There isn't room in a pop industry for every music taste or genre, and an industry that views music as a product, as a commodity, as a dollar sign can at times stifle artistic integrity and individuality. What then happens is you hear more of the same, repeated and regurgitated over decades. But there was music before an industry, there will be music beyond it and there is music outside of it.

That's something groups like DateMonthYear can teach us. DateMonthYear are a pop act that do everything themselves, yet you've still heard of them.

A band in the same loose sense Nine Inch Nails is a band, and like the Trent Reznor background instruments, the revolving roster of DateMonthYear makes each release like a selfie; an image of who the band were at that moment in time. Actually, reflecting on my recycled profound observation, that's more like a collection of school photos. Looking back you can see them grow year by year, album by album and see where they began.

Kind of rock, kind of pop, Spit Out The Sun, DateMonthYear's contribution to the Lost on a Highwire compilation falls on the easy listening, easily listenable side of the music spectrum.

Even taking on the song of another artist, this being a cover of Mike Miller, and being a different collection of artists each time, the dreamy, melancholic quality that is often described in reference to the DateMonthYear sound remains, though is more of a subtlety than the forefront like on previous, more progressive post-rock, Puscifer-ish tracks like Haunted or River.

You can still hear a longing in that forlorn voice, especially when compared to the original Spit Out The Sun.

Who hurt you, DateMonthYear?

The point wasn't to outshine Mike Miller, or to take the track and run in their own direction, like the film makers asked to interpret DateMonthYear's tracks for their last project. It was to pay tribute to one of the forefathers of Hamilton music, or possible stroke his ego. Either way, they succeeded. They gave this anthem of mid 90's a DateMonthYear treatment and rejuvenated it in a way that makes it palatable twenty years later.

We haven't heard much from them of late, a side effect of what and who DateMonthYear are, but here's hoping this is  sign of good things to come, perhaps even a new stylistic direction.

You can find Spit Out The Sun on the DateMonthYear Bandcamp, where should probably check out the rest of their music and you'll see just how diverse the music these groups of people is.

• 1
  Head Like A Hole
• 2
  Horror Story
• 3
  Fraser Ross
• 4
  Fur Patrol
• 5
  Michelle Rounds
• 6
  L.A.B.
• 7
  The Boondocks
• 8
  Late to Chelsea
• 9
  Springloader
• 10
  Baconfoot

• 
  Nadia Reid @ Loons, Lyttelton - 16/11/2024
• 
  Pull Down The Sun @ Franks Bar, Whanganui - 15/11/2024
• 
  Elidi @ Franks Bar, Whanganui - 15/11/2024
• 
  Infinity Ritual @ Franks Bar, Whanganui - 15/11/2024

• 1
  APT.
  ROSÉ And Bruno Mars
• 2
  DIE WITH A SMILE
  Lady Gaga And Bruno Mars
• 3
  BIRDS OF A FEATHER
  Billie Eilish
• 4
  TASTE
  Sabrina Carpenter
• 5
  I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY
  Gracie Abrams
• 6
  ESPRESSO
  Sabrina Carpenter
• 7
  SAILOR SONG
  Gigi Perez
• 8
  LOSE CONTROL
  Teddy Swims
• 9
  A BAR SONG (TIPSY)
  Shaboozey
• 10
  GOOD LUCK, BABE!
  Chappell Roan

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