Wonderlick – Popping Pills
The great irony, of course, about being a great artist is that if you produce enough great material and, especially, if your work becomes popular enough, your children will require therapy as a result and have you pay for it, regardless of how great a parent you have been otherwise.
Rock’ n’ roll, more than any other art form, is one about being young, being dumb, and getting away without having to pay the consequences. It’s the ultimate fantasy. And in that, it’s the ultimate way of giving the Grim Ripper the middle finger.
Wonderlick knows a thing or two about tempting Death and laughing in its face. The songwriter behind the moniker also knows why someone would want to take great chances just to keep the demons of boredom at bay.
However, possibly in a line that’s never been written, or hinted at in rock n’ roll, Wonderlick also realizes the irony of, at one point in life, paying for pills to give you thrills, and at another, paying for it to keep you alive. “Popping Pills” is a tender, empathy-filled, funny song about the burdens of being alive.
Otlo – Better Hurry
Everybody, from Erevan to Nuuk, is on the internet, and nearly every person behind every screen is incredibly lonely. I had a stranger try to make chit-chat in the supermarket this morning, and nearly started trembling before realising we were related.
But such occurrences aren’t rare. They’re the norm. And how much of this can people take? How long will people be able to assemble a beautiful, virtual existence around themselves before needing someone to share a cup of coffee with? Otlo is asking the same thing.
Back when kids who didn’t own a powerful enough computer used to spend a fortune of their parents’ money in order to go to internet cafes and spend time in digital worlds where they could be anyone they wanted, folks would call it a trend.
It’s here to stay. We’re never going out as long as we can have the world we want on our screens. “Better Hurry” is a gorgeous bedroom pop number. But it’s the music of a haunted palace, of a place where everything is perfect and the light shines just right. Otlo’s lyrics and music perfectly contrast just in the way that real-life loneliness does against a backdrop of dimly lit screens containing the names of a million friends. How much more of this can people take?
