Youth Valley – cerberus
The prevailing theory is that the angriest people, the kind that you’d send at the front of a medieval army, tend to be the nicest, most calm individuals that you’re likely to encounter drinking cold tea in the shade.
No, it’s unlikely a case of Jekyll and Hyde, per se. No, it’s not like the planets need to assemble in some special way to change them. It’s not even that they’re unaware of how they are and the consequences of this.
The truth is that people who get taken over by powerful emotions must do their very best to refuse them. They can’t go meeting these feelings all alone on a darkened street. But, they do have the duty to investigate them as Youth Valley does.
That’s why, in scope, “cerberus” is an anger-field, or more than your typical death metal stomp. But this is not bombastic music. It’s dreamy and filled with anxiety. It’s an outside look at one’s world once it’s fully been engulfed by red mist. It’s also a mighty nice shoegazey sound that Youth Valley create here.
TIDETIED – Valley
There are a million Dream Journals abandoned underneath pillows and mattresses across the world, and it’s likely that things will stay that way. Nothing makes perfect sense inside a dream, and there’s little to do about it.
This, however, also makes it tricky for the people writing down their nighttime fantasies to capture the essence of what their mind’s eye has seen. Dreams are, typically, too hard to describe or too shocking to write down, and thus get lost.
Music, especially modern tones, has a particular quality of feeling as if it’s made by dreams and made to soundtrack them. Of course, this is not true of all music and requires tremendous skill that a band like TIDETIED possesses.
And while, yes, the verses of “Valley” should make you feel like you’re floating above strangely colored mountain tops, this is a British indie-rock band through and through, and the single delivers a strong, memorable chorus. This is the modern dream-pop of the fabled “Brit three-minute single,” and our dreams are safest for it.
