Yo Kinky – Beaches
Similar artists: La Luz, Beach Fossils, Best Coast, Tijuana Panthers
Genre: Indie Rock, Dream Pop, Alternative Rock
Some might claim that rock music is in the past. And what if it is? Would that be so bad? After all, surely the ideas of the past can’t have all been used up. Besides, some of those worked pretty well the first time around.
Throughout history, the ones destined to become great artists were, first of all, terrific students. Learning from predecessors wasn’t merely an act of respect. It was the way that one acquired the tools also to create great works.
Rock might be living in the past simply because there is so much material with which to work. Best of all, from artists to the public, everyone seems to be intimately acquainted with retro pop art ideas.
Yo Kinky’s Beaches is a brilliant collage of quaint and cool moments pop art moments. It’s a fever dream of beach movies, complete with surf guitar riffs and sultry vocals. It’s a song powered forward by clever, twisted rhymes delivered confidently. It sounds like the musical accompaniment to a big-budget B-movie recreation of all of Elvis’ pictures.
Triptides – Unwound
Similar artists: Stereolab, Cortex, Bee Gees, Bobby Caldwell
Genre: Classic Rock
There’s no official update that arrives once a tread is no longer of global relevance. Nobody can proclaim that a music genre, for example, has stopped being successful. There’s usually no moment to which someone can point and indicate as the exact time that one music genre came to an end.
And, consequentially, there are no immediate mourners. The true fans move on, feeling the same kind of love for their favorite musical artists. Still, each day those artists struggle a little more to achieve the same kind of commercial results.
Then, one day, someone exclaims, “Whatever happened to …?” People nod and eventually say the same thing. If enough folks have missed that trend, they’ll celebrate it, parading it in era movies or themed parties. But, on rare occasions, so many people declare their love for it that they demand to have that style make a return.
Triptides’ Unwound is music that plays with a gorgeous kind of sound that has long faded from the charts. But a quick listen will surely prove that this has been a major injustice. The keyboard-lead psychedelic rock sound floats beautifully here, shimmering like a precious stone abandoned out in the Sun. Plenty of people should like it and demand its return to the charts.
