There was a time, not to long ago that you had to make a choice between being a pop artist or a serious musician. One was the stuff of slick commerciality, high production values and easy accessibility, the other depth, integrity and longevity. Thankfully the world has moved on and now the lines between the two camps have become entwined in a wonderful middle ground that delivers the best of both worlds.
This is the world that Julia McDonald inhabits, one of pop sheens and commercial potential but also one what teases the edges of the song with dreamy vibes and sonorous atmospherics. One world adds credibility to the other and in return benefits from the potential of the wider market it operates in. For that reason, based on this luscious single, Julia McDonald should be able to do that rare thing of walk the fine line between mainstream pop and some more discerning and harder to please tastes. Not an easy thing to be able to do.
Most people build songs based on solidity – riffs, defined chord progressions, choruses, verses – you know all the stuff that has been tried and tested over many years by thousands of artists through millions of songs. But doesn’t that just mean that it’s time for a change? I’m not saying that Nick is the first person to visit these musical peripheries but he is certainly one of a very select gang of sonic explorers who from the 80’s onwards grabbed the emerging and increasingly affordable technology and used it to unlock and create whole new worlds.
Before we get down to the nitty-gritty of exploring the music too closely, right from the off the two things that scream out at me as I dip my toe in its sonic waters are the sheer eclecticism and the texturing of sounds. It’s the same feeling I get when I listen to Steely Dan’s Aja and there are more than a few similarities – the innate soulfulness, the progressive landscapes containing wonderfully accessible ideas, the execution of the musicians that somehow combines precision with a loose and often louche style. And simply the sheer scope of the territory being explored.
Sometimes you have to just realise that you are beaten, admit defeat and move on to the next job. No, I’m made of more determined stuff than that, so let’s have another go at describing Manu Louis’ strange and mercurial music in a way that at least makes a little sense.
Blind River Scare has always been a great reminder that when it comes to roots genres, the lines blur easily. Country music is just folk with a fancy hat, or perhaps folk is country under smaller skies. The point is it all comes from a common source and it is where those cultures and traditions co-exist that Blind River Scare, and indeed the song writing of its leader, Tim Manning, is born.
Catalysts come in many shapes and forms, and that’s a finely hued pun right from start. After hitting a difficult point in her personal life and searching for the missing motivation towards her musical career, Sarah Donner found an unexpected shift in focus came from a very unlikely source. After adopting Melon, a cat with more than it’s own share of health related hurdles to overcome, she realised that sometimes you can slay your own dragons by helping those around you, take the focus away from your own struggles and seeing life from a new perspective.
Despite being the product of modern day Boston, Heavy America have a sound that links together points in time and places on the map from a much wider and deeper musical palette. Alternative rock is a pretty broad term but in the case of Heavy America it is a dark and moody rock core, built of slow burning meandering builds and incendiary dynamic shifts. It is then shot through with sleazy Doorsian menace and drifting desert blues, a slightly retro psych-rock touch and some Sabbath-esque drama. Throw in a bit of musical swagger and garage rock rawness and you have the perfect musical storm. And all that in under 4 minutes!
When you look at an artists “about me” or biographical blurb and check their listed influences, it often says more about what they want to sound like or what they sound like in their own head rather than describes the music that has just burst from the speakers. It was very strange, therefore, not to mention totally gratifying to find that as I listened and read, I found that the influences listed were more than just a nod to Dru Cutler’s record collection or aspirations. For all the myriad of sounds and styles suggested by musical roll call, I found myself mentally ticking them off as I listened to his music.
As the artist’s own name might suggest, Wollow is an album that contains much duality. With roots in both Sicily and England, Sergio blends a British folk honesty with more emotive, exotic and passionate sounds. But it goes beyond that too. Like any musician, join the dots between their songs and you get to see something of their life and here that line takes in Yorkshire villages and Sicilian farmhouses, the echoes of his teenage footsteps through South America, the suburban hubbub of the modern world.
Terms such as country-rock often conjure conflicts in the mind of the would be punter. Rock music tipping its Stetson at more rootsy traditions? Country music making a break for wider commercial markets by betraying the tenets of the genre? Well, there are no such concerns in the wake of listening to Promised Land, playing as it does to the strengths of all concerned.
Whilst I am a big believer in music which pushes boundaries, breaks new ground and makes weird musical leaps of faith, I am, like most people, a sucker for music firmly based in more comfortable zones, that just happens to be perfectly executed. And yes, Joshua might easily be dismissed as just another slice of pop-rock, but that is to over look the fact that it is a brilliant slice of pop-rock. If you don’t want to explore the mainly niche and non-commercial back waters of as an intrepid musical explorer then why not juggle familiar musical building blocks and just simply use them to create something more impressive, slicker and infectious than those around you.
Illacrimo are the perfect band for the post-genre world, wandering effortlessly as they do between musical styles. Whilst they have one foot firmly planted in a slick alternative rock vibe it is what they gather around that which sets them apart from their peers. Pop awareness, classical deftness, and electronic exploration all make this a lot more than just another rock band.
It’s great when a band throw you a bit of a curveball like the minimalistic, ambient intro of And You Brutus. I’m looking at their image of five bearded bar room savants and thinking that somewhere along the line a music file has been mislabelled and I’m trying to match up sounds which seems to have drifted in from a West Coast, new age studio or a student bedroom from Minneapolis. But then the song starts in earnest, the world comes into focus and everything makes sense again as southern twanging guitars and four-four country-rock backbeats build to more expected soundscapes.
I’m not sure why we feel the need to specifically label devotional music as a separate genre from secular. Gospel? Christian rock? What does it all mean? After I all I don’t remember anyone feeling the need to call The Beastie Boys Buddhist Rap or label Pink as Passover-Pop. All that really matters for Kathryn Shipley is that her faith and her love of music can come together in such a wonderfully complimentary way and I really doubt that she cares what anyone else thinks on the matter.
