The Fourth Wall – No Daggers
Similar artists: Deerhunter, my bloody valentine, Slow Pulp, SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE
Genre: Shoegaze, Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
Witches, supposedly, tell the future while glancing at a pot of coffee. Hikers go out and find their own truth while walking through the thick forest. Regular folks regularly lose themselves while staring at the flames of a bonfire. Everyone is trying to find something that they can use. And, everyone thinks that they’re only a step away from gaining that kind of understanding.
And ever since you could plug an electric guitar into amp and distort the signal almost to the point that it starts sounding like a power tool, people have been doing the same for rock n’ roll. Some use it in fine measures, like original rock guitarists of the 60s and 70s. Others employ it to the extreme, letting the noise of the feedback become the guide.
The Fourth Wall’s “No Daggers” sits somewhere in the middle when it comes to its lush wall of feedback. There’s definitely a tune here and, I reckon, one that could be interpreted on acoustic guitar if required. But there’s a walloping, controlled wave of tortured guitar noise that is even more important. What does it mean? Anything you think that it should. It’s the equivalent of staring into the same or finding out the future while glancing through the ground.
SoCal Jack – I Should, I Must, I Will
Similar artists: my bloody valentine, flyingfish, Title Fight
Genre: Shoegaze
At the end of the day, every musician, from those who become professionals to those who entertain as a hobby, hopes that they can make a connection and do it on their own terms. There’s a lot of selfishness involved in making art. And, that is how it should be. Nobody went to Picasso’s house and asked him to paint something that more people could understand, and in the colors that were in vogue at the time.
Artists should be out to please themselves. When they start hiring a committee to determine what kind of art they should make, they are bound to fail. Audiences sniff it. Even the poppiest of pop musicians, those that make records exclusively to be played on the radio and generate profit, lose their audience when they begin trying to approximate what the audience might want to hear.
No, the artist has to give the audience what he/she wants to hear. SoCal Jack’s “I Should, I Must, I Will,” sounds like shoegaze-rock made in a mad scientist’s laboratory, one in which the musician’s given themselves permission to get lost. The pretty melodies that almost hint at 60s pop are covered in a great mist of electric instrumentation, a pop song suspended in dazzling guitar glimmer.
