Parade of Bad Guys – The Bird is Dead
Genre: Lo-fi Rock, Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
No matter how much the large record labels, movie studios, or art galleries try to make modern art into their personal money printing scheme, the work they nurture and help produce will always end up feeling stale. It’s hard pretending that you’re hungry when you have a full belly.
People outside of the system with a good idea, or simply enough anger to forget the odds that they’re up against, will always end rattling the status quo. In popular entertainment of any kind, the grenade that always ends up shaking the mainstream sensibilities comes from where one least expects them.
Parade of Bad Guys’ The Bird is Dead could well be an example of this. This doesn’t sound like the jams your platinum-selling acts will produce. It sounds like the work of a clever, understimulated kid, with a few anger issues, creating these sounds from who knows where. The results though are undeniable. Stop waiting for your radio or TV sets to deliver the next big thing. It’s probably being crafted by a kid in a basement near you.
Valley Boy – Disgusting
Genre: Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Alternative Rock
There’s an old saying when it comes to joke writing or songcraft. They say that your best idea is usually the best. Try to muscle in those first thoughts and you’re likely to end up with an overcooked mess of things where rhymes are too perfect and the groove so airtight that it can’t swing.
But, what about your first idea, as well as all the others, are rather mundane. Then, it takes real brilliance to turn it into something worth caring about, and something even greater to turn it into a fantastic song.
Valley Boy’s Disgusting is just that tune. On the surface, this could work merely as a novelty number featuring adolescent humour. It is that. But, it’s also a tune that features adolescent longing, juvenile words that verge on the poetic, and a brilliant tension-relief dynamic. One of the best pop songs you’re likely to have heard in a while.
