If you throw around the term pop-rock, sadly, all too often, people’s minds seem to envisage some sort of middle-of-the-road, fad-driven box-ticker sound that neither delivers the immediacy of the former nor the integrity of the latter. Music that exists merely to please as many people as possible.
But what if a band could take pop’s grasp of the instant hook and inherent melody and wrap it around the driving, urgent and robust rock sound? Indeed anyone who could do that would be carried head high through the streets, be banded the saviours of tasteful music, the rainmakers of the modern music drought. They would be regarded as heroes, adventurous cross-genre gene splicers of the modern musical age. Or, if you are looking for a more modest title, you could call them D2UR.
For Wasted Time is all the above and more, and D2UR again proves to be well ahead of the curve. Pop-rock is not a new thing, but pop-rock (although that seems like it is a term that doesn’t even begin to do this song justice. Intelligent Rock? Pop With Balls?) this authentic and exciting, this deftly done, is rare as hen’s teeth. (Now that’s a good name for a rock band!)
Anyway, it is in the blend of acoustic delicacy and rock and roll drive, in the space between ear-worm melody and metallic urges, between groove and grit, between pop and a hard place, that the charm of the song lies. Graceful enough to take home to meet the parents, powerful enough to take your head clean off with one punch. Exciting eh?
As I said at the start, combining the critical elements of pop and rock in one sound is often a compromise; one always seems to hinder the other and appeal to neither camps. Get it right, and you get rock music with all the snap and infectiousness of the pop world or pop music that is robust, raucous, full of edge, and with a hint of danger. Take your pick what you call it. And if you want to know what that sounds like, give this track another spin.
