The beauty found in art, as in life, is about friction: joyful songs with sorrowful lyrics, minor key riffs over doo-wop chord progressions, or a post-communist refugee songwriter surrounded by a cushion of North American veterans of guitar pop. Adam Sabla is an example of all three, and leading the band Loose Fang seems to be a perfect fit for him. The Czechoslovak-Canadian tunesmith was lucky to find a full band of collaborators (Jay Slye, Catherine Hiltz, and Ian Browne) and bunker down in the port town of Steveston, British Columbia to create the full length Live Wires, Black Sheep, a title that reflects their penchant for guitar buzzing and finding the wandering souls of the nearly deceased guitar generation. The album finds all the right melodies in a swamp of dark, 90s college rock, like a protest painting of Brezhnev kissing East German leader Erich Honecker from around the same era. Much like that era’s music returning to an en vogue status, so once again is the need for social upheaval. So why don’t we revive the sound to dovetail with the global sentiment? Guitar-forward music may be considered equal to speaking in a dead language these days, but maybe if we don’t know the Greek, Latin, or Slavic roots, we may not know what the future brings.
