Madame Z x The M Project – Dandelion
Genre: Psychedelic / Freak Folk, Lo-fi Rock, Alternative Rock
Madame Z x The M Project’s Dandelion is a slow walk through dark cobblestone streets in a city built in the sky.
In the post-record-label era, it’s simply not enough to make music every few years. Artists can’t even rely on one song that they’ve managed to perfect. Only getting by involves work, cunningness, and a willingness to adapt, change, and experiment.
Unless this happens you get left behind. Nowhere is this more evident than with the major pop stars of the day. Sure, there are millions of dollars pushing them up the charts as we speak. But, how many of them get to perform to even small audiences once the finger of the music industry is lifted off the scale.
Madame Z is an artist ready to bear the hardships and advance to her rhythm, knowing that no artist is promised the keys to the kingdom. Madame Z and The M Project’s Dandelion is the statement of artists’ desire to reach out for their prize. The song is a smokey, whiskey-drenched number that sounds like Tom Waits embracing electronic elements. Through it all, Madame Z’s alluring vocals breeze like a siren’s song coming from beneath the sharpest waves. This is elegant work made with real elbow grease.
Stuart Pearson – Rise And Fall
Indie Folk, Folk, Americana
Stuart Pearson echoes the voices of the voiceless on his Southern gothic folk number Rise And Fall.
It all goes back to the blues and to folk, teachers like to tell us. These are the embers of all of modern music, and it’s been that way ever since Little Richard let out a scream, or Chuck Berry slid his fingers down a fretboard.
There must be some truth to that if we consider the people widely considered to be the greatest songwriters of our time. The likes of Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, or Neil Young all return to this type of music for sustenance. The longer they push into their careers, the more their voices become one with the voice of the blues itself.
Stuart Pearson acts as a messenger for that kind of songwriting on the song Rise And Fall. It’s a song about abject misery sung as if the stories being told were always inevitable. There’s a Tom Waits-like glee in the way that the writer digs up stories of deep anguish. And, through it all, Pearson’s masterful construction of the song is more than evident. Some people are just born with the gift of channelling the deepest blue.
