Ian the Idiot – Travis the Chimp

Similar artists: Elliott Smith, Alex G, Sufjan Stevens, Neil Young, Belle and Sebastian

Genre: Indie Folk, Indie Rock

Life is sad, and it is beautiful. Many times, it feels unbearable for both of these reasons. These are the things with which Ian the Idiot, a stage guaranteed to get a reaction, works on “Travis the Chimp,” a pop orchestrated with many tricks used in classical. 

It’s a truth that artists rarely find out on the first try that sad and beautiful stories are best told directly. After all, our existence is filled with such things, and there’s no reason to hide them under a blanket of mystery. That would be excessive. “Travis the Chimp” features the kind of lyrics that a child might write when faced for the first time with the realisation that terrible things happen all the time and there’s no real way to stop them. 

But if you know nothing about that, you should still be able to sink into this song like an excessively comfortable sofa left without a plausible explanation in the middle of a busy train station. “Travis the Chimp” is a gorgeous song, complete with impressively rich orchestration and vocals as warm as a late-night cup of tea. Ian the Idiot doesn’t live up to his name. 

Bradley Palermo x The Shadow Queens – The Devil Finds a Way

Similar artists: Amigo the Devil, Harley Poe, Tejon Street Corner Thieves

Genre: Punk, Folk Punk

There’s a great, and not entirely proud, tradition involving horror stories. It’s part of the development of nations. They’re part of folklore and fairytales. Most of them are true, and they’re especially ingrained in the fabric of Western and Northern Europe. Many of these have travelled on the hush-hush over the pond and to the United States of America. 

Bradley Palermo & The Shadow Queens’ “The Devil Finds a Way” does what you may assume from reading the title, but not quite in the way you might expect. Like Harley Poe, the musicians are fascinated by the folk-country acoustic guitar sounds and the campfire doom & gloom stories that so easily accompany it. This is something intended for Halloween, sure. But, hey, there’s nobody that can convince you to ditch Halloween for a whole year afterwards, is there?

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