
Three of Swords – The Best of Me
The careers of most musicians follow a similar arc. It may make you sad or may leave you indifferent. That won’t change anything.
The fact is that, regardless of how much success a band or musician reaches at the peak of their popularity, that will eventually fade. Now, you can spend the next few seconds imagining that musician in old age. Nearly all of them will reflect upon their careers.
Some of them will need to not just reflect but figure out the chords to their biggest songs and play them on the nostalgia circuit. When they whip out their gear and their stage clothes, most of them will hope that they are remembered as cool, detached, ice-cold rock n’ rollers.
But that’s a waste. Give us artists that show emotion! Three of Swords’ “The Best of Me” is music that is brimful of emotion. In fact, the singer, at times, feels like he’s chosen to be recorded at the start of a nervous breakdown. Great! It’s the sort of sound that the world needs. There are enough folks trying to pretend like they care about nothing. The emo-rockers were on to something, and some of them risked their reputation and dignity to say something truthful.
The Underbites – The Lesson of the Lord
There’s not a lot of good-natured humor in pop culture anymore. The moment you hear a single joke about a group of people, you start becoming suspicious. It’s only natural. Everyone seems to be an extremist these days, radicalized by internet pamphlets and using even gags to insult large groups of people or ensure that they are kept down.
Punk-rock, sports and comedy clubs used to be so fun. It was stupid escapism at its best, and nobody really meant the hurtful things that they said. They were just trying to get one over their opponents, or trying to make a room chuckle. Now everything has turned political and everyone is working for the cause that they’ve chosen like party members back in the Balkan republics, back in the 1980s.
Let’s have some fun, and let’s make it stupid. The Underbites’ “The Lesson of the Lord” is immensely catchy, silly, and irreverent. Is it a protest song against organized religion? Hell knows, but it sure is a lot of fun. So much so, in fact, that it’s hard to imagine that The Underbites are sitting in a room plotting against Christianity. No, instead, they join a proud line of punk bands who just wanted to play fast and draw a few brief gasps of shock along the way.