Mars County – Moving On
Genre: Shoegaze, Psychedelic Rock, Alternative Rock
Similar artists: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Verve, The Black Angels
They say that someone who visits the desert for the first time, and who connects with it, never forgets the sound of the wind whipping through the desert dunes. It’s bound to haunt you forever. This isn’t all too bad for an artist, with the sound with which they’ve connected the most bound to make their work for as long as they will be making it.
There are bands whose brand of rock music has a lot to do with the mysterious sound of the seemingly endless desert. Like one bass note hanging off of every musical phrase, what these groups have in common is a dark, unsettling murmur. Their music is a meditation carried out in the city’s busiest square.
Mars County’s Moving On is created as a kind of rhythm n’ desert music. It’s a music of escape. It’s a soundtrack to places where people are generally uninvited. Mars County embrace the post-hippie dream of freedom, where one’s paradise exists only where other people are found to be missing.
The Bureau of Motor Vehicles – Green Team Defend Your Base, Base Under Attack!
Genre: Indie Rock, Garage Rock, Emo
Similar artists: Catfish and the Bottlemen, Manchester Orchestra, Remo Drive
Not everyone has a great tragedy to depend on for inspiration. Thank the Almighty for that!. But, our own individual dramas, smooth as they may be, demand being documented. After all, some just need to squash a bug for their nervous system to meltdown completely.
The musical artists that are able to bring that sort of drama out of ordinary disappointments are blessed. The ones that have enough of a sense of humour to put a swinging groove under their blues, or sneak in a sunny joke amid the dire rain of the lyrics are on to something special.
The Bureau of Motor Vehicles’ Green Team Defend Your Base, Base Under Attack! are bored and they don’t care if you know it. But, they’re bored in a really charming, engaging way. Their version of boredom caught to tape isn’t all that different from The Velvet Underground documenting the artsy, grimey New York boroughs. The Bureau of Motor Vehicles are funny, sad, and know a great melody when they hear it.
