Battle of the Ballad Bands
For the most part1, I don't like ballad bands. What's a ballad band2? The Coldplays and David Grays of the world who make a tremendous living singing ballads about their constant heartbreak and oh-so-miserable-life over a simple, slow guitar melody (normally accentuated in the prime of their broken hearted-ness by a well-timed string section).
The thing about ballad bands... they really couldn't bore me anymore. Listening to The Frays of the world leaves me feeling tired in it's paint-by-numbers approach. I would much rather someone flip the formula on it's head to make a listener actually think about the sound. The first example that comes to my mind is the Beach Boys... they made music that from the surface sounded like a happy-go-lucky carnival ride. If you listened closely though, Brian Wilson comes out as one of the most depressed songwriters of the 60's. Masked under the pop harmonies was a man's heart breaking... becoming far more compelling than the typical woe-is-me-guitarbreak. So that's my beef with ballad bands, as a genre it's all so obvious it's almost3 not worth the chord changes.
Now here comes the part where I ridicule my own statement by exclaiming the benefits of a ballad band... The Perishers. What's up with this? What kind of a hypocrite am I? Not one at all as there is key to being a ballad band that I can actually stand: Depart from the formula.
The Perishers utilize all the gimmick's that normal turn me off including the "swelling pianos and delicate melodies4". Since I can't figure out what it is that seperates them from the rest of the crop, it's time for a list:
- Beautiful lyrics... The Perishers first language is Swedish, yet the music is in English. While this does lead to a slightly more simple lyric structure, it works so well because they aren't sounding contrived.
- Vocals. Why is it that most ballad bands have whiney singers? No thin throated warblers here...
- For every woe-is-me (ie. Trouble Sleeping), comes a song of optimistic meloncholy (ie. "Nothing Like You and I").
- They work with one of my musical heroes, Per Sunding at Tambourine.
- Because I do.
For all my bitching and moaning, it really just comes down to the fact that the Perishers strike on something I can relate to while Coldplay et al leaves me feeling empty. So, on that note....
1 Silly literary device used to show you that I am going to make a gigantic statement and then spent the next 3 paragraphs debunking said statement.
2 I use "band" here lightly and mostly for the alliteration. I make no distinction inside the "ballad band" genre between a slow-ass weepy solo artist or standard rock four-piece.
3 Key to my argument are retractable words like "almost" and "not quite"
4 The Perisher's Official Biography (Watch out kids... I'm actually using a footnote correctly for once!)
Buy some: The Perishers