Motherhood – Ripped Sheet
Genre: Post-Punk
Similar artists: Deerhoof, Tropical Fuck Storm, Pixies, Oh Sees
Rock n’ roll and cartoons have always gone together like Canada and the snowy season. After all, whether we’re comfortable with admitting this or not, the greatest of all rock stars have always been life-sized cartoon characters. Take Elvis, Iggy, or The Ramones, sketch them out in pencil, give them a mystery to solve, and anthropomorphize their pet and you have a potential cartoon sitcom on your hands.
The arrangement has always worked out well. The Beatles and The Monkees had their own cartoon shows after all. Next, bands like Alice Cooper and KISS lived these shows on stage. Even modern rock stars fit into this mold.
Motherhood’s Ripped Sheet shows that punk-rock might be the most cartoonish and playful of all music genres. It’s not just their video presentation that makes us think this. It’s the ridiculously hyped-up, and catchy cowpunk of their single. The tune doesn’t move much further from that. But, sometimes all that you need is a good idea.
Cartoon rock is music made on copious quantities of sugar. Motherhood sound as if they’ve taken a nibble themselves.
Sonofold – Father Father
Genre: Grunge, 90s Rock
Grunge bands, perhaps, don’t get enough musical recognition. But, what would expect when you don’t even acknowledge having created a unique genre of music. As tempting as it is to lump the Seattle groups and their kin with the rest of the alt-rock revolutionaries of the 1990s, the truth is that you’re supposed to be hearing something unique.
For one thing, nobody had as much gusto about mixing dissonance and the sweetest of melodies in quite the same rocking way. Nirvana may have quoted power-pop even during their freakouts. But, Alice In Chains wrote melodies and riffs based on musical lines more suited to Stravinski, or to a child dragging their fingers across a guitar fretboard.
The mix of dissonance and beautiful melodies is explored by Sonofold on Father Father. There’s a looming, gloomy feel to the track. It makes you want to look up in terror. There’s the power behind these tangled lines. And, there’s proof that Sonofold just like many other bands have had a lot to learn from those strange men and women decked in flannel.
