#MusicMonday Review - May 2023

[osornios]

#MusicMonday is the hashtag I've been using for quite a while to share music recommendations from up-and-coming artists. Always fresh, and always different, trying to look for trends before they become one. You can check April's review for more music.

Multiple subjects, different genres, yet this month's tracks open up without holding back. Have an honest listen, with a word from the artists themselves. 🎧

Bad Pilot – The sad king & the Singer

We begin this month in Friedrichshain, Germany, with a synth pop hybrid full of drum, bass, and electro beats:

"This song is inspired by one of The Hyperion Cantos' character, The sad king Billy, novel by Dan Simmons that I read during the lock down periods.

The sad king gets bored alone in his Palace while the world is sinking into chaos devoured by a mysterious scourge that spared no one. In love and obsessed with the world of the Arts, he invites his muse and poetess to write and sing songs in a new Babylon that he wants to create with her and 8000 other artists, a world of free spirits without limits to entertainment, without political structure and without police."

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The Palava – Comfort Zone

The honeymoon phase it cannot last

Just give it two years and it’s in the past

I wake from my sleep and I hear your name

The glass is broken and we’re missing a piece

Just hold on and follow me

We gotta hold tight we can make it work

From York, England, this Indie Rock track let's you channel your broken heart, where you're put in the past, with no signs of going back:

"the song was influenced by the themes of a break up and the feelings that go around clinging onto things you shouldn’t and the feeling of needing to let go but being unable to."

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Box Of Kings – Two Timin' Woman

You took all my lovin’, you took all I had

You played your part then snuck off to another man

You told me you loved me, said I was your man
You’d never ever do me wrong, or so you said

Well, you’d best believe me now, the cat’s out of the bag
Your scheming ways are done, too late to make amends

Let's move away from a bad breakup to the Netherlands for some Blues Rock, instrumental interlude included, about trustingly walking into an emotional trap:

"Nothing from personal experience. It’s just a rock song about a deceiving woman. We (the guys in the band) are all happily married. 😁"

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Social Station – Secrets to Be Heard

You can be a freak, and I can be a weirdo
Take a hit, you can’t quit, look around the corner
Push or Pull, empty or full, there is nowhere left
Are you talking to me? Well that’s my best DeNiro

From heartbreak, and deception, we travel to Washington, D.C. for a haunting post-punk track that makes you believe. Sink or swim, you have to hold your head high:

"I would say Secrets to Be Heard was a pretty spontaneous track, completed very quickly in the course of a single recording session. The general theme of the song is trying to be comfortable in your own skin, owning up to failings, and just trying to be a better person.

Like many songs on our new album, Secrets to Be Heard is definitely inspired by those trying to be true to themselves and trying to live their best life. I wouldn't say there was one particular experience or person, but a collection of people that I've known personally that unfortunately could not cope with issues of being accepted, mental illness, and substance abuse.

This song is a reflection on those struggles, and imagines if they could have been helped, simply, if their secrets could be heard."

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Jared Knapik – Tempered Glass

I blinked just in time to watch it all pass by
By in front of me, it's been five years since we're 23
Remember when you said to me, "In five years and we'll be 30"?
Is this how you wanted it to happen, or is this just a bad twist?

Now we're 29 and the years are flying by
Without much courtesy, just rushing all my memories
Remember what you said to me when I told you what you meant to me?
Standing out there in the cold, I prayed this life to go slow

We end this month's selection in Granby, CT for an mysterious acoustic track about the concept of time, actions, and consequences:

"I don’t often like to say exactly what songs are about — I think it can detract from listeners’ abilities to extract their own meanings — but I’ll say this:

I like to describe songs as “emotionally autobiographical”. Meaning, maybe there wasn’t an actual car accident like is described in the chorus, but the feeling is real.

The lines in the verses — “Remember when you said to me, ‘In five years and we’ll be thirty’”, and “Now we’re twenty-nine and the years are flying by without much courtesy, just rushing all my memories” — those were real conversations I had with someone about how quickly time seemed to be passing us by. It seemed like as we got older, the times we got to see each other became fewer and farther between; the weeks turned into months, then years."

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Listen to them and much more on the complete Playlist

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See you next month!