Tag: New Model Army

The Wheel Workers Call for Embracing New Ways of Thinking and Living on “Day After Day”

The Wheel Workers, photo courtesy the artists

The Wheel Workers has proven itself as a band that excels at creating a sense of forward momentum and introspective mood in the material for it’s new album Harbor which released on 8/26/2022. A fine example of the song “Day After Day” that establishes a strong low end push in the beginning with vocals that follow a wide ranging arc of tone that syncs well with the synths and when all the elements come together mid-song and transition into a more contemplative passage it’s obvious that we’re not hearing a band that got some memo about how post-punk is supposed to sound. It’s more akin to something we might have heard out of New Model Army or The Sound or some 1980s art pop/rock band willing to get creative with arrangements and song structure so that a song’s ability to keep and hold your attention continues to the end. The fact that the song seems to be about being fed up with needing to try to recreate institutions and ways of living that have failed us rather than establishing something that works better for everyone and to nurture a vision for a more viable and nurturing future society and not wait around for someone to do that for us or wait for some authoritarian order to impose a new frame upon us despite what we might all like to see is just a bonus. The line “I train my heart to let go day after day” speaks eloquently to a willingness to realize that the way things were held up so high is turning out to be a collective romanticizing of a dysfunctional society and its norms because things now seem so decayed and on the verge of collapse when we can imagine and make better. Listen to “Day After Day” on YouTube and follow The Wheel Workers at the links provided.

The Wheel Workers on TikTok

The Wheel Workers on Instagram

The Vitality and Grit of 100’s “Special Vision” is a Pointed Commentary on the Empty Promises of Organized Religion

100_SpecialVision2_sm
100, photo courtesy the artists

Rowen Tucker of Australian post-punk band 100 took inspiration for the writing of “Special Vision” watching from Sydney’s Hyde Park workers retiling the roof of St. Mary’s Cathedral. All that toil and outlay of resources and for what? The expansive urgency of the song charges its words with a paradoxically melancholic and angsty energy both raw and pointed and atmospheric. Its chords cut and highlight literate and thoughtful observations and introspective examinations of one’s own relationship to what some might think of as the larger issues of existence. Except that Tucker grounds it in a spirituality rooted in life experience rather than empty promises of reward in the great beyond. The line “Sacred space for the chosen few” skewers the aspect of religious faith that reinforces class differences and linking poverty with lack of morality. In singing “Spend my life making bad decisions, I do it clean because I’ve got no religion” points to a personal morality in which one acknowledges one’s own mistakes and their consequences with no need for guilt or eternal punishment for “crimes” and “transgressions” that mean little outside a religious context. The chorus, and the source of the title of the song, “No special vision” is like a non-religious chant rejecting that post-Manichaean ethos of judgment and guilt necessary in most modern Christian sects. No need for thinking you’re special and above others because of one’s special relationship with god. The immediacy and grit of the song is palpable and fans of New Model Army and Pile will find much to like about the band’s inventive guitar work and pointed poetics. Listen to “Special Vision” on Spotify, connect with 100 at the links below and look for the group’s new EP out later in 2020.

open.spotify.com/artist/34CBZlqmK3KCxHeAcgQHTH
triplejunearthed.com/artist/100-0
soundcloud.com/100its100
facebook.com/100its100