Seola Station – Rooftops
The greatest rock artists were occasionally easy to like because of danceable, hook-filled songs that they produced and, more often than not, hard to understand. A few of them produced an endless stream of hits, and the majority of their works eventually received the proper care and attention.
That’s because, unlike the AI-infested playlists of 2025, the great rock stars never made it easy on their audiences. Some of the albums that they produced, and which record labels desperately wanted to sell to the world, were simply poetry recitals, elongated instrumentals or flat-out sounds of guitar feedback played at different frequencies.
But the great ones never lied either. All that they tried to do was hypnotise audiences into wanting to hang on to every single element of their stories. All that they wanted was complete devotion.
Seola Station is a classic rock band, but not the kind that plays “Sweet Home Alabama” in front of drunken motorcycle gangs. Now, the band’s influences are much more subtle, artsier than that. “Rooftops” is a poem linked to mesmerising folk-rock groove, a tune that resembles Patti Smith much more than it does ZZ Top. This classic art-rock demands your full attention.
BRIARS – Odds And Ends
Where were you when you realised that your home city had no proper rockstars? If you’re a would-be musician, that moment tends to stick with you and should make you miserable for a while. It makes it feel like the whole game is rigged.
You can’t count on the silly-dressed singers on television as rock stars. Those are glorified wedding singers looking for a gig. What you likely did was pull out whatever records or CDs you had and try to work out where the bona fide stars came from.
To your dismay, you were left with only 3-4 answers. Every rock star seems to come out of London, New York, or Los Angeles. It might’ve been enough to get you to give up. Thankfully, this didn’t work on everyone. Some had the bravery to create pop music that echoed the hopes and dreams of their home city.
BRIARS is a two-way pop partnership. “Odds And Ends” is sweet, but serious. It’s a very well-crafted pop song. And it couldn’t have belonged to bands from London or Los Angeles. This is very much music influenced by the folk songs of Cork, Ireland. This is very much a song that contrasts with whatever is bound to be on the charts. And, because of all of that, it is really a striking, unique tune.
