I have seen thousands of words written on the art of pitching music to a blogger. (The best words on the topic are these by Dave Greenwald, by the way)

Indeed, certain words and phrases in emails from new bands do indeed catch my eye over others.

Unfortunately, these are the ones that give me a reason to delete the email immediately, like “exclusive remix”, “massive bass drops” and “modern rock band”.

The latter is particularly persuasive in encouraging instant deletion, conjuring images of lame, gentle pseudo-MOR – so what was it that made me listen to Dire Con, a band pitched as a “modern southern rock band”?

In truth, it was because the email containing such platitudes was very polite. Thus it’s true what your mum told you: it’s nice to be nice.

Pills is weirdly nice, when you think about it. Actually, perhaps the word I’m looking for is honesty. Here’s a bullshit-free song with a sense of yearning permeating throughout; a song that wants to tell a story, take a trip, and rock out whilst doing so.

Of course, none of this is cool – compared to the bewilderingly confused values of cool that exist at the moment – which is more reason to listen to Dire Con‘s brazen, loud and crunchy music in the first place.

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