These Mav Karlo and Free Energy songs have a lot in common, so you may as well become a fan of both!

I won't get into the boring specifics of how I listen to the music I'm considering for review, but one component is allowing albums to play in the background during my work day. Since my brain has grown adept at picking out the little things that can elevate an LP from a single listen, through to me thinking of writing about it, this works pretty well. I think part of this is also tied into my years DJing, since songs that popped up above the surface waves of noise were sometimes the exact thing I was looking for to expand a set. 

And sometimes you realize just how similar two songs sound. When this happens I don't jump to the "who wrote it first" argument since the nature of music, and rock music in particular, means there's going to be similar melodic repetitions, and sometimes those structures are very similar for no other reason than both songwriters just happened to stumble across similar progressions on separate occasions. 

Which is a really long way of me saying that this brand new Mav Karlo song...

...reminds me a LOT of this Free Energy song from 2010!

So I did a little digging and found this on the Free Energy Facebook page (that I hadn't checked in a really, really long time since the band basically disbanded years ago):

Hi Friends, it's been awhile. Everyone doing okay?

Our longtime pal, tour brother & all-around good guy Menno Versteeg from Hollerado is releasing a solo record as Mav Karlo in October. Produced by Chris Coady (Beach House, Future Islands), the record features Hollerado’s Nixon Boyd, Vivian Girls’ Katy Goodman, Dizzy's Charlie Spencer and Free Energy’s own Nicholas Shuminsky.

Yes, it took a looooooong way to get there, but in the end the reason these tunes sounded so similar is perhaps not such a mystery! Again, I'm not judging or viewing this as a negative issue in the least—heck, if this helps turn on a Free Energy fan to Mav Karlo, or the other way around, everyone wins!

Also, don't forget to check out the entire Mav Karlo album "Wirewalker" is on, Strangers Like Us, when it's released this Friday, October 16!