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Austin McGrath makes a very good point when he says that he “heard Bach was nearly unperformed for 100 years after his death.” Make of that what you will, but I think that it says something about the realistic chances of immediate musical fame and, therefore, should make you think about the reasons why you want to make music in the first place.
I guess, in Austin’s case, it has nothing to do with following fad or fashion, being that “In Love” feels as if it is a repolished, re-imagined, re-recorded song that was popular in the music halls of the Dustbowl days of the Great Depression. But that is probably its strength. Actually, there is no question about it.
Rather than compete with the pack for blatant chart placement and popularity, he makes music for the right reasons. And if “In Love” and its array of strummed guitars, its half-drunk, 100-year-old, wonky piano, sibilant percussion, old-time music hall vibes, and his hazy, happy, harmonious, cosmic country vocals mean that he is miles outside the zeitgeist, that, to me at least, is precisely the right reason to do anything!
And in this “can’t see the wood for the trees” music industry that the modern age has ushered in, what better place could you hope to find yourself than to be stood on a lone hill away from the musical morass, an intriguing sonic shape on the musical horizon?
