Does anybody actually like music anymore? It seems that not only audiences and the business men have given up on it, but musicians themselves. Literature and art, real art that involves more than computers, have movements with the words ?modern? and ?post? often involved, the music industry in comparison is just a retrospective of its own past: post-success you could say, but we wouldn’t say anything like that for fear of sounding like a complete douchebag.
Modern music then is a paradox, but we?ll show you some ?new? videos anyway by some bands you could care less about, but hey at least they all sound like something you've heard before. It's like one big radio friendly comfort blanket.
hecklerspray got lots of recommendations this week from friends and drunken men on trains, but first let's go back into the depths of time when you thought you liked The Mystery Jets. You know they had that second album that involved blazers, pastel colours, and obviously, 80?s electronica, you listened to it once and then realised you didn't really care about The Mystery Jets because the singer had a funny head.
Well you can be thankful he isn't going solo just yet, but Kai Fish is; he's one of the ones you've never heard of before. His first single ?Cobalt Cheeks? is nice and depressing; it probably laments something terrible, the frailty of life perhaps or as every other sad song in the world does, a lost love. More importantly the video which is a series of transparent images over which Kai moves teaches us three things.
One: Sometimes you can have too many transparent images. If the video stayed as it was in the first 30 seconds just a transparent Kai over a transparent anonymous woman this would have been very effective, as it is nobody wants to see a shabby looking transparent couch.
Two: Kai Fish looks ever so slightly like a bohemian Aaron Johnson after that cradle snatcher got her hands on him and forced him into giving her a child.
Three: Kai Fish also looks a bit like Gael Garcia Bernal. Note these lookalikes depend on the transparency of the image and distance from the camera.
You can watch the video for Cobalt Cheeks here
Thurston Moore, the brains behind Sonic Youth, is still strumming away making noisy distorted music for the fans of his old band that are still alive and us young knowledgeable folks who feel good about ourselves by knowing as much music history as possible. ?Circulation? is his newest single and thus video; it's, you know, not bad. We here at hecklerspray expected more from such a fine fellow; it's artistic sure, it's authentic too, but it's just lacking a little bit of excitement and guts, we wanted story. Slow motion dancing is great too though.
You can see some ladies dance in Thurston?s video by clicking here.
Now the drunken man’s pick of the week are a little family band from Teeside called Cattle and Cane. That sentence tells you everything you need to know about this band. If you have heard The Fray then you have heard Cattle and Cane. The video shot by a friend of theirs, Ryan Geddis, is for ?Sold My Soul? which could easily be their signature song if the drunken man spoke the truth when saying ?they are signing with universal, is that right, do they do music??
Anyway, the video is low budget as you might expect for an unsigned band, but then the movie Monsters was low budget and that was phenomenal, this is? well, it’s not. This is a series of stereotypical images involving the hills, violins, and sheep.? Okay so there isn't actually any sheep, but there might as well be. While the video is a bit clich?d you will be kicking yourself that the battered man was right when he said ?it's stuck in your head now innit?? yes sir this ridiculously catchy power-pop is stuck in our heads.
Watch a new faux folk superstar learn to crawl here.
Somehow the world has had a proverbial hat pulled over its eyes and we have just figured out what you have been missing. We apologise to Enter Shikari for ruining their career, but how has nobody noticed that they are just Limp Bizkit? HOW? Please if you noticed this earlier then write to us because it's a horrible thing to have suddenly creep up on you, but with ?Quelle Surprise? the first single from their new live album creatively titled ‘Live From Planet Earth’ their fa?ade come crumbling down. They might not use the same poser rap as Fred Durst and co, but it's the same thing with Rou Reynolds taking the role of leader while the rest of the band spew out a concoction of trance and hardcore that is left over from the Nu-Rave days of yesteryear.
The video also has a still of what happened when Steven Tyler was let loose on set.?We’ve?hated people for less. Rou hits the camera with his hand and people frantically swing guitars around their necks, it's just not allowed and we don't see why Limp Bizkit should take all the blame when these guys are right there doing the same thing. What makes it worse is if you get to 3:20 in the track you will realise that Rou can actually sing, but clearly chooses not to in favour of screaming at you. We are going to take away your dreams fellas, no matter how much you tell us not to.
If you feel that way inclined, have a look where it all went wrong here.
WHY IS JESSIE EISENBERG IN THE WANTED?
hecklerspray watching videos by the shittest pop bands in existence so you don't have to.
The Wanted are just a confusing group of boys that nobody understands and their video directed by self-confessed Director X is like watching Donkey Punch in four minutes. It has yachts, girls, shorts, pools, and sunsets, but it doesn't just show you these things it shows them at the moment when they are mentioned in the lyrics in case you didn't get it. It is a confusing song to be fair and clearly The Wanted has recognised that the brain capacity of their target audience is collectively smaller than all the smarts Carol Vorderman has in her toe; her little toe at that. we're not linking you to this because it's the worst thing eyes have ever had the misfortune to witness and we beg you not to go in search of it. You have been warned, the rest is up to you.
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david brooke says
Excellent. Anyone so self-depreciating about their own theoretical construction of the failure of the music industry deserves commending. “Post-sucess” is a brilliant term for the symptom of some of the issues (but then by my use of such a word, and the celebration of it, makes me the aforementioned “douchebag”). I often wondered that one day we should perhaps strip bare the aura of the musician (you know the person with the purity of artistic expression untainted by the fact that they are always talking to record executives) and just simply let people from marketing have a shot at making an album. It could not be any worse I am sure. But yes, all music is retrospective, all art is retrospective, for it cannot avoid having an implicit comment on the music that existed previously. Even as a reaction, or a continuation, it is still a contribution defined by the noise of the past.
All that being said I was unable to watch the music videos (I have no acess to sound on this computer, but I promise to do so later). I am little disappointed to see Thurston Moore’s name in the list. I long ago stopped with Thurston Moore but it is good to hear he “is still strumming away making noisy distorted music” but I am not surprised “it