Song of the day – 281: Hello Seahorse!
Do I like this? I like Bianca, and she recommended this to me.
Is that a good enough reason to like something? Perhaps. Pop music is partly about context: who else likes it, who else doesn’t: so it’s important sometimes that I feel there’s shared appreciation. (I didn’t know when I wrote my Pris entry on Friday that Nicky Wire likes ’em too, but if I had that would have only increased my impatience to praise them. If, on the other hand, Billy Corgan had been found to be a champion I probably wouldn’t have gone near them, such is my disdain for his taste in music.) My taste doesn’t often coincide with Bianca’s – she likes her hardcore punk and her hip-hop, and I like both too, but our ideas of what are the important elements in same are different. For one, I don’t understand punk that is regimented. And I prefer hip-hop that is way more in my face, and preferably tinged with some dark humour and some sort of supple sample. Jazz beats? Nice, too. So when they do… well, it’s nice to document the fact. Because I have immense respect for her as a person, and writer.
The singer in Hello Seahorse! looks fabulous (see picture above). Is this important? Yeah, I reckon. Plus, they’re from Mexico – and it’s nice to break free of the Caucasian music straitjacket occasionally. Their music is vaguely operatic in the same way Foetus can be but nowhere near as abrasive or upsetting: the opposite, often: and likes to linger in a sense of music, mystery, majesty. This is music that swims.
The sound is a little radio-friendly, post-Coldplay and Arcade Fire for me, a little bit flouncy and ethereal, but I love the vocals and some of the beats, and yes. I believe I do like this. Quite a lot, and some of the songs more than the one above: ‘Casa Vacia’, for instance: