Here are a selection of tracks to get your day infused with some constructive energy. The songs here speak to everyday situations, ranging from jolts of energy to questioning personal emotional states to subtle anger at someone you can’t really trust after all and more. Get moving with these songs…
RockWeller – “Graceland”
The music of the Singapore-based band RockWeller lands with a gentle power on the title track of their 2019 EP Graceland. The confident, substantive rock music feels like a sonic equivalent of piloting a boat as the waves gradually intensify, and even as the water hits the side of the boat with unsettling force — there’s a solid core keeping the whole operation moving forward. In this case, jumping into the music means that your emotional state gets infused with that confidence. It’s a direct jolt to the soul, like a musical experience of getting gradually intensifying shocks to the chest to bring you back to life and safety.
It’s a wonder, really, that the EP that “Graceland” comes from is the band’s debut. The music sounds like it carries the confidence of traditions of strength and music that cuts to the soul and that stretches well beyond the limits of a song. Great energy gets funneled in here.
Listen:
Jane Astronaut – “Here it Comes”
The new Jane Astronaut song “Here it Comes” feels like the experience of wandering around outside on a sunny day as thunderstorms rattle against the horizon in the distance. The artist has made the boundaries here plenty fluid enough to suggest a large amount of “force” hiding just behind the scenes, and this force rolls out in a delicate, sliding back and forth manner so that you’re really eventually wrapped up in the story here and kept on your feet. The story itself ultimately isn’t too complicated, but the slip and slide shoegazey rock ensures that to say it feels poised to stick would be an understatement.
“Paranoia makes me sick” pops up in the lyrics towards the end, and the weight of that line and the others like it really lands with an eye-catching flourish. You really get the musical experience of slowly dancing around through the rain, and it’s subtly captivating.
Listen:
Until We Get Caught – “Burn for Me”
The New York-area band Until We Get Caught roll out almost irresistably catchy intense heaviness on their newly available single “Burn for Me,” which sports thematic content that’s about as direct as you might guess. The band really soar on this song — they alternate between an accessible melodic punk and some more intense portions, with corresponding shifts between soft and loud vocals, and these disparate elements really come together powerfully to further the experience of this song.
In the intro (and other parts), the band’s combination of gentle music and biting commentary against someone who’d proven to be just too much proves really jarring and illustrates some of the horizons out there that are really only able to be captured through just being artistically honest. A key result of the band flipping around the sonic spectrum is that they capture the experience they’re getting after with a smoothly growing power. Their music feels “real,” so if you’re ready to experience this kind of tension and achieve some next level — you’re in luck.
Listen below:
A Crash Republic – “Sweet Apathy”
The Boston area band A Crash Republic are really loud and pretty intense and a lot of fun — and managing that balance is no small feat at all. On “Sweet Apathy,” they’ve infused a confrontation with apparent social insecurity with fist-pumping energy that makes this a kind of rally around the emotional truths of the situation. No longer are the mundane drags of life boring — now they’ve got this superb punk rock soundtrack.
The music is meaty, the lyrics have a lot of chant-potential among their twists and turns to dig into, and this energy just proves really catchy. Even the tones themselves have a lot of mature thickness to them, and they blend together to spark a fascinating creation where all the parts really do reach skyward, or at least ahead thanks to their energy bursts — the lot that’s going on here really proves smooth and great. It’s the kind of thing you feel like you’ve gotta see through and end up having an awesome time doing so, because the band deliver big time.
Check it out:
Peace Theory – “Spaghetti Western”
Have you ever felt like the modern technological onslaught was making you go a little off the edge? If so, here’s a song for you — “Spaghetti Western,” by Peace Theory, whose lyrics (available on the Bandcamp page) are definitely worth looking at and develop the song’s drive perfectly.
The Texas-based rock group make music that encapsulates a feeling of getting almost trapped in a kind of chaotic, slowly but surely building grind of mundane modernity and, importantly here, also reaching for a way out. Their music proves substantive and packed full of plenty of intense, memorable riff patterns and more, and the band build on that foundation with forays into jazzy instrumentals and other similar concepts that feel kind of like a sonic encapsulation of headspace — or more precisely, the kind of headspace that you’re left with after spinning through a day or week of the slog.
Turn on this band and get a new horizon opened up — it doesn’t end here.
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