The Mellons x Triptides – From the Vine
How healthy is the current musical climate? Is there any strategy that we can use to tell for sure? Sure, there is. Here’s what I do, and you can apply the same tactics at home. Just think of the best five pop songs featuring guitars that you’ve heard over the last three months. Was that easy? Does your brain hurt now, and you’ve not even managed to come up with anything good?
Musical health should always be determined by the number of great pop songs available. Sure, that’s not to say that superb classical music, jazz, or extreme metal cannot exist at the same time. But that’s more likely to exist. Niche styles are, by definition, made to please a small group of listeners. Smart pop music, like the one made by The Mellons, is harder to locate on most occasions.
This all means that we ought to greet the collaboration between The Mellons and Triptides, the single “From the Vine,” with a good degree of enthusiasm, and entirely without cynicism. The melodies over these chord sequences, along with those fantastic vocals, work so well throughout that it’s easy for the band to quote retro psych-rockers like The Byrds or Moby Grape while they’re at it. The world’s always waiting to rejoice in fantastic pop music, and now more than ever.
personne – synesthesia
If you want a new internet rabbit hole to go down into, try, preferably using a VPN and incognito browser, searching for the communities of people training themselves to acquire synesthesia as adults, the process by which one excited sense involuntarily triggers another. But while you’re at it, also ask yourself if what most people truly lack in this world is stimulation? Is there really too little that you’re made to feel when you can only hear sounds and not taste them?
And while you’re busy asking those questions, also consider playing a little game where you try to remember three new songs that you’ve heard in the last week, or three pieces of news, or three colourful billboards. You may not come back empty-handed from this challenge, but your brain will certainly feel strained. Keep that feeling with you for a while, and add personne’s music to the experience. There, now, you have a definitive answer.
It’s not a coincidence that personne’s “synesthesia” is a song inspired by sensory overload, the thing largely responsible for the modern world’s anxiety and perpetual tiredness. What is also remarkable is the band’s sound and the strategy that the group uses to grab your attention. The childlike sing-speech delivered over the verse part, while the music feels like it’s slowly tumbling into nothingness, is particularly remarkable. It’s music that stops you in your tracks, even though you have a million other alternatives of ways to spend your time. Do you still need to feel a little more?
