Magic Kids – Memphis 
Magic Kids - Memphis
The Tennessee based band, Magic Kids are a group of “nice” musicians. When rummaging through all the new music out these days people don’t want to waste time with the predictable. Artistic competition is high and everything is accessible in the viral world. Popular culture defines this “nice” personality type as simple and ball-less. Originality is what makes musicians great and helps “nice” guys get laid.
In addition to being nice, the debut album by Magic Kids, Memphis, has hopped on the 60’s pop resurrection bandwagon. Unlike Best Coast, a fellow indie band inspired by the beach boys, Memphis is an appropriation album. Brian Wilson grasped the nostalgia of youth while revolutionizing pop aesthetics. The Beach Boys created this year around summer music as a form of escapism from cultural instability. Experimenting with structural design in the sixties, Pet Sounds is part of this required educational archive for many musicians. Magic Kids have to make pop music that isn’t just kitschy to this summer style, but more substantial to their generation.
The lyrics for the track, “Hey Boy,” are only disappointing after hearing the hype generated, “No, they’re just her fools/And besides, I’m cooler then them.”
They are real mature, real poetic. Hipster parents and Glee fanatics will be pleased to further encourage our youth culture with manufactured innocence-shallow and slightly annoying. Keyboardist, Will McElroy said “We’re trying to take that back: make it okay to take simple pop songs to grand places.” This has been said throughout the history of pop music, by multiple artists, and HAS been done. Maybe the selling point doesn’t make everyone want to scream, but the group’s album concept might.
Memphis is an album that was built on the commercialized hippie mentality of peace and love. So much so, that the band’s manifesto is to only spread happiness. A lovely idea and taken seriously when attending such festivals as Burning Man. However in a recent interview discussing the album, they mistakenly made the comment, “If it makes you feel sad then it’s bad music.” Magic Kids aren’t genuine bohemians, but naïve kids wearing peace signs on their shirts.
Magic Kids – Memphis – Tracklist:
01 Phone Song
02 Candy
03 Superball
04 Hideout
05 Summer
06 Hey Boy
07 Good to Be
08 Skateland
09 Sailing
10 Radio
11 Cry With Me Baby
First of all, the quote from one of the band about “if it makes you sad” is at least two years old, hardly recent. And he has since explained that quote in other interviews and it does not mean what you are reporting.
I don’t understand how some folks just don’t hear the irony in songs like Hey Boy. Or Cry with Me Baby. How can you call it “peace and love” when there are all these minor chords and while the music is at many points light and upbeat, the “Kids” are singing things like “and when the bombs have blown the cities away..” Irony, people.