Say what you will about Gaytheist, Eagles of Death Metal, and Dale Earnhart Jr. Jr., the best band title to come along since you started listening to good music belongs without doubt to This Frontier Needs Heroes. Because damn it, unlike the other three, This Frontier Needs Heroes contains a message within itself. And for the windswept wastelands of the indie scene, this message rings true.
We live in the hopelessly impersonal, subjective year, 2013. All the music hitting you right now is produced, distributed, and marketed by scum sucking slave worshipers of the almighty dollar: Satan and Clear Channel. You don’t have to go to the crossroads yourself; it’s pretty much our job at Surviving the Golden Age to deliver it right to your screen. But This Frontier Needs Heroes subverts that dichotomy and speaking of screens, visual art is equally laughable these days for a reason: it’s about half a century behind music. This is a shame if you really consider Hollywood. Music’s got nothing on moving pictures, which is fundamentally the wet dream of any sociopath with a weak narrative arc and massive special effects budget. But at the same time, you know all of Spielberg’s dirty tricks, yet any little indie band outta Brooklyn makes you feel like a kid again through pure emotive resonance. Case in point: This Frontier Needs Hero’s latest album, Hooky.
This is the digital age. While you get sentimental about the rock ‘n’ roll’s glory days, Robert Johnson, Dylan, Zepplin and that whole lot there are things going on around you that you won’t be able to understand for decades. This is the wild West here, this vehicle from which you read this–the Internet, and you’re selling yourself short with your (lack of) involvement. Just look at This Frontier Needs Heroes’ sibling songwriting team of Jessica and Brad Lauretti. Hooky was recorded from their respective homes in Brooklyn, NY and Jacksonville, FL at a distance of some thousand miles from each other. Gone are the Red Indians and white hatted Cowboys, but the eight tracks of Hooky provides all the deception, vagrancy, and compassion you could ever want outta the life you don’t lead.
In fact Hooky could be considered a concept album in that Mr. & Ms. Lauretti are pointing fingers directly at us. They’re accusing us of phoning it in, hiding behind the masks we create over social media, through fashion and life-style from our true identity. For instance you sit here trolling rags like StGA for music news. It’s hard to be the music news when you’re reading my dull opinions. The titular track and namesake urges you through mid-90’s self-deprecating lyrics and self-aware musicality to be your own hero. Close your laptop and finish that rock opera you’ve been working of for the better part of the last decade already. This Frontier Needs Heroes’s can’t do it all for you! You could out write me any day of the week, and we both know your opinions are far more intelligent, thought out and apt than mine, yet who’s got the bullhorn here?
This Frontier Needs Heroes has taken a few chords, cursory arrangement, rhythm, melody and syncopation, a dash of poetry concerning the bare facts of this carnival we call life and made a legitimate artistic expression out of it. What’s your excuse? If at any time you lack inspiration listen to tracks like “George Clooney,” with its realization we’re all in this together, or “Now is the Time,” wherein the narrative struggles with relationships, both between God and man, and the good ol’ fashioned relationship between woman and man. (What’s the difference?) But be warned: This Frontier Needs Heroes makes it sound easy.
You don’t need us. Digest Hooky for yourself, but don’t just tune in, turn on and drop out. We’re not going to be able to tell you anything you don’t already know about music, life or the times other than this is a great album. You got nothing left to lose. At the risk of forsaking Hooky, make your presence felt here.
Rating: 7.2/10
MP3: This Frontier Needs Heroes “George Clooney”
Buy: iTunes
