The Parlor – The Sacred Is the Sweetest
Retro rock fashion seems to celebrate a history that never really happened. The 2000s indie-rock wasn’t as sleazy as people would like to remember. Most of the bands on the Sunset Strip spent more time on their hair than on their songwriting. And all the hippies chanting about peace and love traded all of that in for a big car and a bigger house in the suburbs.
Thankfully, Charlie Manson is scaring us straight about the 1960s at least. All of the books and movies about that decade now, by law, have to contain a chapter on weird, dangerous cults. If you want to reflect that era’s music as The Parlor does, better tune in!
“The Sacred Is the Sweetest” is psych-rock music that’s meant to sound like the 1960s, but sounds more like The Brian Jonestown Massacre, simply because we’d like to imagine that’s what the mystical decade sounded like. The Parlor writes tunes to chase the real world away with, or soundtracks to joining a cult.
Legends of the Seven Golden Vampires – Two Worlds Collide
Music’s a tool designed to trick us. That’s precisely how it works, no more and no less. And if you don’t believe me, if, as an exercise, you want to remove all of romance from music, just read up on how it’s made.
It’s nothing more than simple math, the teachers will tell you. Learn what notes go into a chord, what chords go together in a progression, what progressions you can use for a particular genre, and you’ve got the recipe.
But nobody with any imagination listens to music for this reason. They listen to it because it tricks them into thinking that their problems are bigger than anybody else’s and that their moments of pleasure are more glorious.
Legends of the Seven Golden Vampires are looking to trick you with the single “Two Worlds Collide,” but this is all for your own good. The music, a mixture of old-school shoegaze and even older patriotic vocal chants, sounds like a love song turned into a glorious tragedy. It plays on your senses. It makes you think that things are more important than they are. And, it’s one of the only things that matters.
