YONAH – House of Damage
The pen might be mightier than the sword, but when so many pens are at work jolting down mad ramblings and so many swords are being swung above our heads, it’s hard to know who to give your previous attention to. The only way to do it, it seems, is to write something so remarkable that your potential audience will have no choice but to stop and acknowledge it.
Everyone complains about how poor the lyrics to pop songs have been for a long time. Every pop singer who complains about them thinks that they can do better, but few manage to do that. Some are even more direct in their approach and swear off using lyrics altogether. Wordless pop music is what we’re all heading back toward.
It’s hard to ignore YONAH’s “House of Damage,” because of the sheer charm of the vocal performance and the great lyrics to go along with them. It’s fun gallows humor, certainly. But it sounds like YONAH arrived at this spontaneously, almost by accident. “House of Damage” sounds almost like a nervous breakdown of sorts, a moment where it all falls apart, and the singer can’t help laughing through the tears. That would all carry a hint of tragedy about it if this weren’t such a strong, memorable song.
Christina’s Trip – Swim
People who don’t attempt to create art have it hard. They must make sense of the world and find ways to stand it all on their own. Truthfully, there’s nobody who can listen to your problems and suggest solutions. Neither the ones you’d pay for this service nor friends and family who swear they love you can do much about it when you really get down to the point.
Life is designed to try and break you down, wear at you, and make you emotional. The only way to avoid this is to turn so far away from the world that you might lose all contact with what it is to be human. Artists have their best and worst. They are among the few who can trace back those dark feelings and isolate them through their work. But they must also then with them.
Christina’s Trip’s “Swim” fits into a proud tradition of songs that are, at the same time, a pleasant jingle for the ears of the audience and a confession of one of the worst days of the author. It’s dark in, and only an admission of one’s troubling thoughts can be. But, because “Swim” is truthful, as well as a good pop-rock song at heart, it may really make everything just a bit better.
