What a disturbing cover! But what gorgeous music.
It is music like “Black White Red,” the new one from Oxford’s Wilderness States that reminds us that while some people are still arguing about what constitutes classic rock and exactly what the alternative rock sound might be, some bands are just taking the sensible third route and making music which leaves both those now antiquated labels behind.
“Black White Red” is a dense and beautiful blend of big guitars and an almost gothic vibe. But that is just the tip of its creative iceberg. Throw in some post-rock adventure, a liberal and liberating use of dynamics that keeps the song ever-evolving, always fresh, a few electronic and synthy touches (though ghastly phrases such as ‘electro-rock’ are, thankfully, highly inappropriate here), and even some guitar work that seems to border on dream-pop, and you have something hard to label. Wonderfully so!
But why would you want to label it anyway? Aren’t we done with all that nonsense? Surely this is just the sound of modern rock music doing its thing, at least the sound of it in the hands of people who really know how to stride into the future, as opposed to most in the genre, who are still looking back for inspiration and ideas to plunder and plagiarize!
The song might be lyrically a very personal exploration of overcoming childhood trauma, it might have some slightly dark vibes running through its sonic DNA, but to me, this is nothing less than modern, faultless, and foot-sure rock music and the sound of the genre’s future all rolled into one.
