One Track Minds – Isolation
Garage rock is, essentially, trance music. The construction of almost any song that falls under the umbrella of this music style is extremely simplistic, sometimes including only one or two chords. The vocals are usually confidently performed but buried in the mix. And, most importantly, the guitar always almost seems to screech with fuzzed-out vigour.
Norwegian group’s One Track Minds’ Isolation may not be as wild and untamed as some of the styles more demented emissaries, like Les Rallizes Dénudés or A Place to Bury Strangers, but listen to the song from afar, and it will present itself as loud, 4/4 ritual music.
The whole point about performing these sorts of songs is to sound and look calm and collected while standing in the eye of the hurricane. One Track Minds are poised and deliver this single like a scruffy rock group that has just walked out of a rare, old, imported single. It feels special.
URGES – All About You
The proof that all noteworthy forms of popular music have travelled to all corners of the world is in the fact that punk-rock has its representatives coolly making music in Switzerland, a land known as much for its general serenity and comfort as it is known for its cheese.
Only that the sample with which we are presented here shows a group that is clever, adaptable, and angry more with the direction of modern life in general than with the government, military, or any other assembly that might be devised to keep an individual down.
Featuring a fun, colourful video, Urges’ All about you arrive at just the right time if you happen to be a band playing this kind of brainy punk-rock. Sure, the guitars and rhythm section move things along nicely, and the singer emcees the events with composure. However, it’s a brave new world for bands that, like Fontaines DC, love to play and usurp the stereotypes associated with punk-rock. There’s a new breed of angry guitar music, and it’s made by people wearing beards and sweaters.
