Cassette Review // Music On Hold "Episode_I" (Gone With The Weed)

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https://gonewiththeweed.bandcamp.com/album/episode-i //

When I first saw the name of this cassette I thought it would be something either like a podcast or what I think should be a project someone should do one day (It's probably already been done.  If so, please link me?) where they listen to a bunch of music while being put on hold by various companies (because many of them use generic instrumental music and not the radio station music some of them do) and then you kind of either collab with it yourself or get other artists to add beats to it or lyrics or whatever.   That'd be fun, right?  But yeah, that isn't this. 

Music On Hold can definitely be described as new wave when this cassette first starts.   With the drum machines and synths I'm pretty sure that the first song is about hoarding which gives that 1980's feeling of sound a modern take on lyrics.   Oh, if we only knew back then what we know now.   Remember how people thought TV Guide was going to be worth money some day?  Those things were like calendars.

"Home" feels a little bit dreamier as it can have that Schatzi vibe and then on "Top Of The Bridge" it feels like upbeat mallpop.    "Headless" has this darker slip static thing going on, but on the flip side it turns right into these 1980's pop vibes.  "Life does not rewind itself as you die" is one of my favorite lines ever and not just because it feels like it's about cassettes but because of the meaning behind it.

As it gets blissed out you can hear some Blink 182 type guitars on "What About Us?".   Some of that Neon Trees magic can be found in here, in that modern sense mixed with the classic sense, but overall this is just a lot of fun and bands don't really seem to make such fun music anymore.    It seems like when artists reach a certain level of fun they become a type of pop I cannot listen to but Music On Hold seems to have found that balance and for that I will listen to this one all day long.