Dog Army – Marks in Mahogany
Like a board game heading into its final stages, we have used up our musical map. It’s difficult to shock your parents now, especially if they used to wear metal t-shirts on their way to school. You can’t get louder, nastier, more disgusting, or start playing your music to aliens unaccustomed to the past 70 years of rock n’ roll.
Role-playing is your best choice. I am sure there will be studies being conducted in the not too distant future about the many people who thought that they were someone else entirely. Technology and nostalgia have allowed us to dream of being heroes, murderers, bank robbers, etc.
The man behind Dog Army fancies himself a gunslinger. There’s enough conviction to Erik Dionne’s vocals and to the old-fashion honky-tonk instrumental to make us avoid questioning him in a heated argument. Marks in Mahogany is the kind of song that Nick Cave might hear and wonder if the perpetrator may have owned a copy of Henry’s Dream. They did.
Siydock – Spleen
Boredom and cynicism have done a lot for us. Certainly, they have contributed immensely to Western culture. Schools may have been built with the purpose of serving as a place of learning, but they’ve taught, at least, as many would-be adults, the terrible dissatisfaction of wasting their time uselessly.
School days also, provide a lot of downtimes and not too many opportunities to use it unless you’ve been fortunate to have been born in a family of great financial means. For many, the road towards becoming a poet starts here. Boredom, anger, and a developing sense of self are the perfect ingredients.
Siydock’s Spleen is an ambitious work of poetry and blues guitar that sounds like the result of a gifted youngster strolling alone and aimlessly through deserted streets. The video offers the perfect contrast to this in the form of a long shot of trees trembling in the wind.
Leaving this all aside, get a load of the words and guitar playing displayed here. Both are created with the idea that more is most certainly more, but they are both impeccable—a very good, twisted, and anxious folk tune.
