Shox – Hold
Eventually, the kinds of music critics who would go gaga for Lou Reed’s records of nothing but feedback warned us that the big record labels would own everything. There wouldn’t be a single song on the radio that wasn’t written by one of their professional teams, played by people that they hired, or produced by some Swedish guru living in the Hollywood hills.
Those paranoid delusions, for the most part, turned out to be true. What those visionaries failed to see, however, is that, eventually, annoyed with all the predictable, corporate-owned singles, music of a different kind would start flowing through whatever holes in the basement that it could find. Slacker rock fanatics are, as we speak, taking their time in creating some of the modern world’s best records and Shox are part of this proud bunch.
Shox’s “Hold” proves that bands like Pavement or The Fall didn’t just make records to pay the rent, but wrote a kind of gospel that similarly creative, but ambition-challenged musicians make today. “Hold” is a perfect little pop song. It’s all fun and anguish brought together in the performance of musicians who must feel like they’ve won the battle. Whatever lister is looking for, this kind ain’t got access to the radio or the big Spotify playlists. Whatever listener is searching for this still believes that guitar music has yet to deliver its best, and that Shox is one of the groups that will help solve things.
Twilight Lounge – I Still Believe In The Power Of Love!
Oh, other than terrible dictators and the soldiers that they send in to blow civilians to shreds, nobody other than pop stars has done more against making people want to stop talking about love. Repeat any word long enough, and its meaning disappears.
And with much of the general public hungry for romantic experiences, or, at least, the entertainment meant to make them hopeful of it, songwriters, producers and pop stars plucked out of Disney-owned sitcoms have devalued the concept of love.
Twilight Lounge is one of the bands trying to erase the sad events accumulated between the late 1960s and today. That’s good news, because more and more artists are looking back at what the world had in that particular era, and wondering why we ever accepted letting it go.
Twilight Lounge, for better or worse, brings the spirit of the original hippies to the blend of psychedelia and indie-rock of “I Still Believe In The Power Of Love!” It’s a sentimental, but earnest song, one that is delivered with great confidence. Twilight Lounge isn’t looking to make you weep nostalgically while digging a hand in your pocket. The band is hoping to change your mind about love, and thus to make you appreciate it even more.
