Zoilus on the problem with indie rock

Carl Wilson (Zoilus) has an article in Slate in response to SF/J's much debated article in the New Yorker, and I for one think he nails the issue of indie rock's retreat into, eh, "whiteness" better than SFJ did. (Note: there are two pages). Key points:

• the excision of blues-rock from "underground" rock goes back to the '70s with the demise of top 40 radio, and '80s origins of American punk and especially hardcore (though, there are exceptions here too, of course)

• SFJ cherry-picks exceptions selectively, overlooking several important ones

• "if gangsta rap marked a break, it was because hip-hop became coded to reflect the retrenchment of the "Two Americas""

• the "trouble with indie rock" may have far more to do with the widening gap between rich and poor than black-white

• while it may be a cliche, "the particular kind of indie rock Frere-Jones complains about is more blatantly upper-middle class and liberal-arts-college-based, and less self-aware or politicized about it"

• their music is bookish and nerdy rather than body-centered, and "shows off" "its chops via its range of allusions and high concepts with the kind of fluency both postmodern pop culture and higher education teach its listeners to admire"(side note: don't mistake bookish and nerdy for smart and intelligent, and also note that it does not necessarily have to be one or the other. Both rap/soul and indie artists have shown admirable "chops" in both body and mind at the same time.)

• "this university demographic often includes a sojourn in extended adolescence" where the "musical consequences might include an open but less urgent expression of sexuality, or else a leaning to the twee, sexless, childhood nostalgia that many older critics (...) find puzzling and irritating."

But go read the whole thing. It holds together much better than I could ever hope to summarize in bullet points.

Update: a few quick things before I lay this topic to rest, at least for now:

a). although like SFJ, I tend to prefer music with "swing, some empty space and palpable bass frequencies" i.e. the American tradition, I don't necessarily see that as absolute necessities, and like Carl Wilson, I like some of the bands SFJ points his finger to.

b). I'm no apologist for indie. There's plenty of bad music out there, and not just indie. But I also think the reason why is not solely down to a lack of "miscegenation".

c). I agree that indie has a problem - culturally first and sonically second, perhaps - but as you may have figured out, I think some of SFJ's examples are off the mark and also that Wilson did a better job of figuring out what the problem is.

Idolator gets cranky, then mocks some more

More on SF/J in a post on Idolator today, where Jess Harvella answers some worried readers.

"People thinking this is me saying that indie rock should somehow be held exempt from its often dodgy racial politics--this wounds me. Forget indie rock, there's not a single aspect of white--and especially white male--culture that doesn't need to be mercilessly picked apart for both the covert and overt, conscious and unconscious racism that it perpetuates every day! This seems self-evident, but you'd be surprised how many white men are content to let their privilege go unchecked. (Wait, no you wouldn't.) And indie rock is a subset of white maledom that's notorious about letting its cultural assumptions go unexamined.

So I understand why Frere-Jones wrote the piece. I just happen to think the piece was bullshit, especially his bizonkers internal inconsistencies and wild generalizations over genre. Indie rock's race issues are more cultural than sonic, and though musical choices are always tied up with a musician's social outlook, someone choosing to emulate Bruce Springsteen rather than Larry Blackmon hardly constitutes a cultural crime. Indie rock's cultural, social, racial, and sexual hangups are not going to be resolved via the forced "miscengenation" Frere-Jones is looking for." (More here).

Agreed, and see my previous post for my comments on the inconsitencies and generalizations of SF/J's article.

Ps.: Gotta love the mocking 1-100 SF/J-score, too. Here's one of the rules: "- Subtract 15 points for slap bass. (That's a red herring.)". Big laugh.

Everybody's talking 'bout....

...S/FJ's piece in the New Yorker, where he laments the lack of soul in indie-rock. While it took some time before any reaction to the article appeared on the net, these last few days discussions have been fierce in this I love Music-thread, and yesterday Idolator picked it up, albeit half jokingly, by giving a SFJ-score to bands on the on-going (and largely indie) CMJ-fest.

Now, I admire a lot of SFJ's writing. I think he is a good critic, and some of our tastes are similar - he loves the Minutemen, as do I. He loves the Clash, ditto. We share an affinity for a lot of post-punk (which, btw, I refuse to give up on. I liked Gof4 before the post-punk revival, and I'll continue to do so. Get off your "that's SO yesterday" horse already).

One of the reasons I like these bands, and the reason I mention these bands right now, is their prominent use of the bass. The propulsion, juice, pulse, and ooomph of the bass, the way it can make the music swing. This prominent use of the bass may have its roots in largely black American strains of music: jazz, soul, dub, and funk. Their use of the bass is just of of several signs that these bands mixed a whole set of different influences, both "black" and "white", to create their sounds and music. SFJ notes that this mixing (I'll come back to his term later on) is part of what made these bands and other music that he loves so important and he thinks it is sadly lacking in modern indie-rock. Indie-rock, he says, has since the 90's strayed away from the African-American influences and instead turned to "whiter" influences making it "soul-less" or "less interesting". (Norwegian readers, note the similarities to some of Ole Martin Ihle's critique, but also note the significant difference: SFJ loves punk and early indie, which I fear Ihle isn't open enough to appreciate. To SFJ, indie doesn't mean "soul-less", it's just become soul-less).

Some of the discussions on SFJ's article has been about this point: indie's lack of "black" influences. On the basis of the article, that's an obvious thing to discuss. If you listen to the podcast which accompanied the article you get the feeling that he also thinks it is lacking the other way around. There is no mixing of sounds in neither indie nor hip-hop these days. Also note that he says that the sounds of "black" and "white" music used to be more difficult to pin down before, especially in the 60's and 70's, rather it was an American music where influnces had been fused over the years albeit with a distinctly rhythmic influence from Africa. To this point I agree, but it seems to have escaped the vast majority of those who have engaged themselves in the discussions over the article.

I feel that on one hand the article is just SFJ saying that he misses a Minutemen or a Clash in modern rock/indie. Fair enough, but there are several problems with the whole thing. I'll go over them one-by-one.

• His word for mixing of styles or influences is miscegenation, a highly loaded term originally intended to be derogatory.

• Taking a few current indie bands to mean all current indie is reductionist and false. Suerly there are exceptions to the rule. Also, what is the rule, or, what is indie?
  

• SFJ traces the problem as he sees it back to Pavement. Now, I love Pavement for several reasons, but my main point here is this: Can it not be said that Pavement's odd twists and turns, pauses and off notes are not so much a sign of lack of ability (you'll never convince me that Malkmus is a bad guitar player), but may rather be attributed to a delibertate choice of style and moreover be seen as an influence of Thelonious Monk (which has also been pointed out by Christgau, among others), a man who used odd twists and turns himself to create a very personal voice within jazz?

• It's difficult to understand why SFJ uses a band he likes, Arcade Fire, as proof of the problem. By doing so he freely admits that this mixing of styles that he misses is not the be-all of rock/indie, thereby making me think the "problem" - sonically - is not as big as the article, all four pages of it, would suggest.

• The article is not well written. SFJ's point comes across better in the podcast, where he explains, as I noted above, that American music didn't use to be "black" or "white", but a potent mix of both and that this is something he misses.

All this makes me think that made SFJ just wanted to cause a stir, to start an argument. It seems to have worked. He has answered a few e-mails on the blog on the online edition of the New Yorker. I've mentioned the I Love Music thread and the Idolator-thingy. Tom Breihan has a conversation with Rob Harvilla on his blog for the Village Voice, and Carl Wilson has announced that he'll have a response in Slate today, where he'll pull class into the argument. And now there's me, of course.

Everyone should get a copy

The new Oxford American's 9th Annual Music Issue comes highly recommended from fellow bloggers and knowledgable book store clerks alike. Judging by the table of contents, there's no reason why one shouldn't go get a copy. Off course you want to read in-depth pieces on the Clovers, Dwight Yoakam, and Thelonious Monk. Add to the writing a pretty decent twenty-six track CD, and you know you have to order your copy right now.

Sonny Rollins (new) Trio at Carnegie Hall, Sept. 18 2007

Francis Davis was there. (As were a host of music celebs, if we're to believe him).

Catching up with jazz

I was clicking through my jazz blog links earlier today, and found that I've been missing some interesting stuff the last few weeks. be.jazz has posted a few excerpts of a keynote address at the 2006 Guelph Jazz Festival and Colloquium by Greg Tate which asks the question of where jazz is giong for black musicians (and possibly a black audience for progressive jazz). Similar questions were asked a while ago which I tentatively gave my views on here. be.jazz picked it up from Soundslope, I belive, where I stumbled upon a link to a blog devoted to David S. Ware's projects, which in turn led me to this recording of "Aquarian Sound". The vid is a bit out of sync, but who gives a flying f***. This is simply amazing.

David S Ware - Aquarian sound
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Against Me! and Future of the Left double bill

You may have noticed, if you ever pop by my favorites pages, that I like Against Me!'s New Wave. I really like it. One thing I noticed, which Steinar also picked up on, is that Tom Gabel sometimes sounds like D. Boon with his matter-of-fact lyrics and no fuss delivery. The opening couplet of "Americans Abroad" is especially Boon-like in the way he crams the words " Golden Arches rising above the next overpass / these horizons are endless" into a short space of time because he needs to say it. More on the Minutemen in the following posts (Or at least I plan to. I have a few thoughts on Mike Fournier's 33 1/3 book on Double Nickles... for one).

For now I'm looking forward to Against Me!'s upcoming gig in Oslo, where Future of the Left, whose Curses I've been listening to lately, are supporting.