Reviews by Jake

The Wheeler Brothers is a band that plays country style rock music.  Created in Austin, Texas, the band is made up of the three Wheeler brothers (Nolan, Tyler, and Patrick), Danny Matthews, and A.J. Molyneaux.  In the song “Spent Time,” the band sings about many things they miss being locked up in jail, including a girlfriend, best friends, the sunshine, and the wind breeze.  The music video begins with a sheet of paper in a lake that says “Wanted” on it with the lead singer’s face.  Then, a shooting scene occurs with the lead singer, who is masked, trying to rob a store.  He runs away with the money and sees his girlfriend by a lake. In the morning, he is caught by the sheriffs and taken away.  The song has upbeat, fast parts, while there are also slower, sadder parts.  The country style setting of the music video and country style music show that the state of Texas has had a great influence on the Wheeler Brothers’ music.

 

Katrina is an uprising musician who recently got back into the music industry.  She was on the show “Star Search,” the precursor to “American Idol,” starting at the age of eleven.  After eight years of being on it, she was bombarded with record deals but she rejected them.  She eventually got a Masters in Entertainment and Media Law at law school.  What got her back into music was seeing a singer named Cher perform in Las Vegas; then she decided to sing again.  What really has made her an upcoming music star is her latest single “Shame On Me,” which reached #1 on Clear Channel’s “NEW! Artists to Watch” chart.  In her song “So Eden,” she sings about how her love with someone had disappeared after eating a certain fruit.  This is a metaphor to the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve; Eve ate the fruit and then God banished them from the Garden.  She sings about how everything was lost.  Beginning with an image of an apple, Katrina sets the overall subject of the song in the music video; the subject focuses on a certain fruit that is special.  Throughout the song, that image is repeated along with an image of a tree, referring to the tree that the fruit came from.  Also, Katrina is shown throughout the video singing.  Her song “So Eden” is so significant because it relates back to one of the most influential and most recalled stories of the Bible: Adam and Eve.

 

Black Box Revelation is composed of two men from Brussels, Belgium: Jan Paternoster, age twenty-two, and Dries Van Dijck, age twenty.  They have been playing over a decade, having a growing fan base in the U.K. originally and then moving to the United States.  The band’s genre is not clearly defined, as it is a mix between R&B and garage-band rock.  Some influences include the mid-60’s Rolling Stones and The Kinks.  They began recording with producer Alain Johannes in Los Angeles and soon created their most accomplished album, Shiver of Joy.  On this album is the song “High on a Wire,” which has a bluesy-rock feel.  The title of the song refers to how the band is very focused on what they do.  They sing about how they cannot “fall off the wire” and how they cannot think about what is ‘below the wire.”  In other words, they sing about how they cannot digress from what they are trying to accomplish or think about what digressing would lead to.  According to the content of the song, the members of the band seem like determined musicians.

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