Blackest Heart – Kick Me
Movie studios and record companies know that the more they sell their product to us, the less likely it’ll be to trick us. And they hate that. The truth is that if you’ve seen, even casually, hundreds of movies, it’s quite likely that you’ll recognise a dud from the first few shots. Similarly, if you’ve heard a lot of rock music, you’ll know what’s worth your 3-5 minutes of listening time and what isn’t.
Some movie directors and musicians distinguish their work by making it fit within the framework of all the songs and movies of their great predecessors. This is no easy feat. Essentially, it means creating something familiar but original enough, powerful, yet smooth, that long-term enthusiasts will be abe to look upon it and recognise it as one of their own.
Blackest Heart’s “Kick Me” is the song of a band that knows its queues perfectly. The sludgy riff comes in at just the right time; it drops out just when it needs to. The vocals and lyrics bring just enough anger to know that the Swiss group means this. And the chorus, as grandiose as those of their punk-rock heroes, arrives at just the appropriate moment to push you as if you’ve been dragged through a moshpit without you knowing it. Blackest Heart has heard enough of this modern punk rock to know just what for a great song, and the band uses that information.
Storm Boy – GHOSTS!
Regular people deal with a lot of conflict every day. Arguably, there are more things that they need to fight off during those otherwise wonderful periods when there is no crisis outside of their tiny world. That’s when they have time to think. And what most people invariably think about are their internal conflicts and all of the questions for which they haven’t found the right answers.
This is not the only reason, but an important one for which these kinds of people fall in love with punk rock and other things in that vein. It is not that they welcome conflict. However, they would gladly pay someone to playact those kinds of tensions in front of them and use this theatre as a form of therapy. Music constructed out of genuine tension can be a wonderful thing.
Storm Boy’s “GHOSTS!” is remarkable because it sounds like a group of musician friends who’ve come to the agreement that they would explore their collective anxieties through music. There is little musical refinement here, and that’s a very smart choice on the part of the artists. “GHOSTS!” is meant to sound chaotic just in the way that the warning against opening doors to unwanted places is meant to sound like a real warning. I am not capable of correctly estimating what is down there, but hearing “GHOSTS!” makes my Monday anxieties feel a bit less weightful and I predict, that this is the effect that it will have on many listeners.
