Grunge might have been a purely US, 90’s phenomenon that was initially based around the music scene of Seattle, Washington, but as a fan of alternative timelines and imaginative histories that never were (it’s what happens when you grow up reading Micheal Moorcock novels), I do like to think about the “what ifs” of the story of music. What if, for example, Jimi Hendrix or Buddy Holly’s lives hadn’t been cut so tragically short? What if Lennon and McCartney had never met? What if Syd hadn’t taken a bucket of acid and fallen off the planet, ushering in a Dave Gilmore-fronted Floyd? And what if grunge hadn’t happened as it did but was, in fact, the product of Liverpool, * England*, and had only come about in the last few years?
Well, that last one I can help you with because if that were the case, all you would need to get under the skin of this rising music scene would be “Dare To Dream”, the latest single from Attic Theory.
As proven here, some elements would be the same: the intense interplay of guitars, the roaring vocals, the anthemic scope and the shifting dynamics that wander between lilting melodics and squalling walls of sound.
But there is also something different here., something specific to this imagined scenario. Attic Theory unites the grunge sound with a more classic, hard rock vibe, adding blends of melody as well as muscle. Whereas the grunge we knew was often confrontational and aggressive, Attic Theory proves to be soaring and transcendent, happier to float above the mundane world rather than remain in it.
Okay, grunge already happened, but post-grunge, for want of a better term, seems a lot more interesting.
