Zack Keim – Alice
Genre: Garage Rock, Folk
It’s hard to listen to a style of music and pretend that you’ve never heard anything like it, just like it’s hard to watch a movie and not compare it to films with the same style and motifs. Face it, most of us will rarely ever experience pop art with wide-eyed amazement ever again.
But, perhaps, what we have lost in terms of innocence we can use on maturity and on a better understanding. It’s not the ideal trade-off, but it’s something. Folk singalongs, for example, used to be the tunes that working-class people took very seriously. Some still do. But, for the most part, the same songs are now listened to by people carrying a wry smile and who have learned to enjoy things both ironically as well as honestly.
Just like the topic that it deals with, Zack Keim’s Alice is a joyous tune that is stuck in the past, a place where many music listeners would gladly stay. The song works in the same way that telling an amusing story about your childhood does. It’s meant to be funny and endearing, and you’re not supposed to take it very seriously. But, there’s freedom in this as, I suppose, there’s freedom in telling stories over a strummed acoustic guitar.
The Goldhearts – Microplastic
Similar artists: The Beths, Stella Donnelly, Middle Kids, Alex Lahey, Courtney Barnett
Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Alternative Rock
If pop music and mainstream do indeed reflect the fears and desires of the collective subconscious, I am afraid that we are all in a lot of trouble. Or, at the very least, most of us are convinced that society has moved in a terrible direction, and we should be concerned about everything around us.
It’s hard to say what a protest song is these days. Are there any protest songs on the charts? Can songs created with the purpose of potentially showing support for large corporations in their advertisements be considered protest songs? Overall, most people won’t listen to sensible advice, and this is where the sweetness of The Goldhearts may come in useful.
The Goldhearts’ Microplastic is an eco-alert message disguised underneath pleasant harmonies and a tale of a medical emergency. It’s a horrifying story presented in a casual tone over a 50s-pop song structure. It’s a song that seems to confirm the fact that the Western world has created a lot of unneeded comfort for itself at the expense of the environment and people from other parts of the world. Rather than shouting about it, The Goldhearts wisely choose to tell it all to you through a story.
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