We are all afraid of turning into our parents. It may be a short-lived fear, and it may turn out that we like turning into our parents, but there's an inevitable anxiety there. It's a way of transmuting the unavoidable change of aging into something we can control. Time marches on, but we can remain cavalier about certain social
niceties, keep our sense of adventure paramount over our sense of safety, and avoid wearing slacks. These aspects of personality seem like something we have control over. The biggest thing, maybe, is that we don't want to lose touch with that art that was important to us as youths. We want to stay
relevant, up-to-date, and so forth and so on, but at the same time our tastes are mostly fixed somewhere in the past. The music that mattered to us as youths dictates what matters to us as adults, but because music keeps changing, our efforts to keep up inevitably result in us being out-of-date.
The problem with my generation, the generation that grew up with grunge and became indie, embraces a somewhat different consideration. It's not the
anxiety of influence so much as it is anxiety
about influence. When we were growing up, the biggest thing we had to fight against musically was the influence of our parents' generation. The idea that the music of the 60s is the only music that matters is pervasive and incredibly powerful to a general audience. Worse, kids like me tended to approach adult music through boomer bands like the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Doors, Led Zeppelin, and Bob Marley. Thus attempts to come into our own understanding of music inevitably demanded a rejection of that whole canon, while at the same time, again, our tastes were formed in that context, and so those standards never really go away. The music that resulted rejected certain tenets--social
relevance, poetic lyrics, melody, careful production--while keeping others, like authenticity, sincerity, and an emphasis on guitars. What resulted certainly sounded, at times, like boomer music, and even had some explicit connections; most notably, Sonic Youth's Lee
Ranaldo was (0r is, perhaps) a Deadhead.
In the end, it's probably safe to say that we failed. Most younger listeners in the indie-rock demographic still come to adult music through boomer staples, and many stay there. The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, and countless artists
derived thereof dominate musical tastes across all ages. The question, then, is whether we should try and shape the tastes of the younger generation(s) in the same way the boomers did. Surely kids need to get out from under this myth of the 60s just as much as we did, and the music of the 90s offers a viable, yet complementary, alternative. There already is a myth of the 90s, that has been muted somewhat, but is still going strong, at least if sales of Nirvana t-shirts are anything to go by. But if we do that--if we impress our tastes on the young--does that make us as bad as the boomers?
Which brings us, of course, to No Age.
No Age is a two-man band from Los Angeles who have just released their second record,
Nouns, on Sub Pop, the Seattle label that was responsible for much of the grunge boom. Though their name is a reference to the hardcore punk label SST, they sound like an amalgam of noisy indie bands like Built to Spill and Sonic Youth (who, in fairness, did release an album on SST). More importantly, at least for the sake of this post, they emerged from a scene centered around a club called The Smell, an all-ages venue that serves vegan snacks and offers $5 haircuts; a picture of the club serves as the cover of No Age's first album. Its communitarian spirit recalls the hardcore ethos of the 90s, and it has spawned various other noisy bands like the Wives and
Mika Miko. Sasha
Frere-Jones wrote
an article for the New Yorker that spelled out the club's
mythos explicitly, making sure to mention that it lends out books and zines. Though the band's connection to the club is interesting, it's not a necessary factor for embracing their music, which works within an established genre and would make sense to fans of similar bands.
It's interesting, then, to read the band's two Pitchfork reviews, one for the
new album and one for their
first album,
Weirdo Rippers. The first review, by Brandon
Stousy, places the band precisely within this genre, throwing out references to Harry Pussy,
Lync, and Kicking Giant, none of which I've ever heard of before. (Nor do I feel particularly bad about this.) It pinpoints their appeal more broadly, however: "No Age bring back the
DIY energy of Kicking Giant and
Lync and '90s zines and, importantly, a life away from computer screens." There's a clear broadening of scope there: few can relate to Kicking Giant and
Lync, but the appeal of "'90s zines" has only increased since we no longer have to read them, and we can all feel a certain longing for the
pre-
internet days, I guess. (Can we?)
In contrast to the first
review's focus on sounds and influences, the second review frames the band entirely in terms of their scene, mentioning The Smell in the first sentence and through the two opening paragraphs before returning to it again in the final paragraph. Only two paragraphs of the review deal exclusively with the band. Despite having a different author, the second review (written by Amanda
Petrusich) echoes the appeal the first review invoked: "regional culture has been fractured and marginalized by the
internet,"
Petrusich writes, and though "being too focused on anything local-- except produce, maybe-- feels depressingly provincial in 2008," she still finds it "thrilling that a community-sponsored, community-supported art space can attract (and sustain) such a horde of admirable bands."
Thus, it's not only that the band's success beyond the noise/ex-hardcore community is being explained in these terms of being a throwback to a 90s social context, but that the case for its continued success is being made in these terms as well. The reviewing inducting the band into Pitchfork's "Best New Music" category begins and ends with a discussion of The Smell and the way it resembles the lost utopia of zines, community centers, and vegans.
I'm not sure if this is necessarily a good thing. For one thing, the best and more enduring American indie bands of the 90s, if they were part of a scene at all, existed on the outskirts of that scene: Nirvana, Yo La
Tengo,
Slint, Pavement,
GBV. You wouldn't put any of these at the center of an artistic community like you would No Age, and it's hard to see how any of them would have been diminished by having the
internet exist. The two exceptions would be
Sleater-Kinney and Neutral Milk Hotel, neither of whom I like, so maybe this is just a matter of taste.
Then again, maybe it's not. Unless we're going to make an argument that there was something unique about that social environment that made bands different--a charge it would seem hard to sustain given that most of this decade's successful indie bands have sounded like variations on indie bands from the previous two decades--then the reason to hail a return of hardcore flair would be that the experience itself is worth preserving. Moreover, at least in the case of No Age, a band's association with that experience would have to say something about their artistic worth. There's a weird dance going on in that last part of the equation: the extrinsic narrative is being brought in as part of the artistic experience, and while I think that's a good thing to do--it's why I love pop, in part--I'm not sure how it squares with the expectation of authenticity that goes hand-in-hand with the valuation of this sort of music. Once we start valuing process over product, I'm not sure that we've having an artistic discussion anymore. Sure, I wish music now was more aware of, say, sexism, but would a return of "community-sponsored, community-supported art space[s]" really make that happen?
The first part of the equation, though, is where this whole thing gets tricky, and where the problem of anxiety about influence comes in. If we think that this was a valuable experience to have, and if we think opportunities to have this experience no longer abound, it should follow that we want to encourage what few there are so that kids these days can be fortunate enough to have the same kind of adolescences we did. Putting it that way is stacking the deck a bit, so I don't want to lean on this too heavily. Certainly the present decade has all sorts of problems, and there are many aspects of "the 90s" that I wouldn't mind seeing return. If there's anything that argues against merely accepting the social environment as it is, it's that it changes every seven years or so.
But ultimately, the things I want changed aren't specifics, but generalities. I would like to see more awareness of sexism, but I don't necessarily think that it needs to come via take back the night marches. Requiring that a new generation deal with the same issues in the same ways seems like
Boomeritis. "Political problems? Well then, by gum, you need protest singers and protest marches! If you're not doing that, well then, you're not really dealing with the problem, and you don't really care! Unlike us! We
cared, man!" Replace "protest singers and protest marches" with "hardcore music and community centers" and you have the critical discourse surrounding No Age.
What exactly is so bad about the
internet, though? I no longer live in the kind of major urban area where community centers allowed great bands to flourish; I'm back where I grew up, in upstate New York, where there are no great bands (though there are community centers). The
internet is now doing what it did for me as a teenager: allowing me access to this wider world and informing me about what's going on. For kids in Baltimore or LA, that information was available within driving distance, or from their friends; I had--and have--to go out and find it. You know what the big bands play in my current town, people?
Ska. If I don't have the
internet, that's what I'm into.
And it goes beyond that. If you want to see what it looks like when we become our parents, check out the idea that the
internet is getting in the way of kids these days having an authentic indie-rock experience. That's only true if the
internet is somehow inauthentic, e.g. not a culture of its own, and I think refusing to acknowledge that is much more evidence of being out-of-touch than not liking
emo. Lord knows I'm no
internet utopian, but it seems strange to deny that there are real communities online. They may not be able to give each other haircuts or provide venues for bands to play, but none of that is necessary for vital art to happen. There can still be the kind of encouragement, critique, and one-
upmanship that we associate with productive artistic communities. When
CSS first emerged, they made a good case for being a product of
internet music culture, having gotten many of their influences from MP3blogs like Matthew's (if I'm remembering correctly). I think because the idea of online music is so debased for critics and musicians, bands may be reluctant to acknowledge these sorts of influences. But they're undeniably there.
I'm not sure indie is going to do itself any favors, ultimately, by clinging to the processes of the past. Certainly a longing for paradise lost is fine, and there's nothing wrong with reverence for the past. But indie was birthed out of the idea that new technologies (like 4-tracks, cassettes, and photocopying) could change the way music is made. Once new technology comes, that should change it again, at least if it wants to remain a vital form. Ultimately, we may end up no different from previous generations, soft and happy at middle age, listening to the music of our youth and thinking it the pinnacle of human
achievement. That's fine, and good; no one's going to stand up for the music of an era except those who lived through it. But that doesn't mean we have to impose an arrested development on those who come after us in the same way the baby boomers tried to, and continue to try to. Let's not become exactly like our parents.
Labels: baby boomers, indie rock, no age, pop
Sasha Frere-Jones'
New Yorker article
about the whiteness of indie rock makes some good points, and I'm glad he wrote it. But there were a few oddities. For instance, why not mention the whole crop of dancepunk bands, who were nothing if not indie with black influences? It seems like it would've fit fairly well in the article--the fact that they ultimately lost out to coffeeshop-rock would see to bolster his point.
More importantly, though, while it's a great observation that indie's whiteness surged at the same time rap acheived true commercial dominance (in the same way art historians point out that representational painting faded when photography was invented), it's also hard to ignore the fact that there's a good ten-year difference between the indie bands he mentions who did incorporate black influences (the Clash, the Minutemen) and the ones who didn't (Pavement). That gap is no accident, and I think it gives a more pertinent explanation for why the black influence faded than what he goes with, which does sorta amount to "white guilt." Indie did continue to try and incorporate black influences after the Clash and the Minutemen, and it sounded
awful. Those bands aren't in
Our Band Could Be Your Life because no one wants to talk about them anymore; they've been left out of the canon. At the same time, what 90s indie was reacting against was very heavily influenced by blues and soul music: pop-metal and the other genres of rock prevelent in the 80s had a real swing to them, and were full of blues-derived solos. (Well, that and Eddie Van Halen neo-classical pull-offs, but still.) 90s indie perceived that these influences were, at least for the moment, played out, exhausted, meaningless. In the context of Pavement's emergence, choosing not to have prominent black influences was an actual choice, whereas the opposite wasn't true. Indie explored, and is still exploring, a different cultural heritage, a white one to be sure, but hey, it was a bunch of white kids, you know? A lot of good art was wrung from folk, the Beach Boys and Philip Glass.
It's also true that this is no longer the case, that these influences are as played out as black influences were at the end of the 80s. (Though, honestly, I wouldn't really want to hear Devendra Banhart try and steal from R. Kelly; R. Kelly does not need to be made
more ridiculous.) That's why I like what the Fiery Furnaces do: they're trying to find new places to steal from. The admitted ones are the Who (and, now, Zeppelin), but there's a lot of other shit there, which resembles less the broad streams that SF/J's article dwells on, but very specific, minor ones that were dropped sometime in the past and never recovered.
But if there's a piece of evidence that calls into question his ultimate assessment of the situation, I can express it in two words: jam bands. There is a whole style of rock music right now that quite consciously draws from black styles, particularly funk and jazz. And it is, by and large, horrible. In a way, it proves indie's point: continuing down that road did lead to bloat, wishy-washiness, and self-parody. That indie has arrived at a place now that shares at least two of those qualities, if not all three, is not necessarily evidence that they need to sound more like soul--it just means they need to embrace that urge to incorporate and experiment which made all of the bands SF/J approvingly cited great. Did the Little Richard matter more to the Beatles than the Gershwin, or is it their wandering ear and ability to assimilate that really made the difference? I agree that indie bands seem too eager these days to stick within the culturally acceptable bounds of influences, but those bounds aren't racially defined, they're culturally defined, and they exclude lots of white stuff just as much as they exclude black stuff. Indie's stagnation seems less to do with its avoidance of black influences and more to do with its codification as a genre, as a sound, rather than as a set of moves and drives that lead to widely disparate kinds of music--the Minutemen's contemporaries and friends were, after all, Black Flag. Indie used to value weirdness and experimentation, but now it looks ascance at anything that flies too close to the sun. That seems to be far more problematic than its unwillingness to syncopate.
Labels: indie rock, pop, sasha frere-jones, The New Yorker
