NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION loves talking with artists and bands about their favourite seven songs. It is not only about finding out about these seven songs, but also about why exactly these songs are that outstanding and important for the artist(s). This time we talked to Paul Wolinski from 65DAYSOFSTATIC, the band that just released its mind-blowing new album Wild Light. He introduces to his favourite “Seven Songs of American Dread from the cracked asphalt of a U.S freeway”. Are you ready to find out what 65DAYSOFSTATIC listen to personally and ready to find out what really influences the band from Sheffield, UK? You should be, because this will take your breathe!
Seven Songs of American Dread from the cracked asphalt of a U.S freeway – by 65DAYSOFSTATIC
Josh T. Pearson has it right, man. With or without the religious overtones, depending on your taste. Storms are coming both metaphorical and actual. There’s a cold front chasing us across Texas as I type these words from a ridiculous gas-guzzling vehicle that can only exist in a country like this. Hurricanes ripping homes to pieces and ruining lives. This place is too big, too scattered. How on earth are all these people going to cope when the dollar finally fails and oil prices catch up with them?
Like a fine wine, DEFTONES are improving with age. Unlike their peers, they’ve managed to untether themselves from the adolescent angst they were already too old for a decade ago and managed to transpose their restlessness into a fresh, but no less urgent new kind of noise. Still great.
I half-remember a story about this song being about friends of the band who were tragically killed in a road accident. Not sure if that’s true or not. We’ve seen our fair share of wreckage on this tour. These roads are too big, man. Those 18 wheelers are like tanks. The size of cars is caught in this weird arms race in the name of safety on the roads. Everything just keeps growing. They’ll start welding wheels to post-Panamax mega ships next and if that oil keeps flowing they’ll be driving entire cities round before too long.
For me, TOM WAITS used to represent the strange, off-kilter America of lost highways and desert hinterlands; truck stops and diners, tundra and Full Throttle-style gravelly narration of dusty road trips. That romance is slowly getting worn away by beef jerky, corn starch and bad, bad truck stop coffee. Where are you, Tom? Your country needs you.
Poster boys for a generation held down by the baby boomers and nobody buying records any more.
Their finest hour. I have no clue what he’s screaming about but just listen to those guitars chiming like sheet metal in a rainstorm. Incendiary.
Oh LOU… I love Set the Twilight Reeling, the album this song is from. Not one of his more popular ones but my personal favourite by a long way. Reminds me that guitars don’t have to be noisy to be full of urgency and that not all acoustics sound like MUMFOR & SONS, which is a simple fact I nevertheless often forget.