What makes a song good? Andrew, our fearless leader, and I talked about that recently in our little video chat. He also asked me, what a song submission needs for me to include it in my playlist. I told him: It’s a matter of songwriting, production and mood. You’re more likely to be receptive to a certain kind of song, if you’re more open to it because of the way you feel, so that’s a pretty flimsy variable. But songwriting and production aren’t and they need to be good. Sometimes I can appreciate the “it’s so bad it’s good again”-principle, but that’s rarely the case.
Circle to Van Tastik. The American singer-songwriter/one-man-band/man with hat/mustache-man extraordinaire submitted his song “Drag Me to Hell” to my playlist. Listening to it, I was hooked instantly for three main reasons.
a) I’m a sucker for shedding, bluesy guitars. Though in this song the instruments definitely lean more towards the grungy, lo-fi spectrum, it still had the feel of the typical prime-dominante-subdominante structure in song.
b) I love a rough man’s voice. Especially when he can really sing.
c) Put that together and you have a Temple of the Dog/Soundgarden/Pearl Jam-feel.
There’s so much more I could say about the man, but let’s let him speak or himself. I’ve had the pleasure to talk to him via email - check out the interview on the Music to blog here.
You can learn more about Van Tastik here:
About the curator - Julia Maehner
Julia knows two main passions: Music and writing. From an early age she has been making music after a fashion. When she was 13, she sat herself down and decided: “I will be a music journalist. Because I love music and writing.” After a brief intermezzo in New York City working for the music boutique agency Girlie Action as a digital marketer, she moved back to Germany. This experience helped her build her know-how for her marketing client, the IT company .objective Software. She still writes for several German music magazines and is working on launching her own blog, amps on ears.
Find out more about Julia and her projects:
- juliamaehner.com
- ampsonears.com (coming soon!)
- objective.de
