Indie rock is a dead language
Not only that, music itself is engaged in a relentless churn. 70 years of pop history – quiffs and southern rock, Elvis, Mingus, post punk, traditional song structures, free jazz, beats, noise and melody – you name it, there’s a band that’s doing it. The Null Device frames it like this:
If there is no originality any more, then originality becomes simply a matter of choosing which reference points you slavishly rip off (and/or update by putting in more swear words and references to iPods and text messages) more creatively.
Don’t start talking about techno’s future obsession, it’s the one musical form that sounds pretty much exactly the same as when it first appeared. Everything in music is retro, according to Maddy Costa in The Guardian. Paul Morley pins the shift on britpop, Simon Reynolds on C86, but it has to have been around for a lot longer than that.
Look and political standpoint are reference points every bit as strong as music. Think back to the Prodigy’s co-option of mohawk (sorry, ‘fauxhawk’) and shouty vocals to add a bit of edge to their major label neutered big beat or Noel Gallagher coupling Beatles melodies with Ian Brown’s lethargic cool – both firmly in my head at the moment after watching the Coachella documentary (read extended promo flick) in which Gallagher criticises Saul Williams’s idealism with a typically suburban claim that only PMs and Presidents can change the world, music is purely entertainment. In Australia you’ve got CW Stoneking doing ’20s delta blues, The Whisky Go Gos doing bourbon-drenched southern rock, Moving Ninja doing UK dubstep, Microworld doing classic Detroit techno, pretty much the entire electronic scene covering mid to late ’90s material from Warp et al.
The Guardian piece places the blame firmly in the increased availability of all this music, the canonisation of the musicians through literal libraries of documentation, and kids who (like Sydney label Future Classic) want to be seen within that tradition. Less about risks, more about being seen as a classic in years to come – that’s true whether you’re talking about ‘avant garde’ sound art or deep house or indie rock.
Another crucial change in the consumption of music has made it harder than ever for the truly original to be heard. The coverage of music has been democratically spread into the broadsheets, radio and television; pop music seems to be everywhere. But in a funny way that means there’s more interference to finding new music. So much that is familiar is being declared the ‘new’ thing by the record industry, the advertising industry and the mainstream media, anything that is truly unfamiliar and moving forward is more neglected than ever before.
That quote (again from Paul Morley), as Costa observes, explains why the truly original grime scene is getting little coverage despite the masses of media space devoted to music. It’s why TV On The Radio’s thrilling EP and debut got enthusiastic reviews but little airplay, while their homogenised follow-up crossed over.
Comments
So I don’t think you can divorce the sonic from the social. People use & share music to create meaning among themselves (& have a bloody good time). The boomers are still the biggest demographic so it’s unsuprising that the music they consumed (from rock ‘n’ roll to punk) remains dominant stylistically.
What is surprising is that young people seem look to those musics rather than creating their own thing.
My bet is that we have to start looking outside Western (US, Western Europe, Australia) societies for genuinely thrilling music. Follow the demographic pressure. Where are there heaps of young people with money to spend & a voice to find? The leakage of South Asian music into the mainstream (e.g. Panjabi MC) & the popularity of Brazilian sounds (e.g. Carioca Funk) indicate where the next great sonic movements are going to come from. And it ain’t our backyard…
The boomers have a lot to answer for! But really I think it’s got a lot more to do with the massive availability of music (or writing, art, whatever), the increasing documentation of everything (my feelings, your one-off gig in 1983) and a pervasive conservatism across the world. There’s wild music coming from outside Western societies for sure (kwaito, baile funk and the constantly overturning Jamaican music scene) but there’s some wild stuff happening in the west too, and I think the grime and dubstep scene of the past five years is one of the most compelling. It’s stepped away from building a legacy by releasing records on cheap/nasty white label 12″ pressings, sidestepping the usual record outlets and avoiding the rockist press. Ever since I first heard the roots of grime, and dubstep for that matter, appear, I’ve been amazed that it didn’t cut a swathe through music fans across the world. At the very least, bass fans. But it is generally pretty weird music, and that doesn’t seem to gel with the current climate in which it’s only okay to like weird music if it can be contextualised, for example, to the no wave scene in NY in the early ’80s. I like to think that there’s a period of massive musical consolidation going on now, the calm before a cyclone of thrillingly inventive music, but it could keep spinning in ever tighter circles, documenting the increasingly fine minutiae of the past.
So the increasingly audible history of music may be part of it. But only a part. I don’t think it can account for the collective failure of nerve that seems to have gripped popular culture. Those that engaged with previous sonic upheavals (punk, rave) were often those with the deepest knowledge of musical history. Despite McLaren’s best efforts to paint him as a moron, John Lydon was into Krautrock, Dub, Beefheart, etc.
The POV you’ve given here is primarily an aesthetic one whereas I’d lean as much towards economics & demographics in trying to understand what’s going on. The best hip hop in the US has come from the South & West – precisely the parts of the country experiencing demographic & economic growth.
As I think we discussed at the CD 16 launch, grime is partially the result of a certain level of racial integration happening in the UK – and a confidence to own their won form hip-hop by black britons.
I agree there will be a whirlwind of popular music, I just doubt it will be driven by the usual suspects. I think we are reaching a tipping point but with their inward focus most Western cultural commentators are ill-equipped to understand it.
Or to put it another way. World Music in the 80s was Live Aidized (the pity & curiousity of dilettante First Worlders) where as 20 years later it will be Wal-Martized – imported to the Developed World because it is cheaper & better than the local stuff – but based on hybridised outcomes of US/European forms (rock, techno, hip hop)…