Vin Ordinaire – Die on This Hill
The greatest stories in rock n’ roll are about people who didn’t but did, who didn’t want success but got it anyway, who burned up great songs, but still came up with dozens of great ones. Of course, these are great stories, but only stories. The screw-ups of the world don’t get to win the Super Bowl, but we’d love to imagine that they could.
Charlie Chaplin was beloved by everyone not because his character of The Tramp was better, or smarter than others. He was liked because he had less than others did. Similarly, The Replacements were a group that made not-trying into an art form. The only secret is that both Chaplin and Paul Westerberg, both brilliant artists, worked really hard on creating these stories.
Vin Ordinaire draws from Westerberg’s great, anti-hero charm on the cleverly titled Die on This Hill. It takes a lot of guts to sacrifice for a cause, and an even greater set of brains to find a cause worth sacrificing for. Vin Ordinaire creates a charming, country-influenced dirty-scoundrel rock song with Die on This Hill.
The Sweet Kill – Closer
Genre: Post-Punk, Gothic / Dark Wave
People talk about the importance of having a high dose of reality associated with their pop music. Are you kidding me? Most people are slobs. Most people speak about their pet rats and believe it’s entertaining. You don’t want reality. You want people that work to create an alternative reality, a story that you want to believe in.
The world’s full of reality and getting more of it in our entertainment is doubtful to help us much. Instead, we need fantasy to help us better understand reality. We need heroes that seem to go through life with immense love, or colossal hate, or the kind of uncaring nature that no other of us would be able to muster and support.
The Sweet Kill’s stylistic reinvention on single Closer feels like the page ripped out of the book of self-mythology. Here, the singer appears in full vampire-rock-star regalia, beyond the law, untouchable and unsatisfied. The song provides the necessary cavernous atmosphere. Who is this Bruce Wayne character, really?
