(T-T)b – Bug on the Ceiling
You’re favourite band is hanging out in the basement. The band members are complaining and fighting with each other. They’re breaking the band up. Not many people even bothered to see them. That’s not a Dickensian fantasy of work in the modern music world. That’s the story told by (T-T)b and a scene that will seem very familiar to people who are routinely in bands or in their orbit.
It ain’t glamorous. Not unless you got a record exec to give you a recording contract in 1985 and made a video that got heavy rotation on MTV. That must be swell! Just lay around the swimming pool, trying to figure out how to write tunes about fast cars and beautiful groupies.
For every other band in the world, the process is as simple as it is boring. It’s a thankless task that involves spending too much time in basements trying to tune old guitars and begging friends to stream songs and attend shows.
(T-T)b sounds like a potentially great alt-rock band. The musicians also sound like they’ve been staring at the basement walls of their rehearsal space for a really long time. “Bug on the Ceiling” is the sound of a band working themselves in and out of trouble, typical of rock groups. There’s brilliance here, as well as hundreds of hours practicing the same damn song intro over and over again.
Barricade – In Defiance
You could and should play videos of live rock bands to people under great stress, and might get some wonderful results. Have a sports team that needs some motivation? Play them a clip! Have someone about to dive headfirst into a dangerous, life-threatening mission? Play them a clip! Have someone unable to get out of bed and start the day? You know what to do!
The kind of confidence required to go out in front of people and turn your guitar into a tool of mass entertainment is something that is mighty rare. Just listen to Barricade’s brand of 80s-inspired pop-rock. Do these people sound like the kind of people who worry about trivial things? Do they sound like they needed to battle angst and distrust in their own abilities? Hardly!
Barricade plays pop-friendly post-punk with the confidence of a band that’s just been asked to give a show at the White Show. They play music with the self-assuredness of musicians who believe every stage of the world, no matter the number of people who are in front of it, belongs to them. There’s grit to the single “In Defiance,” but its main characteristic is a well-balanced, poppy sound that would’ve made 1980s U2 tremble in their Irish boots.
