This post wasn’t necessarily inspired by last week’s imagination-themed episode of the animated cable-television series South Park. But there is a shared thread of imagination-related-ness driving it that I can’t help but find coincidental. In all honesty, neither act might have wound up getting written up at all if it weren’t for the simple fact they’ve managed to capture my own imagination in a special way.
You may have noted that I post almost exclusively about new music, either well before, or right around release date. There have been a couple of instances where I’ve written about older releases, but it’s a pretty rare occurrence. Seeing how Savannah, Georgia-based musician Jon Lynn, also known as Unsolved Mysteries, released the Lost Love CD in 2006, I wouldn’t normally be in a hurry to write about it. Having only just discovered the album, and appreciating the fact that it was a pretty small-time affair, self-released in a run of only 100 handmade CDrs (and as an iTunes download), I’m willing to cut him a break. Well, that and my initial experience listening to the album (which features elements culled from New Wave, Eurodisco, HiNRG, Britpop, Shoegaze, Dub, emotional Indie-Pop, Electronica, Hip-Hop, Electro and more) was like a shot of “pure imagination” which made me feel like that I was on that boat in the dark tunnel in Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory and Gene Wilder was going ape-shit in my brain while a bunch of freaky psychedelic imagery flashed by. As I was listening to the track “Window” I remarked to my friend Grace that it felt like getting cut apart by laser beams.
Listen to “Window”
It could be argued that it either takes a helluva lot of imagination, or absolutely none at all, for a Rock band fronted by two African American siblings to christen themselves with the anti-ironic moniker Black Kids. I don’t intend to settle such a hypothetical debate, but I will say the Jacksonville, Florida-based fivesome’s band-name is one of the best in recent memory, and their music, which sounds something like The Cure and The Smiths if they made songs that were just as likely to make people at The Paradise Garage and The Haçienda dance as to make mopey kids in eye makeup sitting at home in their bedrooms cry. Either that, or they sound like a way more logical (and way more fun) outgrowth of that whole Joy Division schtick than either Interpol or She Wants Revenge, or their legions of detractors, could ever hope. Regardless, their demo EP Wizard of Ahhhs, which isn’t out in any official sense (something that would normally keep me from writing about it) but is available as a free download on their MySpace page (awesome, right?), is the only thing giving Kenna’s “Say Goodbye to Love” any competition for my attention right now. “Hit the Heartbreaks” is just one of the group’s tunes that might make you shed a tear under the discoball.
Listen to “Hit the Heartbreaks”
More than anything though, for me at least, both artists exemplify music’s ability to “break the barrier” of our imaginations and let whatever is in there, whether it be positive, negative, or a weird mixture of both, come flooding out.
-El Keter
