I'm drawn to music that doesn't quite fit. Increasingly it's work on the outer fringes which lulls me in. Don't get me wrong I love straight-ahead pop and isten to as much old music as new. But when, as in the case of Note Bleed, I hear an artist freely experimenting to find a voice, dipping in and out of this and that, wilfully and honestly communicating with themselves so that they may, perhaps one day, communicate with a much wider audience, I feel duty bound to listen.
There are just three tracks on the Soundcloud link below. I know nothing about the people or person who made them. The lyrics to 'Austerity Measures' are profound and ambitious and the song is blessed with a melodic sensibility that hints at a songwriter who understands the intrigue that can be created by combining chunky major chords with an introspective vocal, the song builds and swells but then ends uncertainly..as the words to the song turn round on themselves. 'The Quiet Ones' is mainly just a keyboard and drum machine - the sparseness of the production mirrors the singer's struggles and pain with a relationship. Listening to it again I can only guess that the relationship is with himself.
'What Johnny Would Say' is a tongue in cheek pastiche of Johnny Cash's 'Folsom Prison Blues'. I feel comforted that Note Bleed take inspiration from one of my heroes, one whose influence has spread beyond the prison confines to genres of music he could never have imagined. Here, it's a vehicle for the singer to rage at personal injustice but to do so with a humour and lightness that suggests to me that finding a voice through making music is the antidote to whatever life has thrown at him. It's how we react to events that defines who we are and on the evidence of these three songs Note Bleed has found a medium to lighten the load and to share some wisdom, in the process to find a voice and, who knows, that elusive wider audience.
http://soundcloud.com/notebleed
