The Dirty Nil – Fail In Time
Charles Bukowski wrote poems about the drink, about feeling miserable because of the drink and about the fear that some happiness and warmth might enter his life. The last, after all, might be the worst of all. Happiness could really ruin his life.
But that’s the fate of plenty of artists who’ve dedicated their lives to telling the truth and for whom the truths worth telling have only revolved around anger and sadness. What if that changes? What stories are left to be told? That’s something that The Dirty Nil is contemplating.
It takes a brave man to jump out of a plane for no reason other than to stick that video on YouTube. And it takes an equally brave and reckless collective to try to change the mind of their audience about who they really are.
The Dirty Nil’s “Fail in Time” is a song about finding a spark of happiness that might change your life and worrying about the flicker eventually going off. But the alternative-rock group that specialises in big power chords and moody dynamics are also writing about the difficulty of getting used to joy for someone who hasn’t encountered it often. It’s a memorable track and an interesting, honest point of view from people who’ve carved a career out of darkness.
The Eyetraps – 20xOver
The majority of music writers are, just like the subjects of their work, great egotists. And while pop songwriters want to be judged as being serious artists, so do, in secret, the folks writing about their achievements.
This means that pop songwriters are naturally drawn to self-indulgent projects. They’ll use the first opportunity that they get to subject audiences to hour-long meditations based on scribblings they did while high on their heads on a beach somewhere. This is precisely the kind of quicksand that young bands like The Eyetraps must learn to avoid.
But how do the egotists manage to get away with it? Easy, the writers also like to wax poetically about every 40-minute dirge of feedback that, supposedly, reveals a higher truth. But not this writer.
I like music that’s direct, memorable, and that has enough soul behind it that it makes you want to listen back to it. That’s why The Eyetraps, with their debut “20xOver” and a tendency to move toward the poppier side of 90s grunge and shoegaze, is the kind of music I can gladly recommend. This isn’t music meant to make the band’s day better when you hear it; it’s music meant to improve your day and disposition!
