Sinnet – Lost Lake
You really have to admire the rockstars who never seem too involved with what they’re doing. You watch old clips of people like Mick Jagger or Rod Stewart singing or giving interviews, and you get the feeling that for all of their talent, they’re not really there. You get the impression that they like everything that comes along with their career, except for the music itself.
Those must be really well-adjusted people, and although cynicism, one suspects, plays a role in their success, it’s certainly proven to work. Then again, there are others who spend their entire lives trying to make sense of what’s happening to them and use songwriting as a tool to try to put everything back together as it once was. That’s exactly what Sinnet’s music does.
Where other rock musicians are comfortable just stealing riffs from old blues musicians, Sinnet’s “Lost Lake” is haunted by perfect chord progressions, the possibility that the perfect guitar fill does exist, and a story about losing love and nothing ever being the same again. That’s a heavy burden to bear for everyone involved, sure. But, long after people have stopped spinning “Satisfaction” or “Hot Legs” because those songs are enormously dumb, they’ll still find something in a composition like “Lost Lake.”
Good Time Mystery Vision – Ferris Wheel
Children rock themselves to sleep when they feel afraid. Lovers cry the day away and murmur to themselves when they’ve got a broken heart. And prisoners hum and write the words to songs on the prison walls.
Nothing’s ever changed, and nothing ever will. First and foremost, music is a tool for survival. And that’s why humans, regardless of their opinions or their abilities, won’t be comfortable letting go of this tool that has allowed them to go on through the hardest of times.
Stop worrying about the armies of music producers writing pop hits, or about AI flooding Spotify with its garbage recycled tunes. Don’t even worry about the wars too much. People like the ones in Good Time Mystery Vision are still writing songs to rock themselves to sleep.
Sure, “Ferris Wheel” has some of the late 60s folk-rock tenderness that would suggest this New York band is made of people in tune with the past, and working on building a strong music collection. But, at the heart of it all, Good Time Mystery Vision are just one more group of dreamers, using old-fashioned playing of music in order to rock themselves to sleep, to make it all hurt a little less.
