Hello, and welcome to Snobby Sundays! Please, allow me to introduce myself: I am the Wrock Snob, from the renowned world-famous site The Wrock Snob. Well, the moderately well-known in a community of people who like music about wizards blog, but close enough. Every other Sunday, I will be reaching into my snobby depths, and bringing you overlooked gems – great wrock bands that you might not have ever heard of. Many of these bands are from the early days of wrock (can we appreciate how weird it is that the “Golden Year” of wrock – 2007 – was SIX YEARS ago?), some of them from a little more recently in this timestream. But all of them will be a little off the beaten path, but no less excellent, and I hope to impart some great new music to you!

We’re going to start things off with one of my personal favorite “indie” wrock bands – longtime readers of my twitter account (among other things) will be acquainted with them, but I will never pass an opportunity to pass their brilliance on to some fresh ears – The HMS Wolfstar.

In a story somewhat opposite that of Buckbeak’s Flight (come back in a couple weeks for more on them), The HMS Wolfstar was conceived by only bandmember Anna as part of a project for school. One wonders what the school curriculum in Sweden is like that allows for a band about gay wizards to be an acceptable thing to turn in, and why we don’t have that kind of curriculum here in the U.S.

I once ranked this band as the Number 1 most cruelly defunct wizard rock band, and it’s not hard to see why – only two songs were ever created, and both are damn good. “Snivellus” is a rare country-twanged wrock song, from Sirius’ perspective. It accurately depicts Sirius’ view of Snape, including his less-than-moral ambivalence over the fact that his infamous prank could have killed Severus, and makes a nice lyrical counterpoint to The Remus Lupins’ “Marauder’s Worst Memory“. As far as the shipping content you would expect from the bands’ name goes, there’s not much, except for one line about Remus being cute.

No, the real shipping meat of this band is to be found in the uniformly excellent “Give Me The Moon”. I’ll confess, Remus/Sirius was never a ship I was particularly behind – I just didn’t see their personalities meshing in a romantic manner very well. But this song alone converted me, and the great thing about it is that even if you don’t sail this particular ship, you can appreciate how deeply the lyrics delve into Remus’ psyche:

There is evil in me, there’s powers no one can control

I am dangerous, that’s what I’ve always been told

And I can feel it inside, so I know that they are right

I’m a monster, a creature of the night

The music is both catchy in verse and chorus, as well as being suitably somber for Remus’ depressed, self-hating psyche. Anna’s voice also carries struggle, emotion, and at times, a hint of hope very ably, as the music slowly builds and gains fullness, with electric guitar adding to acoustic, and ultimately a very well-done choir-effect to the chorus. The song swells, as the bittersweet chorus is belted:

And you promised me

To bring down the moon if you could

And though it’s plain to see

That it’s impossible

I know that you would

The music is great, and the lyrics are even better, making you truly feel Remus’ yearning – for the pain to stop, to feel accepted, and to be loved – universal themes any shipper should appreciate. I highly recommend heading over to the HMS Wolfstar MySpace and braving the atrocious UI – Anna’s music is truly worth it.

I hope you enjoyed this first edition of Snobby Sunday’s – be sure to check back in two weeks for another straight scoop of little-known or overlooked wrock awesomeness!

Wrocksomeness?