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| indie rock and indie fucking roll |
ACADEMIC ABSTRACT: Indie rock suuuucks lately. So says some asshole in the Phoenix this week anyway.
I am that asshole. Read on.
If you're a regular reader of the Phoenix's music section, you'll have noticed a decided uptick in the space devoted to electronic music here lately: electro, laptop lo-fi, chillwave, superstar DJs, and whatever other bullshit genre we're about to hype next week. There's a reason for that: all the writers here (myself especially) have horrible taste. But it also has something to do with the dearth of good indie rock being produced these days. Who's responsible for that? Hard to say for sure, but I'm going to go out on a limb and blame the Decemberists, who play two sold-out shows at the House of Blues tomorrow and Saturday.
The conventional wisdom says that indie rock was a movement in the '80s and '90s whereby bands defied the corporate music system and insisted on going down their own path. Or to put that another way: at some point, everyone in the world declared that he or she was too special to have to work a real job and decided to start a band. In England, of course, it helped that being on the dole was really easy. Allegiance to indie became a convenient way for depressed, even suicidal teenagers to share hairspray tips with each other through coded messages in fan magazines. Here in America, our lazy teenagers also wanted to be in a band, but they didn't want to try that hard, so you got outfits like REM, who couldn't be bothered to write lyrics, or Pavement, who were more about being a "band" than being a band. Indie rock, then, was never about defiance — it was about indifference, and this was a good thing. Because, to be honest, music is a pretty stupid thing to spend so much time thinking about. No offense to people like myself who've made a career out of it.
more words after the jump
more words after the jump
But these musical trends tend to go in self-contradicting cycles. Around the turn of the millennium, bands started to triangulate among the overearnest butt rock of grunge, the little-boy tantrum punk of emo, and the ironic indifference of indie. Somehow, they came up with the authenticity response. This was around the time of the Decemberists' first release, Castaways and Cutouts, an album notable for its elegiac approach to gently strummed indie folk and literary pretensions.
You know what they used to say about the Velvet Underground, how not many people heard them but everyone who did went on to start a band? Same thing with this record, except that it inspired everyone to apply to an MFA program, grow a beard, put on one of those old-timey hats, and pick up a mandolin. White people decided to keep it real, you might say. All of a sudden, indie became less about rocking out, fucking around, and having fun and more about caring about shit. There's nothing less rock and roll than caring about something — just look at the past 20 years of U2.
Things got only worse as the Decemberists grew more popular over the course of the next decade and perfected their even less funny Belle and Sebastian shtick. People like myself fell pretty hard (as I said, bad taste), delighting in their tales of fallen damsels, seafaring rogues, chimney sweeps, and, I dunno, art students from Portland with a Mac fetish or whoever their audience became. At one point, they put out an 18-minute single based on the great Irish mythological epic, Táin Bó Cúalnge. Not so easy to listen to at the club with your bros and get wasted. This was in essence the beginning of the era of NPR rock, the perfect soundtrack to shopping for organic produce at the co-op.
After 2003's genuinely fun Her Majesty the Decemberists and 2005's literary Picaresque, the band left indie stalwart Kill Rock Stars, signed to Capitol Records, and somehow started getting even more popular. And what's weirder, they started selling records. Long story short, now I have to hear that awful Mumford & Sons turd on the radio all the time, and you've got bars rocking the Bon Iver station on Pandora. Thanks a lot.
The Decemberists' latest, The King Is Dead, is another collection of jaunty, country-influenced folk indie, all well crafted and precisely played and really, really nice and good. It sounds as if they'd worked really hard on it. First single "Down by the Water" is the highest-charting radio song of their career. Critics are calling it homespun, rootsy, earthy, sturdy (?), breezy, sumptuous, and straight up, though I'm not sure whether they're talking about the record or a day spent out on the farm scrubbing a horse's balls. Which sounds as if it could be the basis for the band's next thematic excursion into Americana. What's more authentically American than a horse? Well, besides a gun.
So, fine, go out and get this record if you want, and put it in the cue with your Fleet Foxes, National, Blitzen Trapper, and Tallest Man on Earth records and all the other dozens of bands who care really hard about caring really hard. Eventually, this shit will cycle around and we'll get back to music that means something: music that doesn't mean anything.
THE DECEMBERISTS + WYE OAK | House of Blues, 15 Lansdowne St, Boston | January 28-29 @ 8 pm | $29.50-$39.50 | or hob.com/boston
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11 comments:
I enjoyed this one.
- no one, listening to the new Decemberists record.
i enjoy what you did here.
You forgot to mention the part where they rip off Neutral Milk Hotel. Otherwise, horse balls.
incorrect.
Shmincorrect.
The Decemberists writing is more valuable than the nothing said in this article. Just sayin.
Ah, you tried so hard to be amusing. You simply weren't. And the Decemberists are often pretty lame.
really gave it 'my all'
I totally agree with this. But I would have a different attitude, but that's just me.
Anyone who thinks the Decemberists did NOT rip off Neutral Milk Hotel either hasn't listened to any Neutral Milk Hotel or is in complete denial. I haven't listened to Mumford & Sons enough but they also sound like a pretty blatant NMH rip off. Unfortunately the kids making the Decemberists and M & S sell well today were not alive and/or listening to NMH in the late '90s. In their eyes, these 2 new acts are completely original and *hip*, when in reality they are killing the indie music scene.
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