Harolds Last Chance – Upside Down
Genre: Punk, Pop Punk
The world is a messed up place, partly because too few people are doing anything on their own, out of sheer passion. The majority of us wait for things to get delivered to us and complain when they are not up to our standards. This, naturally, doesn’t mean that you have to learn to build your own mobile phone. However, taking charge of your life might do you good.
Naturally, the ones that do are moved by the desire to start things from the ground up are motivated by some form of greed. This doesn’t impact the audience of whatever it is that they are constructing right away but ends up, eventually, factoring into the way that their product impacts the world.
It’s rare to see and hear people passionately jump into a personal project without the knowledge that their work will bring them handsome riches. The one-man band of Harolds Last Chance returns with a pop-punk fiery DYI number called Upside Down. This might be the work of a soon-to-be YouTube star, but one gets the feeling that this is beside the point. The musician is just having a ball by challenging himself, piecing everything together, and not having to ask for help or advice. This remains a moving tale.
The Sols – luv kramer
Genre: Surf Rock, Garage Rock, Alternative Rock
Similar artists: The Strokes, Beach Goons, Surf Curse, The Killers, The Frights, The Buttertones, Fidlar, Ultra Q
Trying to gain access to the music industry has always been a lot like asking to be granted admission as a fighter in some kind of blood sport. There’s no room for niceness here. And, people generally only remember the winners. While it takes a really sensitive soul to come up with great songwriting, it takes a really shrewd business person to make a buck in this world.
When people ask, I wonder why there’s no band that is as successful as Band X or Singer Y used to be? the answer might be simpler than we wish for it to be. There are certainly plenty of imitators of the acts that have achieved the most amount of success. However, there are very few that are able to capture the sound that made them successful in the first place. In other words, there are numerous cover versions, but very few are very good.
The Sols are one of many groups that sound like The Strokes. However, they are one of the few that capture their excitement and effervescence. Their single luv kramer is a perfect mix of punk-rock urgency and considered nonchalance. It’s the equivalent of the kid leaning onto a streetlamp with a cigarette dangling from their mouth and shades covering their eyes. These may all seem like simple enough tricks, but there are few who are actually able to pull them off.
