War Violet – Different Formations
Similar artists: Angel Olsen, Fleetwood Mac, The Zombies
Genre: Folk, Americana
New problems have old solutions. War Violet’s music is weighed down by modern melancholy and questions that demand difficult answers. The best way that the young singer-songwriter has found to move toward the truth is by employing age-old, robust musical qualities.
There’s very little pop music nowadays that is very musical. Of course, I shouldn’t be the one to talk. You are reading a review endorsed by a website that favours loud, atonal punk and heavy metal. Still, with modern artist promotion offering so many distractions, it is easy to forget to actually listen to sounds coming out of the speaker and judge them on their worth.
War Violet’s “Different Formations” uses the gorgeous melodies of ’60s folk rock as the starting point. The warmth of a fingerpicked acoustic guitar drives the song. And while the song talks about modern problems that, for the moment, seem insurmountable, War Violet goes for a classic approach that prefers old truths. Best of all, the song’s construction invites you to admire it, not merely to pick a quick thrill from the way that it’s packaged.
Rum for Breakfast – IKWYW (feat. Rebekka Keus)
Similar artists: Madrugada, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Fontaines D.C., Ocie Elliott, Warhaus
Genre: Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
Love affairs make so many people terribly depressed and bring a lot of them to the very edge of despair. Rum for Breakfast make music for the cursed romantics of the world, for the ones who suspect that something’s wrong with the veil of reality, who look for poetry as a form of transcendence.
Is there any way to escape the cycle of doomed love affairs? For certain folks, no, there isn’t. All that they can do is embrace their fate or attempt to the best of their ability to build up the resilience of their hearts. Either way, one looking at the world and all it has to offer, it’s hard not to sigh sadly and call it beautiful.
Rum for Breakfast’s “IKWYW,” a song featuring the vocal talents of Rebekka Keus, pivots toward the musical audiences that want their songs to feature poetry and sadness. The Dutch artists deliver a vocal duet that feels like the words of love whispered just before a murder. Musically, this owes a great deal to the kind of worlds that Nick Cave, Madrugada, or Leonard Cohen inhabited, and it is nicely executed.
