ttypes – The Shing
Genre: Indie Rock, Indie Pop
There are bands that charge a fortune to anyone thinking of attending their live shows. Most of these bands can do at least one of the following things: dress up in costumes, spit blood, make their drum set rotate, and play music while colourful explosives go off in their vicinity. All of these things cost money and, some argue, are supposed to be entertaining.
But these bands are also forced to do a hell of a lot of work. It’s a lot of toiling and sweating involved when you just don’t have the tunes to make crowds of thousands go along with your routine. This is the reason why the smartest bands know that they have to let the songs do the talking. If those are good enough, it will save them on thousands of hours of unwarranted cardio.
ttypes’s “The Shing” goes straight to two of the undeniable sources of good songs – doo-wop and heartbreak. Underneath the modern production lurks a song as old as time, or at least one that could’ve belonged to pop artists of the 1950s. It’s easy to get it and enjoy it from the first listen to get it stuck in your brain. And, the next time you pay a concert ticket, if it’s for a band like ttypes, you might not want to demand explosives.
Sherbet Tone – Quitter’s Song
Similar artists: Big Star, The Kinks, Dwight Twilley Band, The Clean, The Cleaners From Venus
Genre: Jangle Pop, Lo-fi Rock, Indie Pop
Music used to be pretty. But the world always stayed just as ugly. Sure, from The Beatles to Big Star, musicians had mastered the perfect vocal harmonies and the most beautiful chord progressions to go along with those. But the public that had been in love with those sounds for so long asked them to stop. After all, they weren’t a reliable soundtrack to what was really going on in the world.
Since then, rock music has taken a sharp turn toward dissonance, loudness, and brashness. Now, that’s more like the world we know. And, sure, that’s a more accurate representation. Many people can even find comfort in it while they playact their traumas as a means to chase them away. But what about all those pretty harmonies and lovely guitar chords?
Sherbet Tone’s “Quitter’s Song” is a song plucked right out of the guitar-pop tradition of the likes of Alex Chilton’s Big Star. It’s bittersweet and humorous, but it is also wrapped in the kind of guitar-pop goodness that the kids of the 1960s once dreamed could become possible. It might be a song about being unsatisfied with what you got, but those pleasant pop sounds are enough to convince you everything’s alright with the world once more.