Rock

Not Another Rockstar- Maisie Peters is back.

23rd Oct 2022 — 1 Comment

With one blondie dropping a late night bombshell of an album (stay tuned), let’s not forget another blonde. Maisie Peters, truly a brunette, is back and this time she’s got a rockstar boyfriend.

Not Another Rockstar

Recently we joined her on the floor of a photoshoot backdrop, wiping our eyes wondering why we were not good enough for a boy that made us perfect to them.Resonating with the lyrics ‘sat here in your favourite dress’ understanding that we make ourselves up for other people. All authenticity airbrushes bout of us before it’s had time to fill our edges.That young love belief that creeps into our early adulthood that tries to convinces us that if we replicate what they want then we will be enough for them to stay. The truth is if they didn’t want you at first, they wouldn’t want you anyway. You were always good enough but you can’t stop someone from changing their mind. Here of course I am talking about Good Enough.

Maisie Peters Good Enough

She then went blonde, revenge a new hairstyle. Which lead her to here with the release of her Not another rockstar video. A revenge hairstyle and rebellion boyfriend, Peters speaks to that 17 year old in all of us trying to find themselves without realising they are searching in other people instead of inside themselves, I’m 21 and I still haven’t found her.

Maisie Peters

While Good Enough was an emotional ballad to listen to as you cry in the bathroom mirror before falling to the floor, Not Another Rockstar sends you straight to the dance floor, you grab your girls and yell the opening verse; “Pinky promised I was quitting, pinky promised that I wouldn’t love someone if they didn’t I am a girl with big ambitions, but did i listen?”

This punkish attitude echoes the altruism imbued in her previous 2021 banger cate’s Brother that saw her guitar shred all over TikTok’s for you page. This Rockstar rebel is so intoxicating that we get addicted to the lawlessness, a game of spot the different in a line up, all the lovers look the same, will this cycle ever end? Peters echoes this feral ferocity in backstage dressing room, recalling her previous ode to youth, shouting into a hairbrush microphone.

This love is chaotic but its yours and he lets you know he could have had anyone else, but lucky you, you’re who he chose and you should worship him for that. He’ll make you forgive him when he crosses a line and you find him later in a police row. The pacing of this song does sound like a police chase, you can almost hear the sirens as Pters and her rockstar run through busy streets and behind stage doors.

What’ striking about these scenes than other than the paparazzis, perceived only though camera flashes, this video has only three characters, Peters, rockstar and us. We watch, hepessly as this disorder and dissary unfolds in front of us, in awe of our blonde protagonist in her bright coat and dark shades hoping that this time this boy will be good to her.

Overall this video is a fun, mosh pit must have that becomes a colourful chaotic backdrop to a song full of hard-hitting lyrics and difficult scenarios that depict a narcissistic anti-hero and helps yet aware lover who trails after him as he runs from himself.

Be Part of The Band with The 1975

15th Jul 2022 — 1 Comment

Naked, vulnerable and self aware, the 1975 expose their inner psyche in new song “Part of the band”

The 1975

With frontman Matt Healey deep into his sobriety after receiving equine therapy in Barbados it appears he has more of an insight into himself and what it is to be a member of a band.The drugs, the success, the sacrifice. The lyrics nod to his embarrassment with his few relapses with heroin “So many cringes in the heroin binges, I was coming off the hinges”.

The relationship one has with others when the are at war with themselves is usually a toxic one. The lyrics “And I fell in love with a boy, it was kinda lame I was Rimbaud and he was Paul Verlaine” are interpretational. It both nods to Healey’s experience ‘kissing beautiful men’ and thus the slight fluidity in his sexuality but also to the turbulent relationships he has with the band and himself. There is an abundance of fierce and feral love in our lives.It is difficult to navigate certain scenarios when we dress them the way we want them to look and when we can’t dress them but can’t leave some may cope by turning to substance abuse.

Part of the band- The 1975 music video

The coercive relationship between doing what we love and doing what we need can leave us in agony. When we haven’t quite made it to where we want to be and we are forced to take the route in the opposite direction, its as though our limbs are torn from us and we are left to get on with it. We have to do the expected or be extraordinary, how do you become extraordinary if you have to do as you’re told?

The 1975

The single is both satirical and personal, exposing the politics in people’s lives. Who’s is to say what is wrong or what is right? Just because someone is telling you what to do does not mean it is what you should do. It is easy to be offended by individualism when we do not agree with it. If someone acts or looks defy what we have already worked to understand we defy their identity, their ideals. We have to self reflect, we have to be better, not to be “woke” or to avoid being cancelled, but because it is best for humanity when we work to understand one another.

The final line of “Part of the band” is cutting. It will resonate with those who have suffered an addiction whether this be to a substance or to a person. It reassures us that things take time, that there is a both a daily struggle and nightly joy when yet another moon has gone by and you have not sent a text or injected, smoked, snorted or drank. You have breathed clean air, you have reflected, you have screamed and you have sang and you will survive tomorrow. And in Healey’s words ” it’s just not cool to be a heroin addict, is it? [Young people] don’t look up to junkies. I don’t look up to junkies”.

If you or anyone you know needs help ending drug use please consult these websites or speak to a health professional. In an emergency call 999.

https://www.talktofrank.com

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/drug-addiction-getting-help/

Alvvays make their return with new single Pharmacist

12th Jul 2022 — Leave a comment
ALVVAYS

Made up of Molly Rankin (vocals and guitar), Kerri MacLellan (keyboards), Alec O’Hanley (guitars), Abbey Blackwell (bass), and Sheridan Riley (drums), has been making moves in the indie genre since 2011.

2018 proved a successful year for the band after they received a SOCAN Songwriting prize for their song”Dreams Tonite”,at the Juno awards they were nominated as Group of the Year and their second album, Antisocialites, won the Juno Award for Alternative Album of the Year.After these accolades the band took a well deserved hiatus before being impeded by the pandemic.

Pharmacist by ALVVAYS

Perhaps it is unfair to pigeonhole this group into the indie genre as their instrumentals bleed into sub-genres as well as incorporating main stream pop/punk elements it is no wonder the success of this band continues despite their absence. Their latest release, Pharmacist is a ballad of unrequited love, trying to get to your destination by following misdirections and working to make peace with it all.If anything this single is closest to shoegazey with its distorted affects, emphasising the disorientation you feel on coming back to a familiar place to find most things have changed.

“…I know you’re back,

I saw your sister at the pharmacy

Picking up, said you had that new love glow…”

Lyrics to Pharmacist.

Blue Rev cover art

The lyrics call out to those of us who have faith we have moved on until we return home and focus more on the people in our peripheral vision than those in front due to the lingering hope that we may see our old love, see if they still hold on to the piece of ourselves we feel we have lost. But it is not because of them we are lost, because we are never really lost, we have merely changed, filled out in places that weren’t there before, read different books and look at different website. We are different and so are they. So even when we travel back home, on the look out for old love if we do find them, we must know they are not the memory we have of them, they are someone new.

Pharmacist has been hailed by fans as a supersonic comeback, tears of joy and revelation flooding down their cheeks. The single is a sneak peak into the bands new album “Blue Rev” which will be released October 7 of this year. It may have been a long wait before we heard them again but my god has it been worth it.

ALVVAYS on Spotify.