3/25/12

Apparently Look Mexico is into hunting, subject matter suitable for the video to their first track of their 2010 release, which is in my daily rotation. Illuminating the everyman, he who hangs with friends and kisses hounds, it makes the band seem pretty fun. But I think there's more to say for this song than the video says, though.

There's fed-up anger here, and it speaks to me in time signatures.

"When you live out your time/In hope of impossibility/We stripped down lies/We treated you like family/Credit where credit is due/Now the bureau is looking for me/So as you thank us for our patience/Expect something else, not a thing/and I thank you/I'll thank for/Thank you for absolutely nothing"
~You Stay. I Go. No Following
Look Mexico, To Bed, To Battle

Literary worlds are inflamed wtih income inequality tales, academic journals are quick to point out problems and debate each other's solutions. Everyone's talking. But where's the music on this? It's there in a pop track or two, an occasional reference to money or fame ("I Wanna be a Billioniare," that damn song) or escape (think Coldplay's "Paradise"). Fleet Foxes did a pretty good job capturing the feeling of it all on "Helplessness Blues," but commentarywise, the album speaks to the individual far more so than the whole of the culture or its direction.

One of the constant drawbacks of pop culture is it's always trying to define itself into what it wants to be, rather than be what it is. Underground, you find the antidote. Underground, you can call the spade a spade. But I've yet to come across a force inspired recent events in recent years, unless I'm forgetting somebody.

Essentially, where is my Guerilla Radio about derivatives?