Blending industrial sampling, New Wave techno beats, Hard Rock guitars, and spoken-word poetry, Meryl Streek’s Songs For The Deceased (Venn Records) puts you in front of the most ardent liberal soapbox speaker since Eugene V. Debs. The single “Rags To Riches” delves into the emotional turmoil that is life under modern capitalism. I’m glad I got to review this one, because I’m politically aligned and probably most sympathetic to Meryl’s message. Fortunately, it’s also quite danceable.
As a child of the Eighties, when I chose Spike Fuck‘s Evidence (Scared Bones Records), the genre New Wave had me thinking Flock of Seagulls, A-Ha, Howard Jones, Blondie, The Bangles, and a hundred other synth-heavy bands with heavy radio airplay. What I forgot was that New Wave meant the New Wave of Punk Rock. The earliest bands included Lou Reed and The Cars, among others. Spike’s music hearkens back that far. Straight-up near-acoustic vocals, guitars, and drums sorrowfully pour out personal tunes all over this debut album.
For their 6th full-length CONFLICT DLC (Loma Vista Recordings) HEALTH chose to work with pop-producer Stint, whose work has included Ke$ha and Demi Lovato. In some ways this streamlined their sound by taking away some of the noisy edges that had raged in the periphery of previous albums.But the core mood is their giving you the depressive androgynous vibes juxtaposed against the more hammering industrial march they are known for. This can be heard on “Ordinary Loss” that opens the album. Continue reading