One
of the biggest reasons why I dislike putting labels on music is because it
tends to not work out well with the majority of music people make these
days. When I was a teenager, I remember
going into Sam Goody and the CDs were either “rock” or “pop/rap”. How could you ever decide something so black
and white, when music is full of just so many different overlapping and
underlying factors and facets?
With
Armisticio the easiest thing to say, the lazy way out, is to pin this somewhere
between dreampop and synthwave, but the fact is that it isn’t entirely either
of those genres per se, and if you listened to it and tried to craft some sort
of subgenre that mixed the two odds are you’d still get it wrong.
I
believe this calls for a reevaluation of the way that we look at music, and
especially as to how we review it. Is
it fair to simply pass something off as rock n roll? Doesn’t it need something else said,
something deeper?
These
songs on “Decay Dreams” have layers to them, which remind me a bit of John
Ralston, but I’m not sure anyone remembers him. It has its upbeat and almost pop type
moments, but it doesn’t get too close to something like Neon Trees or whoever
is their indie version this month.
Though
it is not the easiest to explain by far, this is the sound of something along
the lines of Talking Heads or something new wave from the Pretty in Pink era of
music, and in that respect it sounds most excellent on cassette. However, it also draws enough from the
modern that you can tell it was made recently as opposed to in the 1980’s or
even 1990’s.
On
top of that, this also has a fresh feel to it in the sense that it doesn’t
sound like what would happen if an older artist made music today, but rather
that of a new voice. Sometimes it’s just best to know that if you
tend to appreciate a certain style of music that is best experienced on
cassette, then this should be right up your sleeve because it sounds just oh so
good.
This has been on heavy rotation in my office for weeks now. Excellent music.
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