Genre Wars…I Cannot Think of a Clever Title, So Fuck You.

As I often do, I spent some time this morning before work reading John Darnielle’s blog Last Plane to Jakarta, a blog about a little bit of everything. One of those everything’s that John likes to write about is music, and John is an unapologetic metal fan, which is odd considering the fact that John is a folk music icon, not metal.

I always feel out of place reading these because, frankly, I am not a metal fan at all. Call me dumb, but I just do not get it, despite trying my best to get into just about every form of metal created. Countless times, on a whim, I’ve downloaded entire Cannibal Corpse, Frostmoon, or Nile albums and found myself trying to force myself to listen and understand why so many people I know are obsessed with these bands, and every time I end up either confused, annoyed, or forced to listen to an Apples in Stereo album to clense my palate.

Honestly though, I do respect metal for the most part. While I dislike, I realize that most of the bands are technical talents, even if they all sound like emotionless robots to me. And I do happen to enjoy stoner metal, mainly based on my love of psychadelic rock and blues music.

And I do understand the purpose of metal: who doesn’t need some really pissed off, angry music every now and then? Or when you’re a teenager, music to piss off your parents. All of these are legit, despite what some critics say. And it’s why I listen to hardcore punk, at least the pissed off music part. Plus, as a fan of neofolk, I realize that most of those neofolk bands I like are incredibly influenced by metal, and some of them even influence folk metal bands.

What the whole point of this is, is to say that while it’s okay to dislike certain genres of music, I do think that you should at least be able to respect stuff that you don’t like. Metal isn’t my cup of tea, but I do give it credit for what it does right. It’s one of the things that sticks in my craw about being a fan of both “indie” music and “punk” music, that fans of both are snobbish assholes that won’t listen to anything that doesn’t give them enough street cred. Any time I express my love of a mainstream rock band like Zwan or Ben Folds, some smug asshole wearing clothes bought exclusively at thrift stores, and headphones that are 4 sizes too big, will feel the need to chime in about how anything that gets radio play inherently sucks.

It’s not just the indie world that does it, though. Most fans of rock music will scream bloody murder if someone tells them that rap really is a legitimate genre of music, and while I don’t listen to it, I agree that it is. I mean, you’ll never see me listening to a Tupac album, but I realize the brilliance of the man. And fans of mainstream pop music would never be caught dead listening to even a Ted Leo and the Pharmacists album, all because they’ve never used a Ted Leo song on Rob and Big.

However, there is one genre that I will flatout attack and refuse it’s worthiness as music, and that is modern mainstream country. Do not misunderstand what I am saying here, I have no qualms with country, and not just in the “well, I like Johnny Cash” way. There’s a lot of great country out there today, but not the garbage being played on the radio. I love Julie Holland, The Watson Twins, William Elliott Whitmore, and others. But modern mainstream country like Toby Keith, Kenny Chesny, and whatever else is just pure crap. And I say this because I work on a farm and am forced to listen to this shit all day.

It’s basically just mainstream pop music with banjos, and without the self-awareness of how unbelievably shitty it is. At least most mainstream pop acts realize how trite and dull their music is, and that it’s only being made for shitty parties and bar sluts. But mainstream country has a horrible sense of self-importance, and a fake sense of macho, which makes no sense given the fact that it may be the whiniest genre I’ve ever heard, and I listen to sadcore. To put it thusly, any music that sounds like it should be in a Ford commercial? Not worth your time.

Now listening to: The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud- A Night in Fear

Album Review #1: R.E.M.- Accelerate.

Part I: The History.  

R.E.M.’s 14th studio album Accelerate may be the most crucial album of their career. To understand the importance of this album, you must understand a little history first: in 1997, R.E.M.’s drummer Bill Berry announced that he was leaving the band. The rest of the band decided to go on as a three-piece, mostly on the insistane of Berry himself. Naturally, this news was met with some confusion from the audience.

And the first post-Berry album, Up, was met with the same type of confusion. Rather than the jangly guitars or shining folk-pop of R.E.M.’s previous albums, Up was a dark, ambient, experimental album made up mostly of electronic instruments. Fan reaction was and still is conflicted: some view the album as a beautifully dark masterpiece, while others view it as a brooding mess. But either way, one thing was certain: post-Berry R.E.M. would be a completely different R.E.M. than the public had come to know.

In 2001, the band released Reveal, the follow-up to Up. Reveal still contained most of the electronic elements of the previous album, but used them to create a warm, summer-ish atmosphere and make an album that Michael Stipe referred to as “our summer record”. While the album does an excellent job accomplishing that goal, the album still had some detractors. Critics and fans alike were slightly bothered by R.E.M.’s newfound similarities to adult-contemporary radio pop. The band’s influence was started to wane, despite the fact that just a few years earlier they were elder-statesmen with a legendary status.

But luckily, the band’s fanbase and critics were divided. Despite some negative feedback, enough of the fanbase still supported them that they weren’t completely written off. At most, they were in a slump. But then a few things happened: The band released a greatest hits compilation that turned them into a nostalgia act for the general public, as well as brought more of a spotlight on their upcoming new album: Around the Sun.

Around the Sun has, as most music fans know, gones down in history as a pretty bad album. Most of the negtive criticism was universal: R.E.M. was essentially finished. They were now becoming the Rolling Stones of alternative rock, based more on greatest hits compilations and setlists that revolve soley around the hits, while releasing medocre albums of new material that sounds exactly like the kind of the thing that the band would have used to avoid. In the span of a few years, the band would also release another greatest hits compilation and a live album, two things that did nothing but prove the naysayers correct. R.E.M.’s career and legacy were getting tarnished fast.

Part II: The Return of R.E.M. in Dublin.

In 2007, R.E.M. was inducted into the Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame, despite the detractors of the last few albums. This, some speculate, was a turning point for the band. Soon after, word came out that the band was writing new songs together as a group. Then, around May, the band announced a 5 night working reheasal where they would play through new songs for an audience in Dublin.

These shows turned the music world on it’s head. The new songs had a kick to them that R.E.M. hadn’t put in their music since 1996’s New Adventures in Hi Fi and the band sounded more enthusiastic than they had in almost 10 years. In addition to that, the band played older songs from their days as an indie band for the first time since the late 80’s/early 90’s, one song in particular (Harborcoat) hadn’t been played live since 1985. The band was telling the world that they were back.

News spread quick, and soon the internet was in a massive state of buzz over the shows. The cellphone videos of the new and old songs became some of the most-watched videos on Youtube that summer, and critics everywhere were hailing that R.E.M. was back on top as one of the best bands in the world. R.E.M. quickly recorded the songs in 3 one week long studio sessons, in order to keep the album feeling raw and immediate.

Then on January 1st, 2008, the band announced to the world that on April 1st, the new album Accelerate would hit shelves. Anticipation for the album was the most R.E.M. had seen in years. News sources everywhere begged for any kind of tidbit on the album.

In the run up to the release, R.E.M. talked at length about the promises that they had made for the new album. While they refused to talk about the material itself in detail, in order to not create false hopes, they did say that they were more excited about this than any album they’ve released in 10 years, and even admitted to that Around the Sun was a poor, uneven album.

Not only did they talk of their new changes in the press, but they proved them onstage. At their show at the South By Southwest festival, the first show since the release date announcement, the band performed a revealing setlist: gone were set staples “Losing My Religion” and “The One I Love”,  two of the band’s biggest singles, and in their place came obscure goodies like “Auctioneer (Another Engine)”, “Second Guessing,” alongside classic hits like “Fall on Me” that haven’t been played live in years. With this show, R.E.M. announced that they’re back and ready to show the world what they’re made of. But, this of course hinges on the new album itself…

 Part III: The Review.

Accelerate does indeed live up to much of it’s hype. It is a cohesive return to form for R.E.M., with songs that sound spirited and truly energetic in a way no R.E.M. album has in the past 10 years. But unlike much of the hype states, it’s not a mind blowing album that will change music in 2008.

The modesty of the album is half of it’s strength. It’s not a band trying to show off it’s chops, but instead a band doing it’s thing the best they can and taking the listener along for the ride. Modesty was always one of R.E.M.’s original selling points, that they were a band that made music because they wanted to make it, not to get famous or to make points. They’re back to being a band of guys rather than a band of superstars. They’ve returned to their roots in an honest, respectable way.

Of course one of the biggest concerns was if the album would just be a simple throwback to the band’s glory days rather than a legitimate artistic statement. And yes, there are a few reminders of yesteryear, such as the jangly guitar on songs like “Supernatural Superserious” or “Hollowman,” but as a whole the album is much more than simply a nostalgia trip. The album expands upon R.E.M.’s classic sound while at the same time embracing it. “Hollowman” sounds like a cross between Reckoning era jangle pop and New Adventures in Hi Fi mainstream rock, while “Mr. Richards” has much in common with Document’s “Finest Worksong” without sounding like a re-tread.

Even the folk numbers on the album sound much more organic and fiery. “Houston” is a dissedent policial piece that features some of the murky atmosphere of earlier R.E.M. records, while “Until the Day is Done” is a perfect example of a classic R.E.M. folk number. They don’t sound overproduced like the folk numbers on the band’s past 3 albums, but instead sound organic and real, something that had been lacking from R.E.M.’s music for a number of years.

Overall, Accelerate is a strong record that’s worthy of most of the praise and attention it’s gotten. While not perfect, it works as a cohesive piece of energetic art that’s able to celebrate itself without being cocky. It’s fun and intelligent at the same time, and a breath of fresh air to the mainstream rock scene. Essentially, it’s exactly what an R.E.M. album should be.

Now listening to: Woodie Guthrie- Dust Bowl Ballads.

Pedro the Christian.

One of my favorite bands over the past 2-3 years has been Pedro the Lion. From the first time that I heard It’s Hard to Find a Friend, I was in love. The laid back style, the brilliantly descriptive lyrics, and the dreamy vocals all appealed to me in ways that few bands have before and since.

But after listening to them for a while, a lot of people starting mentioning to me things like “yeah, they’re that Christian band. Fuck that,” and other things of the like. Now, I’m not a Christian. I’m fairly agnostic, leaning towards atheism. I have a lot of problems with the way Christianity works, as do a lot of people who grow up in small church towns where everybody there hates each other and gossips as if it’s their job to do so. But the music of Pedro the Lion never really struck me as Christian music, despite the fact that Bazan is a strict Christian and that there are many religious allusions in his music.

To me, Christian music is something that sets out to convert people. Music that constantly needs to invoke the word of God similarly to the way that Ian MacKaye sets out to invoke the word of sobriety. Nothing wrong with either one, but to those that drink or smoke pot, straight edge music may not appeal to others, just like Christian music won’t appeal to those that aren’t Christians. Christian music is much more obedient to Christianity. It’s not about asking questions. It’s about following.

And Pedro the Lion/David Bazan is not about that. In fact, I’d say that David Bazan does a better job at explaining the downfalls of Christianity in a way that few others have been able to do. He does it with a clarity and knowledge that even bands like Bad Religion, whose frontman has a PH.D and wrote his thesis on atheism, have trouble doing. My theory is that because religion is so close to Bazan’s heart that he has an intimate knowledge that others may not have. Look at it this way: a democrat criticizing the Democratic party would have much more bite to it because it’s coming from an insider, right? So a Christian criticizing Christianity means more than an atheist doing so.

One Pedro the Lion song that hit me extra hard in terms of the way it took on religion was “Suspect Fled the Scene” off of It’s Hard to Find a Friend:

Old friend
Your horse is ready to ride when morning comes
From this church town
Where damning rumors drip from holy tongues

And it won’t go away
It won’t go away
It won’t go away

Fever to find the scapegoat fast and fix the blame
I know you never meant to leave the way you came

And it won’t go away
It won’t go away
It won’t go away

Looking down from that stain glass steeple
They’ll never know why you had to run

Ride as fast as you can
They’re shooting to kill

I’ve always seen this song as an attack on exactly the thing that caused me to start questioning religion. In a small church town, everyone that goes to said church knows everything about each other. Because of this, people begin to judge, gossip, and generally treat others like dirt because they feel that they aren’t nearly pious enough to be allowed to worship with them. Rather than helping others to become better people, they talk about them behind their backs. All the good, moral churchwives convene and inform the others of who that they should look down at, who they should ignore, and who is undeserving of going to their church. People don’t take the time to understand why someone isn’t as faithful as everyone else, or take the time to understand why they may be questioning their beliefs. Because to the types of people that fill these churches, all that matters is whether or not you’re as good as they are.

Being in an environment like that is more or less what drove me away from religion. You can only sit and watch so many sermons about brotherly love and helping those among you fall onto deaf ears, speeches given to those that have no desire in actually listening to them because outside of that little room, the actual teaching of the Bible do not matter, only who looks like they follow the teachings the best.

Of course, I’d have to be an idiot if I thought all religious people and churches worked this way. Assuming that a small subgroup of people represent the motives of an entire movement is wrong. I’m really not anti-Christian, but when you’re brought up in a church that didn’t stand by it’s own beliefs, having the kind of adverse reaction that I had is expected.

Pedro the Lion articulate that in a way that even the most famously atheistic bands can’t do. Being an insider bashing the same institution or group that they’re inside gives it an extra bite, an extra umph. This is why I really don’t think you can call Pedro the Lion a Christian band. A Christian band wouldn’t attack Christianity in such a poignant way, would it? A Christian band would probably try their best to avoid such an attack, and focus on the positive aspects of faith.

That doesn’t mean a Chrisitan band might not deal with a personal struggle over faith. In fact, I’m willing to bet that plays a significant part in Christian rock lyrics. Every Christian, no matter how devoted they are, will go through a period of questioning their own faith, and music is usually and outlet for those kinds of personal crises.

I’m not bashing Christian rock. Personally, I don’t like most of it, but it does have benefits and positive aspects to it, especially to those that have some sort of faith. But at the same time, calling a band a Christian band usually has pretty big significance to it. Calling a band a Christian band is a way to kill off 50% of the band’s fanbase and then add another 50% of peole that used to hate them. Which is exactly why people like myself discuss which bands are Christian and which aren’t, or which bands discuss faith and which don’t. It’s an important issue in life and in music.

Now listening to: The Minutemen- What Makes a Man Start Fires

Death Cab for Juno.

This winter, Fox Searchlight pictures released yet another movie in their “quirky indie comedy” department. The movie was called Juno. It was about a girl who gets pregnant, and chances are you’ve seen it. Because if you haven’t, I’m surprised, seeing as I don’t know a single person who hasn’t at this point. These kinds of “quirky indie comedies” have become quite the new trend. Little Miss Sunshine, Garden State, and Juno have all become smash hits among the teenage crowd over the past years, and honestly, I’m getting slightly worried.

None of these three movies were actually that bad. As a Steve Carrell fan, I enjoyed Little Miss Sunshine, and I did like most of Juno despite some horrible dialouge…I swear if I ever hear the saying “honest to blog” in real life, someone will end up in some serious pain…but it wasn’t all that bad. Garden State, however, generally sucked and has to be one of the most overhyped comedy/dramas in recent years. But this isn’t even what bugs me.

What bugs me is the increasing trend of the “indie ____ (fill in the blank)”. Fill the blank with movie, music, TV show, or whatever else you’d like. For example, if you’d like to put “mittens” in there, that could work too. Anyway, “indie” as a genre is generally a false term. Looking at “indie” rock as a whole genre is wrong. Saying that, for example, Boredoms and Iron and Wine are in the same genre is just not true. “Indie” is a blanket term describing a musical or artistical aesthetic. An aesthetic that exists outside of the maintream terms of art such as movies and film. Independent films or music is generally more daring and creative when compared to it’s mainstream counterpoints. It’s the difference between Ben Folds and The Fray. Ben Folds is willing to try out new ideas, experiment, and challenge himself and his audience. The Fray want to give you pre-packaged crap that you’ve heard a million times before.

That’s exactly what you’re getting with movies like Juno. All the producers behind the movie did was dillute the colors a bit, throw a few references to Sonic Youth and the Melvins, all underscored with a soundtrack by Belle and Sebastian, Cat Power, and the Moldy Peaches. Aside from that, the movie is as conventional as everything else being pumped into your theater. Again, that’s not to say it’s a bad movie, but it’s also not what it advertises itself as. A real, genuine independant movie would not be screening at your local multiplex. You’d have to dig deep to find it. Juno, however, is playing at your local multiplex. And not due to word of mouth alone.

The reason this bugs me is that you know after the success of Juno that we’re going to start seeing more and more of these “quirky indie comedies”. And with every single one of those, a little bit about what makes the indie aesthetic so interesting will be muddled together with something that’s really just the usual mainstream dressed up in indie clothing. This is when the “indie” aesthetic become compromised into a trendy new style, being sold to the masses via generic teen flicks that use soundtracks that include Built to Spill, Iron and Wine, and Minus the Bear to build up some “indie cred”. Personally, none of these movies will ever get “indie cred” until they feature something like Xiu Xiu in the soundtrack. I would kill to hear “Fabulous Muscles” or “Boy Soprano” being played over a scene of a quirky teenager walking doing the street doing quirky things.

When you start selling indie as a trend, as a style, or as anything more than a general aesthetic, that cheapens it a little bit. This October, I went to see David Bazan play a show in Cleveland, and every fucking kid there was dressed the exact same: faded jeans, incredibly tight button up checkered shirts, those weird conductor hats worn slightly sideways, and every single one of them had that awkward looking beard thing doing on. Anyone who wasn’t dressed like that got glared at. Where the fuck is the community, the feeling of “we all like the same music, we all connect with it”? It’s slipping away to make room for fashion statements and indier than thou attitudes that essentially killed other underground aesthetics such as punk rock, metal, and no wave. This is what happens when an aesthetic starts to begin being sold to people as something else. It become diluded into something else, something much more unpleasent.

The idea that you have to dress or look a certain way to listen to independent music only arose after it became a mainstream commodity, with indie-lite bands being sold to teenage kids through TV shows like The O.C. and other generic teen dramas. Only once marketing companies started saying “hey, that fat douche from Death Cab For Cutie dressed like this! We could sell that to people!” did it start to stop being an aesthetic and start being a genre, a description of a style of mid-tempo pop music.

Mainly, the reason this bothers me is because of the fact that indie music, unlike so many other underground music scenes, has existed for years without really being compromised in any major way. While various movements of the indie scene such as punk rock, grunge, or industrial start to grow in size and become mainstream genres, the movement as a whole had never really been brought up into the spotlight. Attention was paid to specific generes, not the aesthetic as a whole. And this is why the scene was able to constantly evolve and re-charge itself every couple of years. When R.E.M. and Sonic Youth became popular, the Red House Painters and Pavement took over to create new styles of independant music. When they got popular, Elliott Smith and Pedro the Lion stepped up to do their part. It’s a constant process that worked because indie was never seen as an actual genre, just a general outline on how the bands approached their style. “Indie” was just anything under the radar rather than a sound.

This changed around 2004 when Death Cab For Cutie began growing in popularity after the success of the Postal Service as well as the use of Death Cab on various bland teen soap operas. Death Cab had long been the darlings of the underground, something which baffles the mind since they’ve never been much more than mediocre despite the massive amounts of buttlove that Something About Aeroplanes, We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes, and Transatlanticism got from the indie community.

Death Cab are the musical version of Juno: Death Cab were never much more than a low-fi version of most generic alternative rock bands. While most of their albums are at least listenable, some of them even have songs that I do readily admit to liking quite a bit, they’re still nothing really that special or unique. Yet people that don’t really listen to indie music proclaimed them to be one of, if not the, most amazing and creative indie bands to ever exist. This, of course, is not true. Because of Death Cab’s relative safeness, they became superstars when they jumped to a major label and released Plans, an album that stylistically does nothing different than their early work, but has better production value, and apparently this is the same as being either amazing or horrible, depending on who you’re talking to. Anyway, when Death Cab blew up and became one of the biggest bands in rock during 2005, they became synonomous with indie. This, of course, is what’s killing indie.

Death Cab’s sound has now become the standard sound of what people think indie should sound like. This, in turn, leads to other bands developing a sound similar to this in order to reach further mainstream popularity. And like all rapidly growing snowballs, this leads to more and more bands trying to sound like this, which makes people think that indie has a unifying sound, which in the classic sense, it does not. In turn, this makes indie much more marketable to the masses. No longer will people have to know the difference between post-rock and twee-pop, because those terms are irrelevant. Indie is no longer an aesthetic, but mid-tempo pop music being made by guys wearing checkered shirts.

Now that indie can be sold, there’s a chance that it may die out to some degree. People may grow tired or irritated with it, and stop trying to discover new bands because they get tired of the more watered down stuff. I know speaking about myself personally, I held out on modern indie music because I assumed that it all sounded like Death Cab. I was wrong in my assumption, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not the common assumption being made.  And that doesn’t mean that there can’t be anything done about it.

It’s not that I’m the snob who doesn’t want anyone new to listen to my music, or the person who doesn’t like when bands I listen to get popular. I really do generally enjoy that I know someone who went out and bought If You’re Feeling Sinister by Belle and Sebastian after seeing Juno, and I like knowing that friends of mine are listening to good music like Sonic Youth and The Apples in Stereo rather than crap like Nickleback and Hinder. But at the same time, I do dislike when something that I deeply care about gets misrepresented and sold as a package by people who don’t understand it to people that understand it even less. And it’s not even that I dislike the idea of people getting into good music through listening to stuff like Death Cab or seeing shitty movies like Garden State. Hell, I got into punk/indie/alternative/ect. by listening to Blink 182 and Green Day in Junior High. Like I said, I just dislike when something gets misrepresented and called something that it isn’t.

Currently listening to: The Sea and Cake- One Bedroom.