Spencer Griffin's New Music Mondays

 here they are: "Field of Vision" by King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard:  Rock and roll is not dead, it's just sleeping! There are still bands out there like King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard who keep the spirit of classic rock alive into the modern age! Sounding like an amalgam of The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and ZZ Top fused into a single song, King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard's "Field of Vision" is an atypical entry into a format focused mostly on the calmer side of rock and alt, but once in a while, even soft rockers need their hard rock juice, and this song provides plenty of it! The lyrics don't seem to follow a specific narrative, and repeating the phrase "silly billy" at the end of the song doesn't exactly scream "talented songwriter," but who cares about that?! To paraphrase Jack Black's character in School of Rock , this music will test your head, your mind, and your brain, so sit back and enjoy the magic of ...

 here they are: "An Arrow in the Wall" by Death Cab for Cutie: You never expected a mostly somber, folk-y group like Death Cab to get funky, did you? Well, that's what they do on their latest song, "An Arrow in the Wall." In the 20 plus years that Ben Gibbard and co have been around, they've never attempted a song like this one, which is probably to Death Cab what "Emotional Rescue" is to The Rolling Stones (who, coincidentally, will be mentioned in the very next song for this week): a slow-burning, disco-y number that never quite reaches a climax but is still a slinky, seductive song. However, there is nothing whatsoever that could be considered seductive about the lyrics to "An Arrow in the Wall." It is, instead, a warning to Ben's fans about how our already dangerous world in the 21st century could get even worse if we don't do anything about it. Hopefully, DCFC's fans will take heed to Gibbard's message, even though th...