Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Playground Indie and Its Malcontents

Exile produces silence more often than cunning. After two months of not publishing a single rock review (this should change very soon) and compensating by listening to more indie than ever, I've left amused by the suspicion that as the market for rock writing collapses the polarization between the pop world and indie expands. It's a strange world when Flo Rida and Animal Collective debut high on the same chart, separated by sales of a few thousand, and their partisans can't shake hands across Flyoverland. This is a landscape in which Billboard confirms the hegemony of the Pitchfork ethos. I know colleagues who drool over Ghostface or Lil Boosie as much as they do over Animal Collective or Dirty Projectors. They're smart enough to note their differences and intentions, yet unwilling to examine what accounts for the championing of artists determined to make clear statements to a recognizable public and artistes who speak for and to a cult that won't look past its own biases.

Spending fruitless hours agonizing over Fever Ray, Grizzly Bear, and the increasingly paradigmatic Animal Collective was instructive. That age is much more than a number explains only the half of it. In the case of Animal Collective, I hear a half-understood but determined effort to approach the guilelessness of the young adult sensibility. AC wants domestic bliss to resonate like the unmediated wonder of thirteen-year-olds making sense of their bodies. But a twentysomething isn't a pre-teen, and if you're still having trouble figuring out the difference, you need to find another analyst. I expect bands to realize that confusion is sex -- as X, Springsteen and Yo La Tengo's own explorations uncovered. But they didn't dumb down their approaches to get at higher truths; if anything, their albums showed that human drama often can't accommodate them. For artists ideals are fine, but they're a burden too, maybe a luxury, and an economy increasingly hostile to the pursuit of venalities puts a greater demand on clarity than Animal Collective are prepared to give. As for the other two, Grizzly Bear and Fever Ray live in a world I don't recognize: it's retrograde in a hostile way. Fascinated by their adolescent grievances, they perform a shadowplay illuminated by a light that's dim and wrongly colored, intended to show their music in the most attractively disfigured way.

It isn't so dire though. Fumbling through Dirty Projectors' predictably named Bitte Orca, I heard a lot of too-pretty harmonies and ambitious, not-quite-there arrangements and not enough of the peculiar androgynous subtexts that impressed me when I saw them at Pitchfork Festival last summer (it's as if Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie took turns changing into one another and took turns harassing an equally protean Lindsey Buckingham) . Then, in "Two Doves," Amber Coffmann or Angel Deradoorian, I can't tell whom, lets this out: "Your hair is like an an eagle/ your two eyes are like two doves/But our bed is like a failure." Buttressed by fingerpicked acoustic guitar, foiled by string swells, these are pretty good verses, especially after the girl demands an open-mouthed kiss at the beginning of the song. Bands uninterested in expressing emotions are often perplexed about how to express them; here's an example of how to do it right.

Anyway, Christgau's review of two new charity comps helmed by indie/Pitchfork all-stars articulates the dilemma of how to size up songs of experience performed as songs of innocence. To put it another way, it's the best example of how an old guy, with characterstic good humor and common sense, scrunches his eyes real tight to evaluate an ideology as alien as Arianism.

17 comments:

  1. This is also probably the most Xgauian thing you've ever written.

    See also: http://robertchristgau.com/xg/rock/altrock-03.php

    "What's to take over? Indie stars are already masters of all they survey."

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  2. This is also probably the most Xgauian thing you've ever written.

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  3. I'll demur: the last two sentences of your second paragraph are totally alien to me. The reason why I cotton to bands like Fever Ray and Grizzly Bear has nothing to do with their "adolescent grievances" (whatever those are) and everything to do with the sheer pleasures of their sound. In fact, "hostile" is a particularly strange word to use when the dark, dreamy moods and rich textures of both bands strike me as immediately captivating (even if the songs themselves take a few listens to stick). But I guess colors catch our eye somewhat differently.

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  4. I had Fever Ray's "When I Grow Up and "Seven" in mind, the former in particular. When the music itself is funereal, the petulant whine in which she sings about foresters, dog eyes, and crab claws defines "hostile."

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  5. "Whatever those are" was sort of facetious and meant to indicate not that said grievances aren't present but that the music is so enchanting that I'm genuinely not even sure what the songs are all about (though I'm glad that there are vocals, since Andersson's voice is a marvel, and I do like the hint of sneakiness I pick up from "Seven").

    The phrases "petulant whine" and "crab claws" in the same sentence makes me wonder, since I can't seem to remember, if you have time for Joanna Newsom.

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  6. Speaking as someone who listens to AC, Dirty Projectors, Ghostface, and Lil Boosie, I've agonized over both artists with clear statements and those that speak to a cult, and to put it lightly: Why can't I just like the shit I like? Why must everything be an agonizing critical judgment? Why can't I just like the shit I like and try to explain why I like it? Maybe the problem with "clear statements" is that they're really inane, and they have a catchy hook in them, so people either ignore or passively accept moronic statements without caring to think about them? Why can't my baby just do the hanky panky?

    The polarization hasn't expanded, it's still the same as it was. The problem is not that the mainstream has just about completely collapsed (which it has in many ways; if you can buy songs as ringtones or listen to everything for free always, then why buy the album; in a way, the indie listeners are part of the mainstream as well, they're just have a larger presence on the Internet), it's that an artist's cult audience are the only people buying the CD at the store the day it comes out. The market hasn't just collapsed for music writing, it's collapsed for a tangible format to contain music as well (well, outside of the computer and the iPod, but you know what I'm saying).

    I think the polarities between indie and mainstream listeners aren't quite that wide: Both audiences are willing to ignore or bypass flimsy lyrics for the sake of melody and quality of sound. The real bullseye question: How do tastes form? At this point, music is so readily accessible and there has been so much of it that the way people's tastes evolve are even more fractured and hermetic than ever before. And that kind of digging can be just as fruitless as listening to Fever Ray and Grizzly Bear.

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  7. Also, Alfred, that's not to say I take what you or Christgau write seriously. But by the same token, isn't it just a little bit possible that it's not your age that's the problem, but the evolution of your tastes precisely what you've listened/read/watched/experienced etc?

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  8. Yeah, let me also add that I find it remarkably useful to read criticism that contextualizes indie within a broader landscape instead of taking it for granted. This is a thoughtful and provocative post, even though I disagree with some of your conclusions.

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  9. I take back one thing: The mainstream hasn't collapsed, but the way of tracking the pop mainstream is much, much more difficult when you can't track what they listen to or how often they listen to it. You can't track an iPod loaded with illegally downloaded songs.

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  10. isn't it just a little bit possible that it's not your age that's the problem, but the evolution of your tastes precisely what you've listened/read/watched/experienced etc?Totally. Isn't this implied? If it's not, let me add that age shapes taste too. I'm more interested in clarity and less prone to give an album a pass because I like the textures.

    Why can't I just like the shit I like? Why must everything be an agonizing critical judgment? Why can't I just like the shit I like and try to explain why I like it?Ha! It won't stop the rest of us from busting your balls about it. When we tire of self-cannibalization, critics turn to (a) listeners; (b) each other.

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  11. Like John, I love the provocation and thought induced in this post, but I also assumed you tacitly acknowledged that this is implied.

    My ostensible impetuosity was meant to be a semi-rhetorical question: The average listener that's part of the "recognizable public" would likely make the same complaint. Sometimes we can't analyze why we like something in spite of its faults -- we just *do*!. I, like you and others, perceive Animal Collective's faults in their lyrics (although not Dirty Projectors, whose lyrics I actually really like), but I'm willing to ignore it because the music is inspiring in itself, and in some cases the delivery of the lyrics, particularly on "Summertime Clothes," is actually enhanced by the delivery and the music, even though on their own they would read as unbelievably jejune (and you yourself have acknowledged that tons of lyrics are this way). Anyways, I'm prone to second-guess myself when I like something too much, or like something despite something that's bothersome, but when cumbersome critical judgment begins to impede my enjoyment of the music, and when at heart I just enjoy it, there has to be a point when you just give up the good fight, lest you self-flagellate, know what I mean?

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  12. Well, rock and roll has always been a giant facilitator of Peter Pan syndromes, so I guess we're talking about a major regression in terms of years, though it's a significant one nonetheless -- the difference between a 16 year-old with his dick out and maybe a 12 year-old who's in a lot of ways still a little kid. Indie as a lifestyle definitely enables people to put off "adulthood" for as long as they don't look like NARCs at club shows, which is maybe part of the reason why the Dirty Projectors and Grizzly Bear (and especially Arcade Fire!) aren't giving us a Tunnel of Love.

    I still don't feel like Fever Ray fits here though. With her I don't think it's retreating or stunting emotional growth. I think the Knife has already handled plenty of dark, adult shit, both lyrically and musically, and in some of the Fever Ray songs she's just going back to elemental stages to try and find the roots of things, to recall both the comfort and the menace that were there. Plus she does cool-ass things with her voice! Seriously though, there's this part in "Keep the Streets Empty For Me" where her voice gets more naked and girlish than I've ever heard it before, and it's just stunning, like listening to someone cycle through multiple personalities without being at all cheap or gimmicky.

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  13. we're *not* talking about a major regression...

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  14. I'll give Fever Ray another chance then, just for you, J-Love.

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