The great benefit to any activity that drowns the senses is that it takes your mind off the scattershot life has fired in your direction. Being able to shut off your thinking for a few moments is a wondrous thing, not just just because it lets a breath go by without having to think about why we're bothering with the process, but because it gives us the strength to fight once we switch ourselves back on. Being a rebel and being a rider are two sides of the same coin, the yin and yang of caring too much about the fate of our lives.
With it being a few days now past the end of Pride, and with every right imaginable now sitting below Damocles' sword (which I can only imagine is what we would see if certain Supreme Court justices were to lift their robes to show off their 'stuff'), being a rebel is an act of survival. The machine is firmly in control, and it is squeezing the essence from us, until all that's left is the colorless pulp they can refine into 'good Christian soldiers'. But I digress.
Rebellion doesn't have to be violent, nor does it have to have a particular political message. Sometimes, raising your fist and simply telling people you're going to continue to live your truth is all the rebellion that's necessary. Right now, standing up for yourself, no matter what form of weirdness you inhabit, is as much an act of rebellion as anything. The Spider Accomplice are reminding us of that with "Rebels And Riders", the first single from their upcoming album, "The Venomous Montage".
The band is rebelling by putting out an album in a time of shortening attention spans. It's a risk to put so much time, energy, and money into a full-length project, but the band is damning the torpedoes and going full speed ahead with their biggest and boldest musical statement yet. In a time when it's easy to let ourselves get dragged down by the day-to-day hopelessness (which happens to me faily often), they come roaring out of the gates with a summer anthem of glorious fun. If you took Lady Gaga's "The Edge Of Glory", and ran it through an alt-rock sieve, this song is what you would end up with. I have never driven a convertible, and I don't have the hair for it either at this point, but this song is what you would want to be playing as you soak up a few of life's pleasures... while you still can.
Arno's guitars are a wall of sound, with a polished glow that blends crushing heaviness with shimmering Edge-esque arpeggios in the verses, while chimes give a definite Springsteen vibe to the song. It's as if we took the 80s view of America, brought it into the future, and couched it in pounding drums and candy-coated melodies so it can cross over and break through the cultural divide.
The band has been flirting with this all along, but "Rebels And Riders" is fully embracing the hints of pop melody that have always been caught in the corners of their web. The blues might connect more on an emotional level, but for making a grand statement, nothing works better than a big, hooky pop song. There's a reason why, no matter how much I hate "Born In The U.S.A.", it's an enduring classic of the genre. Circumstances dictate nothing is going to be able to approach that level of cultural absorption, but the feeling created by "Rebels And Riders" is the same. Broadway, here the Spiders come?
VK sings to us that, "in the space that divides, compassion languishes and dies". That is the problem, now isn't it? We have vast differences in culture between groups of people, and the veneer of civility we used to wear has been stripped off for 'Casual (Hate) Friday'. We no longer have to pretend to care about people who are not like us, or even accept that seeing them on the street is a fact of life. We live in silos, only knowing what we already want to know, firing the missiles at anything that offends us.
What "Rebels And Riders" reminds us is that we don't have to succumb to our worst tendencies, and we don't have to accept that every man (and woman) is an island unto themselves. No matter how alone we feel, there are other people who share our values, share our perspective, share our belief that we would all be better off if we could band together and remember how important mutual respect is.
To wrap all of that up in a three minute pop song that has the effortless joy of summer is just a bonus. I don't know what else "The Venomous Montage" has in store for us, but if this song is any indication, that spider's silk is going to be reeling a lot of us in.
There is still time to contribute to the Indiegogo campaign to bring "The Venomous Montage" to life. Find out more, and contribute, here!
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