My faith in music has been restored.
Now that statement, of course, requires some explanation. I’ve certainly rambled on about how said faith has been shaken rather badly of late, but now everything’s OK again. Well, “less not-OK,” I suppose.
So, while looking for an interview with another band, I stumbled across an interview with Band A at John Peel’s BBC show site. I had heard about Band A, mostly in connection with another band, but I hadn’t heard anything either particularly good or particularly bad about them. The interview was laced with a few songs, and damned if they didn’t hook me. So, a few websites later, and I’m facing the usual First Attraction to Band dilemma: Are they really good, or is that just a veneer of goodness, that will wear away in short order? And, are they good on their own merits, or a carefully crafted, industry-made band?
The second question should be irrelevant, of course. But it’s not, and not just because I abhor all that is popular with the teeming masses. Or because I don’t want to tarnish my exquisitely polished façade of coolness. I’m at a nil coolness level; it would take buboes and a hunchback to make me less cool, and that might actually work in the opposite direction.
But Band A had me hooked. Now, I’m about two years behind the crest of the early-adopter wave, but I was still just ahead of their first major-label album, so that’s something. And, lo, their first album is quite good. Initially, it wasn’t as good as the samples from their latest album had let me to expect them to be. But that was only initially; it grew on me, and damned quickly, to be Really Damn Good. So now I have Band A songs rattling around my brain at odd times. And, when alone, I sing. I’m a terrible singer. Really, no matter how bad you think you are, I’m probably worse. I don’t sing “Happy Birthday” at office parties because…well, because I loathe office birthday parties, and avoid them. But it’s also because I’m a terrible singer, and so, when forced into such a situation, I just mouth the words. Maybe I’ll mumble a bit, but that’s it. Plus, I don’t know all the words.
No, not to Happy Birthday, dammit.
Band A, like all good bands, is often incomprehensible. Even the parts that I understand, I don’t think that I really understand. Because they make no real sense, you see. Which, again, is another hallmark of a good band. Sun Ra will back me up on this.
The second band? Ah, well, I found out about Band B by using this site. “Using” in the sense of “mucking around and clicking lots of things.” This was a more random random discovery, and Band B is almost entirely different from Band A. Now, it’s not an Ozzy Osbourne-Enya sort of difference…oh, wow. I can actually see that happening. That would be hilarious. Largely because I imagine (for no good reason) that Enya would go insane trying to deal with a bedrugged, scatterbrained Ozzy. Who would be trying to bite the heads off Enya’s pet whippets. Because Enya probably has pet whippets, you see. I mean, why not?