Welcome all to 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗹𝘆’𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗿, a series of weekly reviews by Charles Connolly – an artist in his own right. Here, Charles delves into the greatest brand new singles brought to you by the best unsigned artists on our electrifying and eclectic set of 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩 𝙎𝙥𝙤𝙩𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 playlists.
𝙎𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙚𝙯𝙚 𝙢𝙚 – 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘽𝙡𝙞𝙢𝙥
Charles finds it difficult to concentr-…
In recent years, people’s attention spans have gone to- THAT DOG HAS A PUFFY TAIL!! Sorry, where was I…? Oh yes. Attention spans. They have become so short that one is barely able to- the sun is actually shining; that makes a change. Ach, er… Ach. The thing is, there is so much going on, and it is so easy to flit from thing to thing, that we have inadvertently stumbled upon a modern addiction. The hunt for total satisfaction, knowing full well we are never going to find it. Very little grabs us these days. We scroll. We skip to the next when we’re not even a quarter of the way through. We want instant fulfilment. Instant gratification. Everything’s amazing. Everything’s astounding. Everything’s impressive. Everything is perfect. Or so it seems… The thing is, we’re usually not actually amazed, astounded or impressed. And as to perfection, other than those “satisfying videos”, when is perfection what we actually want…? Unfortunately though, this is how things are these days. Relentlessly “WOW”. There is a limit to the amount of times I can watch the same magic trick, for we all know, it’s an illusion. All rather conflated, no? Who else read cornflaked? My initial point was the attention span, and how it- Look, we’re all guilty of getting bored easily nowadays, but maybe, just maybe, it ain’t your fault. Maybe what you’re mentally ingesting is simply not very good…
There are however two things that seem to buck this trend. Two industries that seem to keep riding our previous attention span quite easily. Two worlds where our attention is theirs for the full duration. The first is film. Films are generally getting longer and more tedious. More predictable. More laboured. 90% (a made up percentage) of most films are computer generated (whether you realise it or not). We are supposed to get sucked into a new reality, but instead we oversee a plateau of unreality. We are often unimpressed, yet we sit through the entire thing for 2 and a half hours!! Eat that, TikTok! Look beyond the bells and whistles, the smoke and mirrors. What is the plot? Where is the plot? How is the script? For THIS is supposed to be the gem clothed in adornment. The sad thing is, it so often comes across as a 6-year-old girl let loose in the makeup department of Macy’s. All the tools, with none of the experience and wisdom needed to use them. Let me correct that, actually. Modern films look incredible. Utterly flawless. But there is no substance. There is no meat. I think a better analogy would be food photography. Food that looks mouthwatering, but isn’t actually real food, because real food would melt and congeal under the heat of the lamps. It is therefore inedible. Did you know that in most ice cream photography, the ice cream is usually made of mashed potato? Okay, it’s food, but it’s not what you want on a scorcher of a day. Perhaps the best analogy would be Miss America. The Miss America of old. Flawless looks, nothing much to say, predictable, and almost entirely fake.
The second thing is music. Or rather, mainstream music. It is bland, it is dull, and it is samey. It is generic, dated and robotic. It is stagnant and of course, painfully flawless. It is also absurdly predictable. I do still try to keep up with modern mainstream music, as I feel I should. But is this really the right reason to listen to what is apparently “the best music out there right now”…? No. It is NOT the right reason. The right reason SHOULD be that I simply can’t keep away because it’s just so damned wonderful. And yet, it is just the same as with film: people are flocking. Millions of people. They’ll play the latest junk song a hundred times, when they should have got bored less than halfway through the first listen. You see, THIS is where that short attention span is lengthened. For no reason, despite the almost limitless supply of music we all have “at our disposal”. Awful phrase, that, isn’t it. As if we are to use it once, then throw it away. But these peculiar listeners are not throwing it away at all. They are lapping it up. I do wonder though… Are they REALLY? Or do they just have the music on in the background because it’s something to cut the deadly dullness of one’s life? Because it saves the chore of choice? I think what it is is, people have forgotten the joy of music. They can’t actually remember what it is that it used to do to them. Having a bit of music on in the background is a far cry from putting on a record in order to immerse oneself in it.
I mentioned this music being “the best music out there right now” in quotes, because it isn’t. Thankfully. The best music out there is either on independent labels, or on no label at all. The independent artists. But not ALL of them, by a LONG way. The age old argument of “less is more” vs “more is more”. I prefer not to think of less or more, but rather “same” vs “different”. And it is THIS that I want you all to think about. We used to be told that in order to gain popularity, we must basically copy what the big guys are doing… This is disastrous advice. This is the very reason everything has become so generic. In order for your music to prick the ears of potential fans, it has to be different. Think of all the greats from the past: they blasted on the scene with a new sound. BUT!! It must be genuine. And THIS is what is hard. Truly great art is inherently rare, and I should think it will stay this way for quite some time. There has never been so much quantity, and this quantity will only increase by the day. So what about quality? When did we leave that behind? Is it lost? Can you remember when you last saw it? Have you checked your pockets? It wasn’t there, was it… While we do need newness and we do crave change, we rarely actually get it.
So, is the film industry lost? Is the music industry lost? They have not stopped making money… I think the problem is, it is the people who are lost. This is perhaps the time to hold up your short attention spans with pride, and show these industries that you’re not content with pre-formed mulch and that you want something that genuinely holds your attention and interest. That is, if you can hold your attention long enough to do so. Ahem.
On that note, let’s scroll and swipe to music. This week’s CC pick was what got me thinking about all of this. It’s refreshingly different, and therefore very easily held my attention. Please welcome The Blimp, with their brand new single, Squeeze me. The Blimp is a Swedish band I have reviewed once before, with their song Really Don’t Care. But Squeeze me really proves that they absolutely DO care. They care a great deal about their art and their craft. But they really DON’T care about fitting in with the crowd. They evidently have no interest in jumping on the bandwagon. All this being said, don’t expect to be “weirded out” by incomprehensible noise. Self-confessed as being “terrible on cyberspace”, they concentrate on making great music. Which frankly is what it’s ALL about. Artists need to do this more. Of course it’s important to try to get the word out, but if you’ve got nothing much to show for your efforts in the first place, there isn’t much point.
I hear many influences here, but never to the extent that it sounds copied. This is the sponge method that I have unknowingly used throughout the years. Listen to several tonnes of music and it all trickles down into something eventually original. Originality has to start somewhere. So what do I hear? Well, there’s a definite James Bond feel going on. All the way from John Barry (classic Bond theme written by Monty Norman), to Paul McCartney (Live and Let Die), to Sheryl Crow (Tomorrow Never Dies). But it’s also like none of them. It just all has that “curious spy” sound. I think this is mainly due to the lead guitar and the strident strings, bound by that descending bassline. Despite having a classic, timeless sound in general, the song seems to settle in the diverse era of the mid 90s. The era that took from everywhere and nowhere. In that, artists from this era started somewhere and ended up somewhere else. Which is more than I can say for modern mainstream music, where they start somewhere and end up exactly where they started – “forgot” to turn on the engine while making brrrooom-brrrooom sounds to make it seem like they’re going somewhere. The Blimp doesn’t do such pointless charades. There are tinges of Suede in the vocals and guitar, flecks of early Radiohead in the heaving oomph of it all. The killer key change of the big fat chorus reminds me of Who Needs Enemies by Cooper Temple Clause. But it’s all of course different. Subconscious influence is the best kind of influence. Or even Unconscious influence. Not meaning you’re in a coma. We shouldn’t work the way HAL (what I call A.I.) works. We don’t want to make a snipped-up, cobbled together mishmash collage of everyone else’s work. We want to invent. Or, we SHOULD want to invent. Invention will of course – to an extent – come from what has already been, but there should always be something new there. What you can’t have, is the song simply sounding like another song in terms of writing and production. There is no point in that. We’ve already got that song. And unless it was a genuine unconscious oversight, this is simply theft. Thankfully, The Blimp does NONE of this. They dip in and out of certain slight familiarities, but end up with something new and exciting.
There’s an uncomfortable, unresolved feeling through most of the song, which really does somehow push the song’s interest. It makes you want to keep listening. 1:27 brings a brief bridge over troubled water, before the rapids gush once more at 1:42. To say this song is complicated would not be too far off the mark, but one might misconstrue the definition of “complicated” in this instance. Complicated, gets a bad rap in music. It usually has a negative connotation. But what I mean here is quite the opposite. It is thrilling, it is unpredictable, and it is fresh. This kind of writing can only come from experience in one’s art and skill. From 2:22 onwards, The Blimp shows nothing but the best of their abilities. The main guitar motif is to the fore, shining in macho armour, until the strings shoulder-nudge it out of the spotlight so as to gain their own applause. Speaking of killer key changes, our singer shows us how its done in this chorus. The whole band swings from early Radiohead to bombastic (semi-fantastic) Muse-like Queen! This song really woke me up with a slap. But a loving slap – whatever the hell that is. I have been freshly squeezed.
There is one final gift from The Blimp, and it is really NOT for the faint-hearted. It comes in the form of a truly terrifying (yet brilliant) music video involving zombies and clowns. Most people are allergic to both. You have been warned…
You might be thinking, “What was that article actually about? Was it about attention spans? Was it about modern things being rubbish? Was it about modern things being brilliant but we just don’t realise it? Was it about mainstream vs independent? Was it about generic music vs original music? Was it about not putting up with junk? It was kind of everything and nothing!”. Mm. Exactly my point. It’s silly. And yet that’s what you just did before reading this article: flicked through the beginnings of five unrelated short videos. Probably. Each might have been decent, but you got bored and moved on. I thought I’d just truncate several unfinished (yet quite interesting) bits into one, so your thumb can rest a bit. Food for thought. Real food.
Miss America says hi. Oh WHAT?!! It had a puffy tail.
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