It feels like nowadays you have two choices in being a commercial artist. Try to cram everything that is popular via multiple genres at the time into one song or go your own way and take a risk. There’s no right or wrong answer as long as you are sincere with it. We all know the best artists take inspiration from existing ideas and have created the greatest works of the last century doing so.
On first listen to Lessons‘ “Tempest” it struck me that as well as the fact they hooked me straight it with a bass line that was worthy of “Under Pressure” and “Billie Jean“, with this one track they had proved me wrong. They had managed both. They had taken some of the best 80’s B-movie synths, the smoothest 70’s groove and the grit poetry of Joy Division. It has been artistically morphed so far from these things though it has come out the other side as something brand spanking new and original.
For me the track lay somewhere between the ethereal RnB of NZCA Lines and the kitsch pop of Friends’ hit ‘I’m His Girl‘, “Tempest“, feels both sexual and apocalyptic at the same time. I feel audiences will get this straight away, and will come back for more of this complexity when so much out there is based around grabbing you by the ears and showing you one thing over and over again. This is something special and deserves all the praise I believe it will receive.
Lessons comprises of brothers Samu and Ville Kuukka with Patrick Sudarski. their debut EP ‘Tempest‘ is out now via Sinnbus.
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