Hallowed – St. Catherine of Sienna
Similar artists: John Maus, Molchat Doma, Joy Division
Genre: Post-Punk
Is there nothing holy these days? Not in mainstream culture, no. And pop artists are suffering. Where are the days when dressing up as a nun or burning a bible could get you a bonafide Billboard hit?
Sure, those might make easy targets. The pop artists that courted controversy by integrating religious imagery into their music would only choose one religion. Fans of pop culture-meets-decapitation videos might understand why that is.
Still, there’s no way for a young person to spend their youth in the company of such things and not be changed. Yes, most people develop into raging maniacs unable to find a way to let things previously dimmed as sinful rest in their lives. Others, however, are moved toward a kind of subtle gentleness.
Hallowed’s St. Catherine of Sienna is poetic post-punk that often feels like a dance-tune written by someone truly tortured by lives great mysteries. But, this ain’t no joke. There’s real compassion here, along with a nifty production that should make this one a song played by at goth and post-punk parties for years to come.
Whitney Walker – Love Keeps No Record of Wrongs
Similar artists: Nick Cave, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Morphine
Genre: Indie Folk, Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
Artists go through at least as many hard times in their lives as everyone else. But they can’t be as unhappy about those as all the others. Bad times are to most artists what a natural disaster is to a new channel.
Perhaps it is true, to some degree, that we all become what we dream of becoming. Charles Baudelaire, for example, wanted to become a talented poet, a horrible drunk, and an early casualty of the Paris-tinged version of the Bohemian lifestyle. He achieved his dream.
Modern artists, similarly, become beacons for bad news when they seek these kinds of soul blizzards out. What do they get in return? A good page of prose, a nice story, and a good song. And, if they’re lucky, the applause and silver of the audience.
Whitney Walker’s Love Keeps No Record of Wrongs is a gloomy but disdainful ballad of cold feet and longing. It’s the contrast with which many artists have to contend, namely the desire for happiness and the desire for misery. Musically, Love Keeps No Record of Wrongs is a great mix of jazz and indie-pop that’s sweet and bitter, but rarely at the same time.
