Bossi – Talking 2 You
Genre: Indie Pop, Alternative Rock
Similar artists: Sharon Van Etten, Arctic Monkeys, Florence + The Machine
Alternative music has always been criticized for its perceived lack of commitment. But, it’s been this precise tendency to jump ideas wildly, that has set it up for a modern era where genre delimitation is much less important than it once was.
The alt-pop musicians of the 1990s were among the very first to have had it with classic rock. Guitar solos were a thing of the past, and the songs about fast cars were the ones that their parents might enjoy. These were musicians who wanted weirdness, wanted pop stardom, and sometimes both. And, they wanted to make no excuses about their decisions.
Bossi’s Talking 2 You is a pop number with a wandering eye toward’s modern music’s experimental side. It’s a number that could have been recorded, with slight alterations, by an alt-rock group, or by a pop princess. If played live, it’s a song that would be unlikely to negatively impact either one of those audiences. Pop-rock can change because it is not tied down to anything, as Bossi shows here.
The Moderner – I Want to Wake Up Now
Genre: Post-Punk, Indie Folk, Lo-fi Rock
Similar artists: Modest Mouse
The goal of the original rock stars was to make you believe that they were immortal and invulnerable. Car chases ended with them unharmed. Stealing other people’s girlfriends never got them shot. And, simply strumming the guitar could make them millionaires. Who wouldn’t want to believe their stories?
Well, there was a crowd of maladjusted musicians for whom the rockstars were worn-out writers. These also had a reputation and fame. But, they didn’t win any of their battles. Theirs was the glory of the well-written book and the liver cirrhosis. They were the artists that had let life choose for them because they weren’t in the position of choosing anything else.
The Moderner’s I Want to Wake Up Now feels like the soundtrack to a biopic about a writer waking up in a foreign country with no idea about what brought him there. It’s charming in a world-weary kind of way. The Moderner makes himself sound like someone who could have the world, if only he wanted it.
