for everyone. This was the promise. It was a reason to keep visiting record stores, or, later, websites. If you were living in a small town, it was your entry into a different, more exciting world. If you were living in a large town and leading a prosperous, comfortable existence, it was your ticket to visit the freaks.
This was art made up of scraps. It had the potential to inspire, or terrify. There are people who found spiritual enlightenment that they never lost. Other people discovered a great reading list. And, other people simply went nuts. When walking into a regular record store one could genuinely be excited, or terrified about finding any of these things. Rock didn’t need to be good, but it had to be special.
Pop music is rarely made by special people anymore. It is why it fails to be exciting and why interviews with musicians all read like an entry in Accountant’s Monthly. Savage Republic’s Nothing At All sounds like it couldn’t possibly be made by people that could be categorized as ordinary, or plain. This is the sound of people that seem like they rehearse their music in a junkyard. It’s blues made by delinquents. Savage Republic makes music that sounds like it’s made on instruments assembled by blind children. Special bunch of people.
