In January second’s New York Times article, entitled “Want a Hit? Keep It Simple,” Jon Pareles argues that, increasingly, “indie rock” seems to be suffering what Lisa Simpson would call “a dumbening.” If it’s somehow escaped notice, I am, generally speaking, never hesitant to accuse something of being preposterously stupid, degradingly clichéd, or so terrifyingly predictable as to be physically upsetting. Like any growing adult, I too assume that the world is getting stupider because of “these kids today.” And like most other people, whether or not they’ll admit it, I’m pretty sure my judgment is keener than others’. But in this case, I’m not ready to unholster my insult pistol to join Pareles’ side in a shootout; in this case, I assume my judgment is keener than his. I don’t agree with him, his point. It’s unfair and preposterous to make such a sweeping claim of “indie rock” as his: that it is “lagging, as it typically does, behind the cycles of hip-hop,” and implying that it has reached an analagous “anti-intellectual trough” to the one he alleges hip hop went through “in the mid-2000s when crunk was king.” Besides the assumption that hip hop, “largely thanks to Mr. West’s best-selling example,” has emerged from that trough, articulating “complex thoughts on celebrity, stray political observations, personal confessions and…psychological complexity,” there are so many things wrong with his argument it is, in fact, hard to know where to begin.
Pareles opens his piece with a sentiment that, at first, seems reasonably savvy. “Lately,” he says “I’ve been having a recurring sinking sensation. A hit on the radio gets my attention and doesn’t repay it; it adds up to little more than a dull thumping Eurodisco beat and a robo-tuned voice repeating an inane hook.” I say this seems savvy because, regardless of its assured veracity, if Pareles is just now realizing that this is the condition of pop radio, he’s not qualified to be a music listener, much less a music critic. Sure, auto-tune wasn’t a factor in 1988 or 1996, but based on this statement, I’d guess he somehow missed disco, the ‘eighties, and the ‘nineties. He makes what is a sensible claim of pop radio, again one he should’ve caught onto long ago: “Predictable catchiness is all that matters, nobody’s looking for much content, and current audience research tells radio stations that robo-voices and simple beats are the bubble gum du jour.” Predictable catchiness is all that’s ever mattered with pop radio; content has never been an issue. Have any of you ever really sat down and considered “Thriller”—I mean really considered the content there? Take a moment. I’ll wait.
Zombies! No, wait, sweetheart, it’s just a film. Are you scared? I can hold you. Hey, wanna fuck? I’m exciting in the sack. No, wait, maybe we’d better just hide: it might be real zombies again—this creepy white guy just said so and, for some reason, I instinctually fear him.
And we’re back. Pareles is worried, however, not about the condition of pop radio (which he later lauds, claiming it “hasn’t ruled out craftsmanship entirely. Taylor Swift, 20 years old and now writing her own songs on albums that— rare in the 21st century—sell millions of copies, comes up with natural melodies and moments of elegance” (go ahead and click that link, I’ll wait), but instead about the condition of “indie rock” radio, suffering that dumbening. He heads to a club for some reinvigorating cleverness and sadly discovers that “indie rock” is doomed because, as he steps indoors, “what [does he] hear but a beat straight out of an old girl-group record, some familiar doo-wop chords and songs like Best Coast’s rudimentary (but enjoyable) ‘I Want To,’ which repeatedly declares, without fear of ambiguity, ‘I want you so much.’” Synechdocically speaking, Best Coast is able to stand in for just about every “indie rock” artist out there—he excepts those artists capable of making “[t]he grand album-length statement and the rhapsodic, convoluted song,” citing “Arcade Fire, Titus Andronicus, Joanna Newsom,” and for good measure, Ne-Yo and Kanye West (who are neither “indie” nor “rock”). He says of these five artists, “musicians like those come across now as holdouts and outright contrarians against the dominance of three-minute, two-idea tracks—of the pop song as little more than a sound effect and a sound bite.” And he wonders, “wait a minute. ['Indie rock'] is starting to sound like bubble gum too…[i]s everybody dumbing down?”
Pareles makes a byzantine series of observations, some valid, some irrelevant, the more insightful and egregiously idiotic of which I’ll try to sum up in one more paragraph because, frankly, I wish you’d just read the article. I’m sick of quoting him and I want my turn to talk. I like hearing myself talk. And if you hadn’t been so damned lazy, I could have been listening to myself talk already. So. Pareles insightfully observes that contemporary music may be a reflection of contemporary concerns: “Depression-era swing and 1970s disco responded to listeners’ yearning for a danceable beat and an uncomplicated, upbeat message to propel them through hard times.” “I Will Survive,” indeed. Then he claims that, somehow, Depression-era swing and 1970s disco are just inherently superior to anything chipper and shallow being released today. He does not attempt to justify or explain this rationale, so I assume his ratiocinative process went something like this: “All smart people know jazz is good, and things were better in the 1970s when there was still such a thing as ‘originality.’” If that last bit seems sensible to you, think back on the bigger picture and ask yourself: did all originality really suddenly disappear in the last 30 of 200,000 years of human existence?
Pareles fairly observes that “[c]oncision, admittedly, is the essence of pop,” then goes on to lay out a cornucopia of examples of concision done well: “all the vocal fireworks of Aretha Franklin, all the rhythmic intensity of James Brown, all the electroacoustic metamorphoses of Radiohead, all the colliding samples of Public Enemy, all the internal rhymes, comedy and psychodrama of Eminem in his prime.” Having taken all of those names from 2010s “Stuff White People Like” page-a-day calendar, I’m pretty sure Pareles is, with that sentence, doing little more than attempting to prove how bohemian and open-minded he is. He likes coloreds from the ‘sixties; and ironic violence from the Revival of the Mesh Hat Era; he understands and appreciates purer, serious old school rap about serious issues; and, of course, Radiohead. Wow. If I didn’t already have a moustache ironically tattooed along my index finger, I’d have the name Jon Pareles inked there.
Finally, he makes a pair of statements that, were I not already hackle-backed, would have caused raging hard-ons in all the little hairs on my neck. He claims that Kesha [sic] (which I believe, Mr Pareles, is correctly typographically set as “Ke$ha”) crafts excellent “songs about partying: seduction and rejection, hooking up, getting drunk and getting wild” which are “smart pop storytelling in a circumscribed realm.” Later, he asserts that “[b]ands that used to bristle with cacophony—like Deerhunter and No Age—cut back on it last year, reflecting either a newfound serenity or a longing for accessibility (or both).” The implication is most certainly that both bands’ 2010 records are far shittier products than their precursors.
Okay. Here comes the part where I get to talk. If I follow correctly the aforementioned byzantine logic of Pareles, “indie rock” is (since about 2009) in an intellectual and sonic downward spiral because 1) its songs are influenced by other, older styles of music (which, I suppose, is not the case with Aretha, James, Radiohead, or the sample-heavy Public Enemy); 2) its songs have disappointingly uncomplicated lyrics (which is not the case with Taylor Swift); 3) its songs are too short and spartan—unless they’re too long and pretentiously complex, which is equally problematic; and 4) they’re too accessible (unlike Ke$ha, I guess).
First thing’s first: I’ve been placing “indie rock” in quotes throughout this essay, and will continue to do so, because Pareles is an idiot to think that such a beast exists at all, much less that it’s a genre of which any band or bands are representative. “Indie rock,” for those who’ve never taken time to parse the phrase, literally means “independent rock & roll,” and the genre technically comprises any band not signed by whatever passes for a “major” label these days (despite the fact that, thanks to torrent files and customer loyalty, I’d bet that little guys like 4AD or Merge have sales that can compete with some of the non-indie “major” label imprints), and which makes anything that is, I guess, not identifiably classical music, opera, jazz, or hip hop (those being the styles I can, at this second, think of which have never really been subsumed by the broad category “rock music”). You may already see the problem: this definition is already pretty nebulous.
Pareles’ prenominate examples of still-dignified “indie rock” artists should give you an idea of the illogic inherent in trying to bundle such music together as a genre of which one may speak in toto: Arcade Fire (have made three discs of multi-instrumental, yet quite straightforward rock music about the ennui and idiocy of contemporary life), Titus Andronicus (postpunkish meandering hard-edged rock outfit whose second LP, The Monitor, comprises radio-unfriendly six-to-eight minute songs relating to Civil War themes, which are bridged by crackly readings from Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address”), and Joanna Newsom (three albums deep into an increasingly self-indulgent and strange baroque bastard child of chamber music and folk rock, driven by solo harp, piano, and harpsichord) have little in common as musicians, except that all of them take themselves seriously. If you’re unfamiliar with all three acts, this won’t accurately convey the difference to you. If you are, then you already understood. But hell, as an experiment, everyone should try this: spin Neon Bible, The Monitor, and Ys back-to-back-to-back, then tell me that all three artists are representative of not only the same genre, but the same genre that Best Coast is defiling with Crazy for You.
I’m reminded of a similar issue faced during my teenage years, when “Alternative Rock” saved us from Bon Jovi, New Edition, and “Walk That Dinosaur.” I remember buying in ’93 a compilation cassette entitled No Alternative. Its liner notes explained its purpose as, twofold: to raise loot for AIDS research (“there’s no alternative”), and to call out and dispute the idiotic idea that “Alternative Rock”—a hot and oft-bandied about phrase of the day—could be considered a musical style with consistent and distinguishable characteristics (“there’s no such thing as Alternative”). Ranging from Goo Goo Dolls to Nirvana, from Smashing Pumpkins to The Beastie Boys, from Soundgarden to Sarah MacLachlan—six artists all, at one time or another, labeled as “Alternative”—the lineup did a decent job of accomplishing the second of those ends.
There is no such thing as “indie rock.” Death Cab for Cutie, what would to kids today probably be considered a seminal band of the “indie rock” genre, was in ’04 signed from Barsuk to a major label. With Plans and Narrow Stairs, released on Atlantic, do they still make “indie rock”? Animal Collective’s art, one of the most innovative and well-known of what Pareles calls the “blog-beloved” groups out there, and the solo work of one of its core members, Noah Lennox (Panda Bear), draws variously and heavily on ’50s pop, ’60s harmonies, ’70s psychadelica, ’80s dreampop, and doesn’t resemble “rock” music like The Stones or The Beatles. But if the areligious church hall chamber music jams of Joanna Newsom put her on the list of “indie rockers,” shouldn’t Animal Collective be there, too? What about Nine Inch Nails? You can’t get much further away from Ms. Newsom without moving into Black Metal country. After seventeen years with a major label, Trent Reznor began self-releasing his records. But Nine Inch Nails is responsible for making mad ducats for major labels between 1992 and 2007, and doing so by making accessible the, to use Pareles’ words, bristlingly cacophonic “industrial” rock like Cabaret Voltaire, Skinny Puppy, and Throbbing Gristle. Is Nine Inch Nails now an “indie rock” act? None of these artists sound remotely alike. But as “indie rock” auteurs—at least some part of the oeuvre of every one of ‘em is, by definition, “indie rock”—Pareles implies that they’re all equally afflicted by a certain self-degradation of quality, all are suffering the same dumbening so aptly emblematized by Best Coast. Best Coast: lo-fi Petula Clark- & Beach Boys-influenced guitar pop about breakups and pot smoking, indeed released on an independent label (Mexican Summer).
So what of Best Coast?
Pareles’ article seems to entirely miss the point of Best Coast. Notwithstanding the fact that they’re not representative of the “genre,” I don’t recall anyone anywhere—Pitchfork, Stereogum, Rolling Stone, Spin, Filter, AMG, Robert fucking Christgau (a moron whose death—because he doesn’t seem to want to retire—I eagerly await)—claiming that the trio was avant garde, that the debut album was revolutionary, groundbreaking, breathtaking art. In fact, most of the reviews, boiled down come to the same conclusion: it is bubblegum. Pareles is right. But what it is, is bubblegum for people who hate the same flavor of bubblegum most everyone else is chewing. Sick of the same lousy Doublemint everyone else is chamming, Best Coast is a nice stiff pack of Juicy Fruit. My iTunes library—organized and tagged to such a meticulous degree that, sometimes, I actually wish I had houseguests so I could show off the bloody thing—contains plenty of what I’d consider revolutionary, groundbreaking, breathtaking art. I have oodles of LPs which I’d describe as being “grand album-length statement[s]” comprising “rhapsodic, convoluted song[s].” If bubblegum is music that’s all empty calories and quickly disappearing flavor, then my iTunes library is riddled with its opposite, the musical equivalent of foie gras. If the aforementioned and almost universally hailed “blog-beloved” staple act Animal Collective’s bewildering lucid dream of an “indie rock” LP Merriweather Post Pavilion doesn’t cut the mustard, how about The Decemberists’ Picaresque? That one features a nine-minute accordion-driven sea chanty called “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” and an eight-minute sonically schizoid narrative about the lives of estranged CIA spy lovers. Or we could go with Mew’s And the Glass-Handed Kites, a fourteen-song ordeal that works well as fourteen songs, but better as one fourteen-movement performance—like a high-concept “Bohemian Rhapsody” that goes on for a little over an hour. All of these records have been released since Pareles’ alleged dumbening began. But though I love these albums, it can’t all be rhapsodic convolution.
I own all three of Joanna Newsom’s LPs, but what Pareles neglects to mention in his piece is that, aside from its three-disc grandiosity, her 2010 Have One on Me isn’t really all that good. It received high marks for the same reason as Kanye West’s Twisted Fantasy: because it was supposed to receive high marks. Have One isn’t as baroque and esoteric as Ys and it’s not nearly as surprising/disarming and bizarre Milk-Eyed Mender. It would’ve been better condensed to one astoundingly solid disc, in my opinion. Nevertheless, I’ve got it. I gave Titus Andronicus’ The Monitor four or five spins, recognized its ambition and excellence, but didn’t really find it suited my palate. In 2010, if I wanted to indulge in something frenetic and eclectic, I put on Owen Pallett’s Heartland. If I wanted a “grand album-length statement,” I had a lot of fun with Beach House’s delicate Teen Dream, the subtle and anxious Social Network score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and Weekend’s debut LP Sports. None of these albums treat “the pop song as little more than a sound effect and a sound bite,” purposively and connivingly constructing “three-minute, two-idea tracks.” Another of Pareles’ charming indictments against the “genre.”
But sometimes I just wanted to drive around with the windows down, or vacuum the office at work with my earbuds in. At times like that, I played Best Coast’s Crazy for You. Or Sleigh Bells’ debut. I adore Treats for myriad reasons, not least of which is because, if there is such a thing as a musical lowest common denominator, as I referenced in Part I of this essay series, then it means that by definition I, too, share in it. Sometimes, I just want to nod my head and chant meaningless, but fun banalities. Sure Treats is a cacophonic challenge to approach, but ”Click, click, settle up, see you on the moon, then,” isn’t an internally rhymed sonnet. Sometimes, I wanted to croon plaintively, “I wish you would tell me/ how you really feel,/ but you’ll never tell me,/ ‘cos that’s not our deal.” Pareles claims “indie-rock is…busily justifying dumb fun as if it’s unavailable elsewhere.” I’m unsure I’ve heard anyone justifying such dumbness since I’m unsure a lot of people are in agreement with Mr. Pareles about the reality of this dumbening. Regardless, sometimes my ears want to spit out the foie gras and just chew bubblegum. But I fucking hate Doublemint. I think the Black-Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift sound like shit, so I don’t go to the same corner store (or FM station, if you think this gum metaphor’s been pushed past utility), I go to a different candy shop entirely and reach for a different flavor. Hence, Sleigh Bells, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Best Coast. “When you leave me,/ you take away everything./ You take all my money./ You take all my weed.” It’s not Wislawa Szymborska, but then, it’s not supposed to be.
Pareles’ claims about the negative effects of Deerhunter’s increased accessibility are convenient, because I know the Deerhunter oeuvre extraordinarily well. And I make no bones about the fact that Deerhunter is my favorite band, so I did probably take a bit of unnecessary umbrage at his disparagement of them. Especially since it comes within 100 words of high praise for Ke$ha and Kanye West. Is 2010′s Halcyon Digest more accessible than 2006′s screeching noise rock debut Turn It Up, Faggot (a demand frequently yelled during high school gigs at the soft-spoken, scrawny lead-singer Bradford Cox)? Definitely. What about 2007′s Cryptograms—the LP Cox considers the band’s “real” debut, since it’s the first to feature core member and guitarist Lockett Pundt—which was about half ambient water noise, electro-bass pulses, and feedback (there’s a reason the band picked both Real Estate and Casino vs. Japan to tour with)? Yep, Digest is more accessible than that one, too. Though Cryptograms features five or six five-minute-or-less songs which are a blast to blare while driving with your windows down, the eight-minute, best-experienced-on-Vicodin “Octet” might elude some listeners (probably those without Vicodin, or those who insist on only listening to music while driving with the windows down).
Is the 2010 release more accessible even than 2008′s Microcastle? 2008′s fuzzed-out, ’50s & ’60s slow-dance-at-the-sock-hop-style pop-influenced Microcastle? Yes, it’s more accessible than even that. Is Halcyon Digest Ke$ha-level accessible. No. Best Coast accessible? Nope. Pareles doesn’t define his cavil with accessibility, except that he seems to equate it with insipidity. This is fair to some small degree; if everyone everywhere immediately understands everything there is to understand about your art, then you’re either the most insanely brilliant and probably telepathic artist of all time, or you’re pandering to idiots with art that’s not all that complex. But there’s a difference between crafting something purposefully inscrutable for the mere sake of inscrutability, and crafting something that allows an uninitiated audience to approach it, while still maintaining depth enough to reward connoisseurs and geniuses.
Halcyon Digest is no Fame Monster, no Kid Rock LP. It features a five-minute, mostly ambient noise number called “Sailing,” remarkable for Cox’s vocal delivery and Pundt’s plaintive and spare guitar. If you listen closely, there’s the most minimal percussion I can recall hearing in a song which actually features a drumkit. This very subtle soundscape, which sounds like it was sung with slit wrists, while floating out in the Gulf of Mexico, just past the BP oil slick, would bore the hell out of most listeners, though it would mesmerize others because of all it accomplishes with its Spartanness and concision. The seven-minute centerpiece “Desire Lines” progresses into a four-minute dual guitar solo that becomes a more listenable version of the shoegazer’s atonality present on the ’06 debut (and which, in concert, reverberates to deafening levels). And the eleven-minute closer, “He Would Have Laughed,” goes through four distinct movements, is brilliantly if cryptically lyricked, and cuts off abruptly, just when it was getting dreamy and beautiful, just when the listener is getting used to its mutations, just like the life of the deceased friend for which it was written. All of this, apparently, does not add up to enough complexity to sate Pareles who, again, listed Kanye West’s Twisted Fantasy as an apical album of 2010.
Mr. West: “Gossip, gossip:/ niggas just stop it./ Everybody know I’m a motherfucking monster./ I’ma need to see your fucking hands at the concert,/ I’ma need to see your fucking hands at the concert./ Profit, profit:/ nigga, I got it./ Everybody know I’m a motherfucking monster./ I’ma need to see your fucking hands at the concert./ I’ma need to see your fucking hands at the concert/”
Let’s stack that up against Deerhunter’s “Helicopter,” my favorite song of 2010. Over a discomfiting and distorted clap track, a strangely plucked harpsichord-under-water-sounding guitar, and an odd palette of white noise that makes the substance of the song (the part into which one could really sink teeth) seem always slightly out of reach, “Helicopter” tells the story of a gay Russian fashion enthusiast who—after being kicked out of his home by a homophobic father—turned to pornography and eventually prostitution to fund his teenage design dreams, but subsequently fell in with the “wrong crowd,” ultimately, ending up used-up and pitched out of a helicopter by the Russian mafioso kingpin who had purchased him as a sex slave for his drug-controlled harem, then grown tired of the boy.
Cox: “Take my hand and pray with me./ My final days in company./ The devil now has come for me./ And the helicopter’s circling the scene./ And I pray for rest./ Could you pray for us?/ We know he loves you the best,/ we know he loves you the best…”
Go ahead and torrent both songs. I’ll wait.
Deerhunter’s Halcyon Digest might be more accessible or less inaccessible than their unofficial debut, Cryptograms, or their aggressive and shriekingly unlistenable real debut Turn It Up, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. Now, instead of being diamond-in-the-rough lo-fi reverb punk, the sound is just lapidary-polished diamond. Is it simpler? In many ways, it is. Is it better? It’s a matter of personal taste. But is it necessarily dumber, less rich than either of the bands other proper LPs? Not one bloody bit. Halcyon Digest got 100 spins from me since its release in September of 2010. Keep in mind that I am a music snob who purchased and listened to another fifteen LPs between then and now. Some extensively (for instance, between its release date and today, I also spun Local Natives’ Gorilla Manor 40 times and Spoon’s Transference 25 times). And still Digest got 100 listens. That’s not counting how many times I’ve played the vinyl. Check your iTunes library. Unless you’ve managed to keep the same library since your first iPod, I’d love to hear what songs in your collection have earned 100 plays. More importantly: what whole albums have earned such attention? When was the last time you found an album so exciting, engaging, and intriguing, front to back, that you played it 100 times in as many days? Halcyon Digest is catchy enough to sing along to, complex enough that I’m still finding nooks and crannies of sound I had yet to investigate, and well-wrought enough that I’m willing to sit up, five seven hours past my bedtime, writing a 1,000-word defense of it which, let’s be honest, very few people will ever read (hit the “Share” button, people). Deerhunter has evolved from a jagged-edged shoegaze act, to an ambient dreampop act, to a carefully constructed and densely layered lo-fi pop act, to whatever sort of “indie rock” you’d like to call it now. I know “Coronado” features a saxophone solo, but still, until the band releases an album with a track like “Bad Romance” or “Poker Face” on it, it ain’t time to sound the alarms.
Sleigh Bells and St. Vincent might have written songs catchy enough that they’ll show up in a commercial or two (the funds from which are sorely needed since only twelve of us legally obtained their last records, anyway). Neon Indian might be putting out 80s synth-influenced music that you can dance to, despite the fact that “indie rockers” are supposed to stand still at shows. But I don’t think it’s quite time to worry, as Pareles does—not just yet. I don’t see the kids on Jersey Shore spinning Grizzly Bear’s Yellow House. For the moment, “indie rock”—from Tune-Yards to Newsom to A Place to Bury Strangers, from Twin Shadow to Caribou to Neon Indian to Deerhunter—is still smart enough, aesthetically challenging enough that it probably won’t sell well at the merch booth of a Nickelback concert. And I doubt you could give the shit away at a Limp Bizkit/Kid Rock gig. Even though Best Coast is putting positively everyone at risk, I’m not afraid. With Kanye West patrolling the perimeter and fighting the good fight for bands like Deerhunter, that just can’t hack it anymore, at the moment, Mr. Pareles, I think “indie rock” is still safe. But thanks for your concern.
