Sssstephen! – Many Faces
“Lo-fi” used to be a particular kind of inability to properly finance your recordings. It is now, however, a style of music and a conscious choice. When it works best, it is a look at the past for what we thought the future might sound like.
That’s what happens when musical equipment gets too good or too cheap. You start getting a lot of people who are musicians who suddenly have endless choices. Who wants to record guitar, drums, and bass in their basement when they could have one thousand different sounds on one thousand different channels on one song?
Since most of us are fatigued and bored of all the perfect songs heard on the radio, lo-fi music seems like a genuinely great proposition. Since the majority of us have had enough of all the information captured in each song, it feels nice to hear artists determined to work with less.
“Many Faces” by Sssstephen! sounds small, self-made, and extraordinary. By going for the lo-fi sound, the songwriter creates the opposite effect. “Many Faces” sounds like stepping into a virtual reality where you’re a character in The Jetsons. Those may be oldie versions of the future, but they’re still compelling. Sssstephen! has created a unique sound all on hits own, the kind that Julian Casablancas might’ve tried to get his studio engineers to get for him. But you can’t just push a single button to get this to happen.
Jon Tyler Wiley & His Virginia Choir – Just Another Heartbreak Song
Falling in love is a bit like volunteering to extract venom from dangerous snakes. One of these days, you’re bound to get bitten. And, there ain’t many people who can handle the pain, let alone walk back and do it all over again.
Most folks are advised to simply steer clear, get used to loneliness, and find something that they can collect, which can sit on a shelf somewhere. The rest of the people who do step into the ring are advised to acquire a good sense of humor.
There are plenty of songs about heartbreak. Plenty of them are famous. But if you listen very closely, most are made by people who struggled to get out of bed and into the recording studio. Most are made by people who were destroyed by the heartbreak.
Jon Tyler Wiley & His Virginia Choir sound like people who’ve found a way to move on, thrive, and even give a step-by-step account of a miserable breakup. “Just Another Heartbreak Song” is a guided tour to all of the places that remind the singer of her. The band sounds energized, Wiley has a smile on his face as he recalls the bitter and the sweet, and not even the Old 97’s could pull off sounding this brash.
