Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You
Ratings9
Average rating3.6
Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You is a story of music, obsession, violence, and madness by Scotto Moore I was home alone on a Saturday night when I experienced the most beautiful piece of music I had ever heard in my life. Beautiful Remorse is the hot new band on the scene, releasing one track a day for ten days straight. Each track has a mysterious name and a strangely powerful effect on the band's fans. A curious music blogger decides to investigate the phenomenon up close by following Beautiful Remorse on tour across Texas and Kansas, realizing along the way that the band’s lead singer, is hiding an incredible, impossible secret. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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4.5 stars. I think I really liked this one a lot more than ‘We Sold Our Souls' but then again I used to be a music blogger who spent hours scouring Bandcamp for hours on end in my spare time.
Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You by Scotto Moore is intriguing and quirky. I am a connoisseur of the offbeat comedy/horror book, and this story felt right at home for me. However, putting this novella into a concrete category is difficult. There are aspects of a lot of different genres present. Firstly, we have horror for obvious reasons, plus a touch of science fiction. Also, There is drama, and I also found it quite funny. It is a lot to unpack for such a short story.
The story starts with a music blogger, home alone. He finds a “hot new band on the scene, releasing one track a day for ten days straight.” I can empathize with the main character immediately. I feel like this when I discover a new story. I want to talk about it and share it with people. The band's name is Beautiful Remorse, and the band is creating the most glorious music he has ever heard. It speaks to his soul, probably a little too much. It makes the listener have an obsessive fascination with the band and everything it is putting out. The music blogger sets out to find out as much as possible about the band and the mysterious lead singer named Airee MacPherson.
Without much effort, he scores an interview with Airee, an invite to tour with the band, and help release the new tracks for Beautiful Remorse. Obviously, an offer that he couldn't refuse. But pretty quick into the tour, he realizes there is something sinister going on, and not all is as it seems.
The lead protagonist in the story is fairly fleshed out. He embodied the geeky nerd voice of anyone talking about their absolute favorite thing; I empathized with him a lot. However, the side characters were no more than cutouts. There wasn't much to them, which is acceptable in a book this short, 120 pages.
As I mentioned earlier, I love offbeat books. Something that is a little weird is usually up my alley. However, this book is certainly not for everyone. The sheer ridiculousness of the events that happen in the book can be a little offputting for some readers. But, if you want to read a story with an old-fashioned grindhouse kind of flavor, Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You is great.
This was a fun, creepy, frenetic novella that mashes up the obsessive power of music and Lovecraftian horror. If you're the kind of person that notices the difference between the radio edit and the album version, or has a favourite bootlegged version of a song, the characters here will seem familiar.
The plot of the novella moves really quickly, which at times stretches credulity a little, but that's kind of necessary for the structure of the story, so it's forgivable. Overall you're left with a fantastic EP of a story.
