The Marley Woods – Good Times
There wasn’t a lot of for negativity back at the dawn of pop music. This was, after all, music set to appeal primarily to teenagers who had inherited a brave new world after the war. A couple of decades later, pop music had embraced the distrust of harder-edged rock. But no matter how much we try to pretend, that was never bound to remain of interest for the majority of listeners.
Disco came after that and never really left. Everything that has happened since, with brief pauses, has been a retelling of the songs that made people dance on dance floors. Now, we’re in an era where, despite the best attempts of pop stars with their choreographed dancing, listeners are once against songs about distrust and fear for the future. But things turn around, don’t they?
Perhaps this is the moment that things start to return to the sunshine-drenched sounds that pop music is known for. The Marley Woods’ “Good Times” sounds like The Beach Boys in their last days of true happiness, just as they are trying to hold on to the dream of a never-ending Summer. The retro production is great, and the vocal melodies are pristine. And while The Marley Woods, on their debut, warn us that “the good times are slipping away”, the sound announces nothing of the sort.
Bang Bang Jet Away – Stage in Life
Wealth is usually wasted on the overly-wealthy and bored. Just take a listen to most of the established pop stars making records nowadays. You can tell who are the ones that have been at it for a very long time. No, it’s not because of their age or because of how many hit singles they’ve managed to acquire. It’s mostly because they sound like they just don’t give a damn.
Their records also sound like they couldn’t locate a good song or a neat little story with all the help in the world. And that’s exactly what they receive. It takes 6-10 people to write the most ordinary pop song these days. It takes a really expensive music studio, the best engineers, musicians and equipment. What a colossal waste.
Those who have good stories to tell will write until a piece of cardboard if they have nothing else to work with. They’ll make music out of tying strings to a tree. That’s what Bang Bang Jet Aways’ “Stage in Life” feels like. This is a short story that has turned into lo-fi rock. The lyrics are the focal, but the playing doesn’t much slouch behind. It all sounds like a budget recreation of some of Steely Dan’s finest moments, a rock orchestra rehearsing in an alleyway.
