Anyway, if you’ve been paying attention to the music-hype machines over the past couple of years, you have a fair idea of what I’m talking about. The Strokes. The White Stripes. The Hives. Interpol. The Rapture. And so on, and so forth.
I first noticed it as a trend when the New Yorker grouped the Strokes, the White Stripes, and the Hives together in order to talk about the Hives. (This was before most people had heard of any of them, by the way.) Today, there is a review of a new “The” band at PopMatters every week; the reviewers have even stopped namechecking the Strokes, etc. because it was getting old hat. If it has any resemblence to the “garage rock” explosion of the 60s (“Garage Revival” was the first tag given to the movement, which has melted away since it became obvious that none of these bands are garage bands), it’s that everyone and his sister is forming a band, putting out an EP of highly derivative, catchy rock ‘n’ roll, and getting a record deal. Except that back in the 60s, most of the bands stayed in the garage.
Here’s a partial listing of bands who could be considered part of the movement, created just from surfing AMG for an hour. Most of them suck, or at least add nothing new to the formulas they’re imitating. If you’re like me, there’s only so much high-octane power-pop you can take before it all starts to sound the same; when the pop element is taken out (like with, say, Ikara Colt), it’s even harder to sit through.
And here’s the major reason why “The New Rock Revolution” just doesn’t work: none of these bands are revolutionary in any sense. The only thing that’s new is that people are paying attention.
Yet, somehow, that makes them important.
That sentence wasn’t sarcasm; I mean it. There are three kinds of bands. (Using the word “band” loosely to mean “musical acts.”)
The first kind of band is the Exalted Ones, the Beatles and Rolling Stones and Bob Dylans and David Bowies and Clashes and Nirvanas. These are bands that everyone (or enough to make a quorum) loves; but you don’t have to “get” them to love them. You don’t, in other words, have to understand what makes them important, be able to appreciate their achievements, or be able to articulate why they’re great. You don’t have to know anything about them; you can just love them.
The second kind of band is the Difficult Ones. These you have to “get” in order to love; they are are the Velvet Undergrounds and Nick Drakes and Televisions and Joy Divisions and My Bloody Valentines. Nobody (or few enough to be disgregarded) loves these bands without understanding them, seeing what they’re trying to do, knowing how they’re innovating and what makes them better than other, similar, bands. All jazz except the strictly danceable falls under this category.
The third kind of band is the Obvious Ones. These you don’t have to get in order to love, either; but the important caveat is that there’s nothing to get. They’re the Herman’s Hermits and KISSes and Bay City Rollers and Gloria Estefans and Spice Girls. Plenty of people love them, but there is no possibility of not understanding them; it’s all surface music. Great, if that’s what you want, but a lot of people want more. Most arguments about the quality of bands centers on whether there’s anything to “get”: naysayers say there’s not, fans say there is.
I bring all this up not only to win applause for brilliant insights, but also to make the point that popularity matters to the degree that bands in the Exalted rank are better/more important/carry more cultural clout/something than the Difficult Ones.
The White Stripes are just the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, only less hardcore, man. The Strokes are just Television, only with shorter running times. Interpol is Joy Division, only cheerier.
Maybe. (Though I’ll disagree, on all counts. More below.) But the significant -- and, I’d venture to say, the only significant -- thing about what’s called the “New Rock Revolution” is that all of these bands are, right now, more popular than their predecessors ever were. That means something. Whether it means that popular taste has finally caught up with what the originators were doing, or whether it means that rock music is going to hell in a handbasket because all it can do is eat its own tail (both are true, in my view) depends on what you think is important in music.
If innovation, originality and being “first” is important (all the things that make rock into art), you’ll hate these new kids. If sounding good, memorable melodies, and a certain indefinable “energy” is important (all the things that make rock into pop), you’ll probably end up liking them. If the fact that MTV endorses them is important to you (all the things that make rock popular, in this day and age), then you already own all their albums.
Anyway, I just wanted to say all this in refutation/response to certain unnamed parties’ snarkiness (not that I mind it at all; it’s what keeps things lively) towards these bands. What I really wanted to do was explore the music, to try to get people to listen to them through my ears and see if that doesn’t help.
That, to me, is the only worthwhile end of music writing. While it’s not quite as irrelevant as dancing about architecture, most music criticism attempts, idiotically, to apply the rules of scientific analysis to what is ultimately an emotional respsonse. The only music writing that’s ever moved me is that which prods me to hear the music in the way the writer does, which makes the writing art instead of propaganda.
There are no absolutes in popular music, apart from sales figures. Remember that and let’s go.
The list I linked to above contains 66 entries. I’ve listened to about forty of those bands with any close attention. Of these, only four have captured my attention and imagination so much that I can find anything halfway-worthwhile to say about them. Two of the bands are American, one Scandinavian, and one English. They’re listed in the order most people would list them in; that is, in the order of most critical acclaim/hype (it’s often difficult to distinguish the two).
So here goes. My attempt to justify their existence.
The Strokes
Okay, first. They don’t sound a bit like Television. I know Television, I was listening to Television long before the Strokes were ever heard of, and believe me: they’re no Television. Sure, they use the same “two guitars playing off of and around each other” format that Television used a lot, but that hardly makes them ripoffs. Television’s rhythmic interplay was abstract and artful, owing more to the Grateful Dead than postpunk generally admits; the Strokes, whether they’d admit it or not, just want to make you dance. If anyone has the right to complain about stolen styles, it should be the Buzzcocks. Listen to the beginning to “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays.” There’s your ripoff.
But the Strokes are more than that, of course. “Last Nite” may be an annoying power-pop single, but Weird Al’s recasting of it as jive doo-wop in his latest polka medley makes an insightful point: precious little post-punk music has ever swung so hard. For a band with such lily-white antecedents (according to the pundits, anyway), solid R&B rhythms inform everything they do. That’s why “A Stroke of Genius,” the mashup between “Hard to Explain” and “Genie in a Bottle,” works so well: try mashing Ms. Aguilera with Pavement and see what you get.
This is even more obvious in the second album. Julian Casablancas claimed to have modeled his singing style on that of Sam Cooke. Well, I can hear it, anyway, especially in “Under Control” and “You Talk Way Too Much.” Lou Reed wishes he could have sung like this in his twenties. Actually, a better comparison than Reed (whom Casablancas sounds like for exactly two words on the first album) would be Jim Morrison, whose voice was similarly enamoured of itself. Thankfully, Casablancas appears to be free of some of Morrison’s more asinine pretentions.
In other words, I think they’re a quality band. That, unfortunately, is not the claim being made for them (and which, to their credit, they’ve always bemusedly denied): that they are the new saviors of rock. Just like Nirvana twelve years ago, and the Sex Pistols fourteen years before that. It’s insulting, really: it implies that rock needs saving. Pop music certainly needs to be refreshed from time to time, but rock, like jazz, country, and hip-hop, is always whatever it is.
Still, it seems unfair that a hardworking spiky pop band should be saddled with such insane expectations. You almost can’t help suspecting the British music press of picking out of a hat who’s going to be the Savior of Rock this year, elevating them to an impossible level of importance, and then stepping back to watch them fuck it all up. Hey, it worked with the Stone Roses, Suede and Oasis.
Obviously, the Strokes’ importance is a media creation. But remember: so was the Beatles’ importance, and the Sex Pistols’. One of them rose above the hype, outmatching all expectations and setting the bar for every popular act to follow. The other practically disintegrated upon contact with oxygen. I’m willing to wait and see if the Strokes can end up outlasting both their critics and (even more difficult) their fans. I think they’ve got a decent head start.
But it can only end one of those two ways. You play the pop game, you play by pop’s rules, and the stakes are higher than in the 60s, and even in 1977. The Strokes have, or have been given, that potent combination of talent, critical respect, terrific sales, and ambition, which has produced some of rock’s greatest successes (the Beatles, again) and some of its most notable failures-to-live-up-to-early-promise (Guns ‘N’ Roses come to mind). So far, I don’t think they’ve blown it. They’ve already matured musically since they first showed up; not exponentially, but enough. They’re in it, obviously, for the long haul. That, more than anything else about them, is what makes them important.
I keep comparing them to the Beatles, by the way, not because I think they’re destined for similar greatness, but because they face similar limitations early in their career: wearing their influences on their sleeve, with a lot of songs sounding kind of samey, and a crushing amount of hype ready to bury them.
Popular music does not exist in a vaccuum. The more people say that the Strokes matter, the truer it becomes.
Last note: listen again to “Hard to Explain.” It’s a brilliant song, firmly in the new wave tradition of subversive pop. That moment of abrupt silence in the middle perfectly encapsulates what the Strokes are, and what it’s possible for them to become.
The White Stripes
Here’s a facile comparison: if the Strokes are the Beatles, the White Stripes are their Rolling Stones.
Of course, the Strokes aren’t the Beatles,and the Stripes ain’t the Stones. But debates still rage over whether the Beatles or the Stones more clearly represented the heart of 60s rock ‘n’ roll; I can see camps lining up today to battle over whether the Strokes’ tight, taut pop or the White Stripes’ wide-ranging roots-metal stew is more important in the grand scheme of things. Of course, like the Stones in the 60s, the White Stripes have more street cred, so their fans will shout the loudest and win in the short term. Long term? It depends on what happens next.
Make no mistake: the White Stripes are vastly important today. Part of this has to do with their relative popularity, as noted above, but more of it has to do with what exactly they’re doing. Anyone can rattle off a list of influences: Bob Dylan, Black Sabbath, Robert Johnson, Paul McCartney, the Stooges, the Blasters, Johnny Cash, the Buzzcocks (more for Pete Shelley’s yelp than the band’s playing). The point is what they do with these (wholly disparate, come to think of it) influences.
There are forests in the White Stripes’ music. Decorative, slightly depressing clutches of trees like those planted all around industrial Midwestern cities, and deep black forests into which no one will venture after dark and be seen again. There are white frame houses with muddy foundations, tuxedoed people dancing too fast in an RKO musical against a gorgeous Art Deco background, and a silhouette of a man hanging from the twisted limps of a solitary tree in this music. There are a boy and girl, both beautiful, both sad, with their backs to each other and their hearts full of things that neither of them will say. There are nameless crimes, and too-specific emotions, there is exaltation and damnation. The White Stripes make music that is both timeless and only possible right this second. I dig it, basically.
The White Stripes understand that pop music is all about image, and they’ve taken their time in crafting a memorable, attention-getting, and even mythic one. Like any great band, they made the transition from indie kids (look at the cover of White Blood Cells) to deeply strange rock stars (Elephant) seamlessly. But apart from the image (and all the non-musical stuff, like the real relationship between Jack and Meg), what is really most remarkable about the White Stripes’ music is the complete disengagement from the safety of irony. This can almost begin to tip Jack’s songs into emo territory (the least ironic genre there ever was), but sheer musicality wins through.
Jack’s “death of the sweetheart” rant in the Elephant liner notes is one example: on the one hand, it’s twee Kochalkaesque sentimentality; on the other hand, it’s deeply felt truth, a sort of moral nostalgia that recoils from ugliness and pain. With regards to the Elephant album in general, it’s worth noting that its homage to 50s and 60s albums goes beyond the back cover; it’s a fairly concise collection of singles and filler, with the filler including some curious experiments that wouldn’t normally see the light of radio play.
“Ball and Biscuit,” for example, is a stomping behemoth of a song, wrenching the blues out of the hands of slick pallbearers like the current Eric Clapton; it’s Muddy Waters filtered through Led Zeppelin filtered through In Utero. And it should be understood that “Jack White records his first guitar solo here” is sheer nonsense. He, like all the other bands here, has been making smart, tasteful solos all along, like any good Chuck Berry fan.
“In the Cold, Cold Night” introduces us to Meg’s voice: she’s a Midwestern Nico, more deadpan than death itself.
“Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine” jumps around like a heavy-metal Chubby Checker, and Jack yelps like he’s making the great lost Damned record.
“Hotel Yorba” (to backtrack a bit) may well be the first alt-country song downloaded in huge numbers by MTV-watching kids. It’s a little like a CCR song in its basic country-blues progression, but its lyrical freshness is entirely its own.
“Little Room” is an indie-rock manifesto for the White Stripes’ particular brand of calculating primitivism.
And so forth.
The Libertines
Of these four bands -- all of whom I enjoy immensely -- the Libertines are by far my favorite. This may have more to do with my posturing Anglophilia than with the quality of their music; but the truth is that I hear more in the Libertines’ music than in almost anyone currently recording.
To listen to the Libertines, you have to work your way past the unholy racket they make. Once you’re used to the tinny, cranked-up guitar sound and can differentiate the notes, you realize that they’re among the most melodic bands working today. “Shambolic” -- which I didn’t even know was a word until I started reading Libertines reviews -- describes them perfectly. Punk meets folk meets Britpop meets music hall meets North African dance music meets Irish reels, with lyrics cobbled together from as many disparate texts as they can find, like drunken homeless James Joyces. The Libertines are one of the few bands that seems to live by Joe Strummer’s immortal dictum “The truth is only known by guttersnipes.” They’re stuck together with spirit gum and rubbing alcohol: they’re not obviously in it for the long haul, which makes every note all the more precious.
About the lyrics: Pete Doherty and Carl Bârat are possibly the best lyricists in modern Britain. In the tradition of Noël Coward, Ray Davies, Bryan Ferry, Paul Weller, Shane MacGowan, Morrissey, and Damon Albarn, they use a combination of sharply-observed detail, keen wit, and knowing romanticism to portray a Britain -- an England, really -- captured at a specific point in time. They might be considered the final inheritors of the Stiff Records aesthetic, and particularly of Wreckless Eric, the great derelict rock & roll poet. Whether this image is true or not, they seem to be utterly unaffected, “naturals” in the most offensive sense.
Although it’s their bursts of clattering punkish frenzy that get all the press (“What a Waster,” “Up the Bracket”), their quieter, thoughtful, and more melodic songs are even stronger. “Radio America,” for example, is unimaginable coming from any other source; which is really the best thing you can say about a band. Their guitar solos/rave-ups are exemplary: what to do when you don’t know how to do very much.
And then there’s the little touches, the muttered “fuck off” at the end of the solo in “Up the Bracket,” or the dropped drumstick in “The Good Old Days,” that make their only album so far the immensely special thing it is. The Strokes don’t vary their sound much; the White Stripes career from style to style; but the Libertines have the most varied sound. The thing is, it’s not spread out between the songs, but thrown together all at once in a glorious rude mishmash. Up the Bracket makes me feel like a teenager again, just discovering music for the first time.
The Strokes are a disciplined unit, the White Stripes inspired by a mad genius, and the Hives (who I was going to write about, but realized I didn’t care for all that much) carefully plot out every bash and squeal -- but it’s the Libertines who are really a tribute to the initial burning promise of rock & roll: anyone can pick up a guitar and become a star.
The Raveonettes
Okay, so the Strokes rip off Television, the White Stripes rip off the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and the Libertines rip off the Kinks: who do the Raveonettes rip off? Why, the Jesus and Mary Chain, of course!
Except this is a Jesus and Mary Chain that is making singles with Phil Spector in 1962, a Jesus and Mary Chain composed of a Marlon Brando impersonator and a Stepford Wife. It’s a Jesus and Mary Chain that sounds genuinely happy about stuff, including love, sex, and teenage violence. It’s an obsession with 50’s B-movies and 60’s B-music filtered through late 80’s noise-pop (J&MC, sure, but also the Swans, My Bloody Valentine, and the Pixies). It’s a heady blend of surf-pop, girl group, doo wop, and the whitest rhythm & blues ever recorded -- with a swooning romanticism that would satisfy Doris Day and a raw sensuality that would disturb Madonna.
Okay, enough critic-speak. The sound of the Raveonettes is guitars pushed to the limits of feedback, and two charming voices harmonizing melodically on top. The fuzzed, white-sheet-noise guitars are all that keep the melodies and lyrics from melting in the mouth.
The first side of their album Chain Gang of Love (and it’s a remarkable feat in itself that bands like the Raveonettes have the ability to make me think in sides of albums, as though I even owned a turntable) is as perfect a slice of post-industrial bubblegum pop as has ever existed. (“That Great Love Sound” may be the best song of 2003.) There’s a clutch of songs in the middle of the album which make up, and I say this with a straight face and no evidence but that of my ears, a mini-concept album about closeted teenage homosexuality. Listen to “Little Animal” to get the idea, and then to “Dirty Eyes (Sex Don’t Sell)” -- that breathy “oh well” is the most sublime unspoken evocation of homosexuality in a three-minute pop song ever.
During the second half of the album, the jeans get a little worn and the formula starts to show through -- but just because it’s formulaic doesn’t mean it’s not also a wonderful blast of cooing buzz-pop bliss.
* * *
Possibly the best thing about all these bands is that no one will ever mistake them for anyone else. How many guitar-based bands can you say that about in 2004? It might not be a revolution, or even a movement, but it is, in my opinion, the best trend to hit the pop scene in ages.
Let the arguments begin!