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It's not a Bandcamp Friday, but I wanted to write about some music I picked up on Bandcamp recently.
"Girls Who Care" is not-so-secretly the same one guy who makes comedy music as "Hot Dad". The difference seems to be that "Hot Dad" is comedy rock, whereas "Girls Who Care" performs more serious rock. In either case it's Erik Helwig performing the music.
One of the problems with being a comedy musician is that the quality of your music is often buried by the quality of your comedy. Weird Al has the same problem; he gets taken as a "joke" act and people sometimes forget that he and his band are in fact incredibly talented. They've been mimicking every style of music for four decades, and occasionally the Weird Al version ends up better than the original, based on talent alone.
I'm reminded of the last time I went to a circus. (I don't like the circus.) The clowns look like bumbling idiots, but when you actually watch them, you notice that they're doing all the same things as the acrobats, but doing them while also convincing you that they're bumbling idiots. It's actually the most impressive part of the show.
All of that was to say that while the Hot Dad comedy stuff is great, and it really is, I enjoy Erik's "Girls Who Care" stuff because it removes the comedy layer. You get a good sample of his musical chops. The tracks on the album "Light Sleeper" have 80's-90's vibes, like a mix of R.E.M.'s early mumbled days and Toad The Wet Sprocket's emotionally honest and lyrical style. Overall this album came as a pleasant surprise, and I've had it on a pretty heavy rotation all weekend.