Launch of "Music Mondays" at 4YE: Monday, February 3, 2014

A collection of likeminded pop culture enthusiasts I 'met' through my association with Popwrapped.com have created what they hope will be a digital empire (well, not really, but they wouldn't mind success and recognition) in 4 Your Excitement (to be found at www.4YE.co.uk) and a few days after it launched, I contributed the piece below (which you can also find here).

Hello readers! Welcome to the inaugural Music Mondays! What I want to do with this column is introduce you to interesting stuff, or, if it’s already familiar, perhaps explore something new with it, whether it’s an album, a video, or a stand-alone song.

For my first contribution, I thought the video to "We’re All In This Together" by Sam Roberts Band would be a cool selection. First the song: I LOVE the guitar part that Montreal’s Sam Roberts put together for this. Sonically, the way that wonderful riff just dances is memorable. It’s the earworm part of the song that stays with you long after the song has ended. Since it was released in October of 2013, it’s gained some decent traction on modern rock/pop music stations.

For the video, the band did something more, or rather, something less – and it’s so much more than a performance video in my eyes, because it gives the viewer and music fan more of an insight into the recording process; by making it ‘homestyle’ (and if your screen is big enough), you get a sense of being not just front and centre, but also in the thick of things during a band meeting. It’s intimate and it’s a little educational as well: you get some of the instrumentals isolated for a spell, plus, you hear the tracks as the engineer does  – but only for the first half. After the bridge the feel is much more trippy (as suggested by the band earlier in the video) and you get more of a sense that it’s a produced performance video, rather than the off-the-cuff, fly-on-the-wall quasi-documentary performance we started out with.

On a lyrical level, I completely identified with “tongue tied a fire inside, caught like a deer in the headlights.” We’ve all been there, right? It’s not just me? Thankfully, Sam’s got a solution “keep moving don't stop, keep moving just go, go, go.” Not away from it, but also not frozen in place, like a really bad case of stagefright when your mind goes completely blank. I interpret it as working through it, using your words, even if they make absolutely no sense. I need to remember that.

The song "We’re All In This Together" is the lead-off single for the upcoming CD Lo-Fantasy, to be released on Tuesday, February 11 domestically and internationally. It is the 5th studio album for the band, after 2011’s Collider.

Want to see what I've been talking about? Check out the video for yourself via the SamRobertsVEVO channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VojforS6qFM

Image from:
http://www.kt8merch.com/store/pages/22160/_PRE_ORDER_-_AUTOGRAPHED_Sam_Roberts_Band_-Lo_Fantasy-_Double_Gatefold_White_Vinyl_LP.htm