
Quirks – Good Terms
Similar artists: Alvvays, Surfer Blood, Teenage Fanclub, Big Star
Genre: Post-Punk, Indie Rock, Indie Pop
Pop and rock have never been further apart from one another than they are today. This is not only because styles of music market specifically toward niche audiences. It’s not even because pop and rock don’t share any DNA. It’s a matter of respect, really.
Rock fans believe that pop stars don’t play their instruments, got picked by a Svengali manager and won’t be around for a long time anyway. Pop music fans believe that rockers play too loudly and flamboyantly, that they make music to soundtrack physical altercations, and that they’ll be around playing their hits to over-the-hill fans for decades. Neither is completely wrong.
Quirks, in the grand tradition of power pop, manage to marry the sweetness of radio music to the intricacies of rock guitar on the song “Good Terms.” Belonging to a proud lineage that includes Badfinger, Big Star or Teenage Fanclub, Quirks aren’t concerned with sounding cool. This is music that your grandmother or your local bike gang could and should like. It’s designed to never go out of style as long as someone can still remember how to tune a six-string.
Talk Heavy – The World Moved On Without Me
Similar artists: The Front Bottoms, Modern Baseball, AJJ
Genre: Skate Punk, Pop Punk
Talk Heavy are emo-punks with a sense of humour about their misery. Real comedic existentialists. You have to find a way to joke about these kinds of things if you really want to investigate them. The alternative would be to simply go insane and mail your favourite rockstar a copy of your will where you live with your cat and coffee mug.
In fact, it’s scientifically and anecdotally proven that a sense of humour may just be one of the most valuable tools for advancing through life. It’s only that it will offer the one cracking jokes some relief. The people in the near vicinity will also find some of their burdens lifting. In other words, misery without a bit of smiling is just too much misery for one person to take.
Talk Heavy’s “The World Moved On Without Me” feels almost like a workshop, a 101 session on how to write an emo-rock song while keeping your dignity. All the lines here are quotable and soulful. The song is built on a strong melodic foundation. And as terrible as everything being sung about here is, one can’t help shake the feeling that it’ll all work out in the end.