koganbot | The Great Promo Listening Experiment

In an experiment to see ~~if I can bore myself to death without actually dying~~ ~~if I can earn a living doing what music critics normally get paid to do~~ if I can approach the world with curiosity and wonder, I've decided that every day this week I will download or stream or follow the link to one of the songs being pushed at me by promo email. I normally get about eight or ten of these emails a day, mostly for indie or world music; usually what I do with them is shunt them off into a "Music Contacts" folder with the intention of looking at some of them and possibly listening to the music on a day when I get around to it. But I never get around to it.

So the idea is that five days this week and five days next week I will listen to at least one of these promo tracks and briefly write up the results (but music I would listen to anyway, such as Donna Summer or Lady Tigra, won't be part of this experiment).

Today already being tomorrow, I think I know where this experiment will lead. But here we go.

Plushgun "Dancing In A Minefield": Plushgun are a pop-rock band with electro beats that seem superfluous to what is mainly going on, which is pretty melody plus rock guitars fronted by a blandly affected singer. The melody isn't bad at all, and I suppose the blankness of the voice helps the melody to shine through on its own merits. And the instrumentation has an OK sheen. But I don't like this. The voice gets more emphatic when the guitars and synths get louder; this adds strain to the blankness without making it less blank.