Timothy Ivan – Ghosts
Genre: Folk, Acoustic – Pop
Timothy Ivan tries to keep the darkness at bay and the spirits sweet with the single Ghosts.
While it is true that music-making tends to bring forward every type of person, with every kind of quirk, the very same can be said of music fans. It’s this that allows a system to be put in place, transactions to be operated, and for an alternative music system to operate undisturbed by what happens in the mainstream.
It only makes sense that while most pop music would be busy with writing songs about good times and about how to avoid troubles, songwriters unconcerned with the Top 40 would be heading in the complete opposite direction.
Timothy Ivan writes the kind of songs that Nick Cave listens to on a brisk summer walk, that accompanies well-crafted plays, that music fans can fall for and stay in love with. Ghosts is a piano drive tribute offered to the darkness with which we need to accommodate ourselves. Timothy Ivan not only understands it but knows how to describe it clearly.
State Run Radio – Weapon Engage
Genre: Metal, Rock, Punk
State Run Radio take the world and its problems very seriously, but they’re willing to risk the neck out in order to encourage a few possible solutions on Weapon Engage.
Famously, David Lee Roth spoke about The Clash, unlike chart rivals to Van Halen in the early 1980s, as people who needed to learn to relax. One could only imagine what Joe Strummer would have had to say about this. The world was full of trouble, as it is now, and doing nothing about it would certainly guarantee that things would remain precisely as bad as they were.
It was a philosophy embraced by most punk-rock bands that followed. As a consequence, most punk and hardcore bands embrace proactive behaviour, especially when it comes to political issues.
Should more people be encouraged to vote? State Run Radio believe so. Their single Weapon Engage is a powerful hardcore number that acts as a modern-day Rock the vote. It’s well-intended, well played, and offers great comfort, even though it doesn’t quite help me better understand just what’s so hot about voting anyway.
