Sun Wave Mountain Cave – Streetlights/Ginkgoes
Similar artists: Sufjan Stevens, Arcade Fire, Fleet Foxes, The Smashing Pumpkins
Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
Art can be a terrible thing for a person who already feels too much. It can downright tear them apart, just like a horrible confession from a loved one or a note that informs them of a murder. This is why it is something that needs to be dosed correctly. Just like any powerful medicine, precautions need to be taken, and the prescription itself can’t be used forever.
Unlike narcotics, for example, art, music especially, isn’t meant to dull the pain or make one deadened and insensitive. No, no, it’s quite the opposite. It is meant to ensure that feelings which would otherwise be locked inside for safekeeping can be expressed and brought to the surface. In that way, art has a tremendous power that can be compared to very few things.
Sun Wave Mountain Cave’s “Streetlights/Ginkgoes” is not a song about melancholy; it’s the representation of melancholy itself through carefully organized sounds. It functions just like any famous classical piece. There’s no need for clear storylines, for heroes or for villains. If you know what the musicians have used as fuel for this piece, you’ll feel it. And, if you do not, it’s perhaps even better. Perhaps you don’t need it just yet. You will one day.
Union Specific – Reformed Creep
Similar artists: Garrett T. Capps, Wilco, Robert Ellis, Croy and the Boys
Genre: Alt-Country, Indie Rock
What would people from English-speaking countries do in the past when they needed to be forgotten? Why, some would drift into the endless plains of Eastern Europe. Others would board a boat to South America and try to make it as some kind of merchant. And the most desperate would try to pick up the French, join the Foreign Legion, and march toward their survival.
Those are all desperate measures, of course. Each requires a healthy dose of courage and some madness thrown in for good measure. Still, the bravest of them all is to throw up your hands, admit your faults, and search for absolution that may never come. Most of the true weirdos march on oddities, but only a few of them care to glance back at the consequences of their actions.
Union Specific doesn’t make cool, rebel music. “Reformed Creep” isn’t the song of an anti-hero. It’s the soundtrack to living hard and strange and making others around you have to suffer, too. It’s also a great little alt-country number filled with quirkiness, gallows humour and hope of redemption. There’s a bit of despair, sure. But, hey, joining the French Legion wouldn’t have been much easier.
