Whomadewho
For the last time, techno should not make you want to dance. Techno is painful. Borderline torturous. Hell, our government should be utilizing it to ward off potential terrorists. As for disco…well, Motown’s coloured folks discovered it. Later, George Clinton and James Brown put it on the radio. Hell, even Tom Jones caught a glimpse or two of it. As for Whomadewho…well, this Denmark-based band whacks it right in the disco balls.
Jose Gonzalez
After hearing Damien Rice’s version of When Doves Cry, I decided to give ‘the hollow acoustic sound’ another go. A few days later, I stumbled upon Jose Gonzalez on YouTube. His rendition of Massive Attack’s Teardrop is awesome. Er…at least good enough to drown memories of post-grunge rockers sitting on barstools, strumming on acoustic guitars and singing about how their dads had too many bills to pay and not enough hugs to give. Forget them. Try this chap.
Dinosaur Jr
During the mid-Eighties, Dinosaur Jr unleashed the alternative rock genre upon unsuspecting masses. In essence, this genre was the next step in the evolution of college rock. Some even took it to be the unholy matrimony between hard rock and punk. Whatever the hell it was, these guys managed to make it sound more intriguing and viscerally edgier than anything else that dared to broadcast itself on MTV. Fiction: Nirvana gave birth to the sonic blueprint that made modern rock music a better alternative to popular music. Fact: Dinosaur Jr’s album You’re Living All Over Me packs more punch than the shotgun that blew Cobain’s head off.
Opeth
What’s life without a little metal to whip one’s earlobes into frenzy? For nearly five years, I watched as my Panasonic music system got continuously assaulted by the likes of Sepultura, Pantera, Six Feet Under, Sabbath and Crowbar. By the summer of 2000, Radiohead’s OK Computer launched an attack so intensely alarming upon my aural inclinations that I could no longer appreciate bands that preferred ferocity to subtlety. It’s difficult to lug Opeth into the metal category even though they sometimes consciously channel the spirits of black metal legends. But their calmer and more introspective side lets them escape any such classification. Let me just say that Opeth is what heavy metal should hope to evolve into by the next millennium.
