Smoke Fairies – Carried In Sound
Genre: Folk, Indie-rock
Genre pieces are hardly ever entertaining. They are made to resemble something else. Their creators do their very best to adhere to a set of rules, and anything that could be added which does not fit those set of regulations is deemed abhorrent. Everything is a copy of something else. This is, largely, the way in which modern music is made.
Smoke Fairies have so much know-how of their chosen genre that they can draw between the lines and only occasionally hint at the style that inspired them in the first place. It takes a great amount of confidence to be able to do this. But this daring experimentation is the only way to ensure a genre’s survival through the years.
Smoke Fairies’ “Carried in Sound” is, at heart, a folk song. It’s an evil-sounding folk song that could just as well rival hard-rock and heavy-metal bands for pure spookiness and sonic power. Yes, the lyrics and the vocal melodies recall tunes that are part of the familiar folk tradition. Everything else, however, means that Smoke Fairies draw their art with new colours and shapes and carve out a kind of modern gothic-folk, a relentless, violent Cormacian tragedy.
Blue Beam – Chicken & Waffles
Genre: Southern Rock / Red Dirt, Progressive Rock, Alternative Rock
Maybe the problem is that we’re all just too damn smart. Or, at the very least, we think that we are. Either way that might just be impeding our ability to let go, to enjoy ourselves, to rock out. Why, the great blues and rock n’ roll masters that started the ball rolling never would’ve thought that one day there’d be courses on how to play this music and that fancy college professors would be teaching them.
Blue Beam are one of those rare bands that haven’t allowed thinking about rock n’ roll to get in the way of playing it. They sound like they woke up this way. Like they just picked themselves right up of the rehearsal floor at noon and opened their day by cranking a few tunes. They sound like they do this a lot. This is the kind of band that we can trust.
Blue Beam’s “Chicken & Waffles” is nothing if not a good time bluesy rock tune complete with big riffs, a tight rhythm section and the occasional scream. Yet, when it works, as it does here, it’s within these simple elements that most of what makes rock n’ roll glorious is captured. This band, for all I know, doesn’t wear costumes, disguise their identities, or write hundreds of pages of lore about their band. They don’t need to do that! They just rock! And that ain’t no small thing either.
