Presented by Spirit of '68 NE-HI
Ne-Hi
http://ne-hi.tumblr.com
Born out of the backyards and basements of Chicago's DIY music scene, NE-HI's nostalgic-rock brings you back to a time that may have never existed. It may be the past. It may be the future. But, it is certainly a place where you feel younger, better looking, and you dance until you are soaked in sweat. A place where you know the best bands before your older brother and all the cool kids at school. The quartet's guitar-driven songwriting and distinct harmonies produce a sound that is both raw and relaxed, rough and humble. Formed to score a friend's film in the summer of 2013, the foursome–made up of Alex Otake, James Weir, Jason Balla and Mikey Wells–recognized the electricity between its four members and chose to continue making music. Since then, the foursome has toured the Midwest and East Coast, building a reputation as a promising young American band.
Plateau Below
http://plateaubelow.com
Plateau Below is a (insert your genre choice here) band based in Bloomington, Indiana. The group is drawing a solid fan base thanks to their captivatingly energetic live shows and raw, honest sound. From sharing the stage with artists like Into it. Over it. and Cayucas to releasing their debut album, Still Paradise, the group’s momentum has carried them far.
It’s no wonder that the concept of time is a recurring theme throughout Still Paradise. Although the band is just reaching its first anniversary, its members share a much longer history. Drummer Jared Jones, bassist Jacob Gumbel, and guitarist Joe Creech have played music together since 2006; Jones and Creech even learned their instruments side-by-side. After casually collaborating for months, lead singer and songwriter Logan Carithers officially joined the trio in 2012, and Plateau Below was born.
After months of crafting the band’s sound, Plateau Below shifted their focus to recording their debut album. In order to capture the free-tempo vibe of a performance, the band recorded all of the bass, drums and rhythm guitar in live takes. They spent much of 2013 recording the remainder of the album in their own homes, mixing and mastering all of the songs themselves. The album features a variety of different musical styles all connected by Carithers’ poetically-inspired and thought-provoking lyrics. Catch their live show or take a listen to Still Paradise, out now on Jurassic Pop Records.
The Tourniquets
http://thetourniquets.bandcamp.com
Great Glaciation is the idea that the universe has a limited supply of energy and that when all of it is spent, everything in the universe will gradually slow down and remain stuck in a motionless state. What I hoped to do in the song is employ a metaphor using this idea to explain my personal sentiments in a world where my motivation to do anything is rapidly leaving me and I feel helpless to avoid just freezing in front of a TV screen. I would hope however, that people take it more as a caveat than an actual depiction of who, and how, I am.
The older I get the more I seem to struggle with motivation and with the question of where I can most meaningfully apply my time. While endowed with the knowledge that doing anything worth while requires an endless amount of menial and monotonous tasks, it's tempting to give in to the nihilistic sentiments that sometimes plague my mind and just trash everything I've worked on up until now as none of it matters.
We get older and we realize that life is not fun, it’s a series of tasks that we check off a list that is only a subcategory of a larger series of bigger picture goals. So, in light of this, why wouldn’t we turn to things like video games where accomplishing goals and achieving greatness are literally within arms reach?
Personal laziness and apathy in the face of living life, of working toward something, is a natural response that is seriously augmented if (you’re in the same predicament as me) you have no idea of what you want to do or where you want to go. This, essentially, is what the song is about.
A lack of motivation in the face of an abundance of work. Whereas the first verse is more personally focused: “I feel my heart slowing,” the second is more of a sort of social commentary: “they hear the sound of the great shut down and turn up the radio … ’til it dies…”
This last line, “’til it dies,” really contains the message of the song, and goes to say something about personal responsibility in the contemporary world. Whereas it’s easy to see human development as some sort of transcendental force that will keep progressing forever regardless of individual effort (or a lack thereof), I’ve come to realize (perhaps too slowly) that this is a totally delusional thought.
I enjoy an incredibly lavish lifestyle; if I want to keep it that way, let alone see others around the world enjoy a similar quality of living, I have to get off my ass once in a while and actually do something.