Milk St. – Peyote
Genre: Folk rock, Indie Rock
Milk St. are would-be folk-punk stars, but they’re having a terrible time, and they’re smart enough to know it now, not years down the line after extensive therapy.
These sorts of realizations, for the most part, for the basis of the great work of great artists. Of course, everyone realizes one day how bad things were really going. But few manage to get to these conclusions on their own. And few get to say it to their audience while they should be busy themselves having a good time.
For all the promises of mind expansion and becoming a bit more interesting, the would-be mystics dressed in rock n’ roll clothes cut a pretty sorrowful sight. Few of them achieve much enlightenment beyond hanging on to a few Carlos Castaneda paperbacks, and like Castaneda, they eventually disappear without a trace.
Milk St. certainly has the brains and isn’t much worried about the rock n’ roll muscle on their single “Peyote.” It’s a brilliantly worded letter to good friends with nice intentions and terrible ideas. It’s a song about the hypocrisy of kicking your brain around with the excuse of trying to get it to work. And it’s a mighty fetching piece of lo-fi folk-punk.
The Great Heights Band – Above the Water
Similar artists: Brand New, blink-182, Radiohead, Taking Back Sunday
Genre: Garage Rock, Alternative Rock
The Great Heights Band lays into strengths for the new single “Above the Water” and delivers an emotionally punchy pop-punk number.
The bands who try and do it all usually end up doing nothing. Especially in this day and age, few are looking to hear everything from one style of music. The days of The Beatles or Mahavishnu Orchestra are long gone, and few fans are wishing for their return.
It takes most bands years and years to find out that the reason they’re failing is that they are trying to do too much. Still, one can’t blame them. It’s the natural instinct of young artists to stick to every powerful experience that they’ve had in their work. It’s only normal that bands will show this level of ambition.
The Great Heights Band know what they are good at – emotional pop-punk driven by great vocals. That’s what the band provides on “Above the Water.” This might seem when described as a lack of ambition, but that’s not true. If you had a singer that sounded like a more technically advanced Mark Hoppus and a band that perfectly understands pop-punk dynamics, what would you do? For The Great Heights Band, the choice was easy to make.
