NYC/Boston-based group Blue Plutos wowed a few months back with their twangy jangle-pop gem “Shadow Chateau“, one of six tracks off their new album Dennett St.. The release has sounded particularly apt the past week or so as I’ve been revisiting it, as the weather has been in a grey-ish limbo between summer and autumn that’s a great fit for nonchalant jangle-pop/power-pop in the vein of Felt, The Go-Betweens, and The Church; these artists always bring a sort of infectious effervescence amid their rainy-day solitude, and Blue Plutos is enjoyably similar in that sense.
As a result, it’s worth revisiting the track “Want to Want” in particular. Compared to the developmental atmospheric trickling of “Shadow Chateau”, “Want to Want” begins with an immediate burst of power-pop color. Punchy percussion, fleeting acoustics, and a playful synth-pad form over the suave vocals, which help signal a melodic shift at 0:38 that first marks the effective yet subtle transition into a fully infectious chorus with anthemic appeal. That part is great, but also be sure stick around for the absolute brilliance at 01:40, when the group launches into an awesome vintage-sounding slice of psych-pop that resonates with a supremely brilliant melody before shifting back to the amiably anthemic chorus.
If you’ve heard “Shadow Chateau” and “Want to Want” – and enjoyed one or both of ’em – then it’s highly recommended to check out the rest of the highly impressive Dennett St. below:
We worked hard on putting together our 10 track CD, now available on the usual distribution channels. Naturally, with no support from major labels we are not getting the exposure we’d need to reach a wider audience. The question here is how would it benefit us to give away our songs for free? This “napster” like model of giving music away for free is a strange one to understand. It cost a lot of money to get the equipment for recording. The instruments are expensive. It took years and years of practice and the recording process took many hours. Then add the cost of mastering and getting the CD’s made and up on iTunes, et al. And now we’re supposed to just hand everything over for free so a few people can download if they like something? If I painted a canvass, would I just hand it over to a perfect stranger? If I wrote a book would I just hand out copies to anyone willing to take one? Obviously there are people out there willing to do that because, and let’s be honest, no one buys music anymore – except people like me. I wouldn’t feel comfortable downloading songs for free unless the artist wanted me to. I’d rather support their efforts. youtu.be/4fUMzfG_x90
I concur John. We too recently released a 10 track CD and have gotten little traction. We initially offered it for free but stopped. It makes no sense. The amount of effort and production costs are high and no one else expects to do their jobs gratis, so why are we now expected to do ours for free?
Initial exposure is usually the reason cited for giving music away as independent artists do not have the means or vehicles for promotion. The problem is however is that anything which has no price is regarded as having no value.
In regard to Blue Plutos, I think their music is excellent and well-worth support. There must be a model out there somewhere to follow to rightfully attribute value to independent music.