Vocabularies – Patron Saint
You gotta be envious of the people who get up at 5 in the morning every day and go chasing after their dreams. But, the people that you really have to be jealous about are the ones that wake up at 3 in the afternoon in the morning and who have their dreams go chasing after them.
Forget about Prince or Frank Zappa furnishing warehouses full of recordings that nobody will ever be able to sift through, let alone compile for release. Who you really want to be like is the Sex Pistols, who are still touring (sans their singer), their one album.
Don’t take advice from people who write a little every day. Find out how Arthur Rimbaud and J.D. Salinger achieved so much fame before turning their energy to selling guns in Africa or growing organic peas out in Woodstock.
But what about the rest of us? What hour should we wake up at? That sounds to be what Vocabularies are asking themselves.
Of course, that’s what I think they’re saying. It’s always hard to tell with artsy punk bands like these where the guitar riffs sound like they’re pushing you down and pulling you up a flight of stairs. “Patron Saint” feels like the work of people who fear they’re not doing enough work. It’s the music of potentially great artists wondering what good is art at all. Those are fair questions, and they usually get answered by some guitar riff.
Séa Byrne – Clayface
The problem with modern life, I suppose, is that it always feels like you’re one song or news story away from finding out who the real killer is. Life’s a mystery that seems to taunt you with clues, and seems to suggest that with experience, you’re bound to get better at putting them together. But plaster that suspects board up on the wall and make all the connections you like, you’ll probably end up where you started.
The more you try to reason with the madness of the times, the more you will find yourself speaking the language of madness. And, frankly, a lot of the entertainment that we so greatly enjoy feels like one more unnecessary riddle, one more thing to waste our time. What about living life? What about trying to rise above the gloom? That’s what Irish-Mexican songwriter Séa Byrne is contemplating on the most recent single.
And that’s why “Clayface” sounds a lot like being locked inside a courtroom that’s jammed with people and where everyone is hurling accusations at you. The post-punk grooves and the dicey funk guitars work to amp up the tension. The densely packed lyrics function as the prosecutor. Séa Byrne does his best to impersonate the voices of guilt and insecurity. But, he assures us, there’s always a way out!
