Moon Walker – Light Burns Out
Genre: Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
The Manic Street Preachers began their careers with threats and promises. And, I am certain that they entirely believed them too. It certainly sounds as if they did, Richey Edwards was not adverse to some posturing. Great and terrible things happened to them, as they do to many young artists. They found tragedy, glory, and fame.
They came back and reported on what they saw with just as much intensity, but with their music dressed up in entirely different clothes. The Manics never fulfilled their self-prophecy of breaking up after their first album, or even imploding on themselves. They remained music revolutionaries who occasionally found themselves making pop records.
Moon Walker’s Light Burns Out is music cut from the same cloth. The tune is filled with the kind of melancholy that might make you want to weep freely while ordering a cup of coffee. This is not a soundtrack to revolution, but to what happens afterward. Setting the world ablaze is all fun and good, but somebody has to clean up the mess.
VOODOO BEACH – DIE HAND
If you’re a rock n’ roll believer and denier of all things nostalgia-related, I congratulate you. I too still get them old shivers when I hear an electric guitar sighing, crying and screaming in just the right way.
I can only imagine what it must have felt like to hear the original “psychedelic rock bands” hit their befuddled audiences with shards of fuzzed-out noise. Blissful, I would imagine. Still, playing the exact same riffs doesn’t quite have the same impact. Your friends might groove along to your band playing Sunshine of your love at a backyard party, but the ears of the world aren’t quite as receptive.
That’s the reason why VOODOO BEACH’s DIE HAND trick of creating a thick, gripping sound from the opening bars of this number is quite remarkable. This is the kind of music one might expect to be used to calm the elements. It feels like three musicians trying to outpower the sound of waves crashing down on the beach. It’s a witchy Teutonic rock sound, and we’ll be among the first to join their cult if they should take the logical next step forward and start one.
