Trash Pillow – Eyes On Us (It’s The Sound Of A Drone)
It’s a mighty great time to be paranoid. Geezer Butler may not have known what the word meant when he penned the lyrics to Black Sabbath, but, listen, the whole thing is making a great comeback. And, if you’ve bought stock early on, there’s nobody that can touch you now.
It’s been a great few seasons, I must confess. Just a few winters ago, I was one of the people laughing at acquaintances fretting over government supervision, proxy wars, and billionaires doing dastardly things on exotic islands. I even had the gall to suggest to them that they should get out, get some Sun, buy some rose-tinted glasses.
But we lost! Most of the paranoid theories turned out to be true, and if they dig up Atlantis, and drag it over so that it serves as a land crossing between Miami and Cuba. Germany’s Trash Pillow is also expecting the worst, but, good enough for us, and helpful for our entertainment, the band’s got a bit of a sense of humour about it (not something you most often associate with the thriving Deutsche leute).
It’s a strange state of affairs. Trash Pillow’s “Eyes On Us (It’s The Sound Of A Drone)” is very much a protest song. It’s the distillation of our common fears and frustrations that we’re never alone with ourselves anymore, that someone can just flip a switch and start peeking inside your head. It’s a song that retains the spirit of punk, while pushing the song in a poppy, alt-rock direction.
But, it’s also a protest against something we don’t understand, something we, surely, are being kept in the dark about. It’s the equivalent of protesting the Spanish and Portuguese ships as they were getting ready to cross the Atlantic. What’s out there isn’t very clear. Trash Pillow, however, speaks for all of us when they say that, on principle, we disagree.
Devereux Scales – Magpie
If someone’s been hired to round off stats about modern guitar songs, here, I’ll make it easy for you. The vast majority of songs over the past 24 months are filled with panic, distrust, and paranoid delusions. It’s a fantastic time for music!
Whether this general alarm is warranted or not is simply not important. Nobody has the time to count how many war theatres were active decades ago, or if diseases ever killed people on a large scale. Reality is what we feel, not what we can count!
And, since there’s no sign of things changing, I’d recommend doing something fun and wholly non-political. You’ll probably find it hard to collect records anymore. But you sure as hell can build a digital compilation of music.
And, bands like Devereux Scales provide just enough of that instant thrill, that lovely surprise of not knowing what happens from the verse to the chorus to turn you into an excited collector.
In fact, it’s probably not a coincidence that “Magpie,” a song about modern satire and bizarre conspiracy theories, actually, sounds like one of those cool indie rock singles that much more satisfied music fans used to love to go out and find. My advice is to make the best of what’s around and start prioritising acquiring great songs over terrible anxiety-inducing stories.
