It’s not that a lot of music is ponderous at the moment, you know – it’s just that, well, it seems to like the sound of its own noises a lot.
Just listen to anything produced recently by an artist whose set-up revolves around making music on a laptop and then sharing it with the world – which is to say, almost all of them – and you’ll immerse yourself in a world of songs that regularly leap over the six-minute boundary.
I mean, this is fine: the length of a song is relatively unimportant – but brevity is still a virtue in the world of pop music, and as we transfer our attention en masse from Old Pop to New, Whizzy Pop, it might be worthwhile to remember a few of the older rules.
Amida has released a two-song EP, and the combined length of both songs is just over three minutes. The songs are played on old instruments. Make of that what you will.
My Life As A Trashcan is brighter than burning magnesium, and extinguishes itself similarly quickly.
This is a song that is defiantly old-school in almost every regard: a skittering smatter of drums, twanging bass, and million-MPH buzz-saw guitar compressing as much information, melody and exuberance into two minutes as is possible.
It’s brilliant, and oddly, a breath of fresh air. There used to be a lot of songs like this (although not all as good), and now there are very few. The scarcity is as enjoyable as the song itself. Great.