Trickshooter Social Club and Helena Hallberg Reviewed
Trickshooter Social Club – Poppy and Harriet
Usually, you know what you’re going to get when you seek out a new song in your favourite music genre, or one made by the artists you like the most. And, while this may all sound a tad predictable, that’s hardly the point. It’s this familiarity that makes casual audiences become dedicated listeners and life-long consumers of one type of music or another.
In fact, music’s always worked this way. Most of the music ever played outside of fancy halls was performed with the aim of making the audience feel hopeful. Yeah, optimism is built into the heart of styles like country music and everything else that has taken inspiration from it, and Trickshooter Social Club know it.
On “Poppy and Harriet,” the band plays its fiddle-driven, bright country-rock with the full belief that just a hint of those melodies will make you smile and get you to decide that, just like the story told by the lyrics, you’ll find a reason to look out at the stars tonight and prepare for a better day. It is what your country-rock-loving ears want and what the sweet grit of the vocals provides here.
Helena Hallberg – Brain Is a Liar
Most people would love to have dedicated their life to art. That is why artists, although hardly ever paid what they are really worth, are respected by folks from all walks of life, are stared at with admiration when they walk down the street and, occasionally, are even asked for their opinion and advice on important topics such as anxiety and how to make it go away for a few heavenly moments.
And that’s precisely why there are so few of these people working in the pop world right now. Pop songs, for the most part, are designed to make folks feel lighter and help them forget about life’s troubles. Modern pop songs are a bit of an illusion, and one that’s getting thin. Thankfully, there are still singer-songwriters like Helena Hallberg taking things a little more seriously.
In fact, “Brain Is a Liar” is dead serious, almost philosophical in nature. It does, however, balance things out by simultaneously being marvellously charming while whispering these deep, slightly unsettling truths. Our brains and the way that they hijack our instincts are, indeed, often our biggest enemies. Leave it to a smart pop song to remind us of this and, somehow, help us feel better.
