zoloft – you’re not welcome
Let’s just assume that nothing ever happens again! Force every rock musician feel like there’s no chance that they’ll be successful, make a living through their songs and playing and, generally, not get many thrills out of doing the work. Bummer!
But who’s left once we’ve inoculated with this brand of negativity every person who’s ever blown money on an electric guitar? Just the people who’ve got nowhere else to go, nothing better to do. People like the musicians in “zoloft.”
And what if we lied? What if people will actually always want to hear songs that speak directly to them, that aren’t written using some formula for chart-topping success, that are produced by people who just need to be creative? Then bands like zoloft will have already created those songs without any hope for additional rewards.
“you’re not welcome” is a great song that uses the power of amateurism to its great advantage. Who wants another modern-rock-sounding record anyway? Who needs blazing guitar solos nowadays? zoloft instead rely on the power of confession. Their song is built from embarrassing observations. It’s a song about friends being disloyal and strangers being unappreciative of acts of kindness. It’s a mean world out there. And that’s precisely why songs like this are most welcome.
shallowlake – Why’d
I routinely have this nightmare. In my recurring night terror, I’m magically transported back to the 1990s, employed at the basement of a major record label and asked to listen to demos submitted by hundreds of musical artists who’ve not been good at taking “no” for an answer.
Suffice to say that all of the demos are recorded on cassettes using lo-fi techniques of the day, all are waiting for me in dusty shoeboxes, and they’re labelled poorly by hand scribbles from some half-faded pen. But what if you find music like that of Shallowlake?
Well, the worst part of this nightmare is that, hard-working and good-natured as I am, I do listen to all the cassettes. And, would you believe it, I find a whole bunch of gems, a copious supply of songs far better than the ones that the record label’s released. I then get shot in the back of the head for knowing too much and threatening the established order of the pop world.
It could all make sense. shallowlake’s “Why’d” sounds precisely like the lo-fi cassette recording made by someone in the 1990s while under the influence of too many alt-rock records. It also sounds inspired, brimming with ideas, and made with no budget at all. And if you would’ve been unlucky enough to discover this in the wrong decade, you’d likely get popped in the back of the head.
