Bouncing between the two sold out stages of Emo’s Tuesday night, the outside carrying Lupe Fiasco and entourage and inside hosting the latest breed of Brooklyn hipsters, Yeasayer and MGMT, I couldn’t help but think of the recent article by New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, “A Paler Shade of White.”
Without entering into the fray of that race-baiting debate, it should be acknowledged that Frere-Jones’ article was valuable in bringing the always relevant discussion of race and music to bear on the indie rock scene, especially in the barrage of diverse responses and retaliations it precipitated. Frere-Jones at least hit a nerve – and really, how could one not with the issue – but there was a grain of truth in his hypothesis that was worth investigating. With Lupe kickin’ and pushin’ The Cool to a crowd that couldn’t care less about MGMT’s glam-disco grooves inside, and to a lesser extent vice-versa, the divide of diversity seemed to stretch further than the expanse of Emo’s courtyard.
To summarize Frere-Jones’ reductionary thesis, rock has historically provided a unique space of cultural “miscegenation,” yet today’s indie rockers (citing the Arcade Fire as his prime example) display little of the foundational influences of rock’s African-American rhythm and blues roots. Frere-Jones locates the disconnect in the rise of an economically viable, exclusively African-American art form (rap and hip-hop) and 1990s political correctness that questioned “white” culture’s “appropriation” of ethnic styles. The article inevitably invited a slew of exceptions against his argument and Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler’s own cheeky retort (“I think [we] steal quite blatantly from black people’s music from all over the globe”), and that’s where I’ll leave the narrowing universality of his hypothesis.
Yet, being pummeled by Yeasayer’s egregious scream-singing, I could feel the root of Frere-Jones’ bemoaning that “Indie band singers abandoned full-throated vocals and began to mumble and moan, and to hide their voices under noise.” Yeasayer’s rhythms were washed out by a scrawling Animal Collective scree that was neither entertaining nor engaging.
MGMT drove in the opposite direction with impressive effect, powering up the guitars and keys over lackadaisical harmonies that added weight to the more dance-rock moments of their exceptional debut, Oracular Spectacular. Yet listening to a song like “Electric Feel” live brought to bear perhaps the more pertinent aspect of what Frere-Jones isn’t hearing in indie rock by emphasizing everything that is being heard.
So much of indie rock has become an amalgam of influences and rhythms, increasingly smashed together under swifter transitions in some hyperactive centrifuge, that actual songs are often getting lost in the barrage. MGMT manages their eccentricities better than most, but no sooner has a steady rhythm emerged and taken hold in the crowd than it’s shot off on another tangent, quelled under quirky effects, or assaulted in a way that wants to consciously unsettle any expectations. It’s no wonder that indie music dancefloors are beleaguered by scrawny hipsters in epileptic fits. It’s not so much that indie rock has lost its soul, but more that those roots are buried under the landslide of so many other influences, rhythms, and ambitions that they’re difficult to discern and even more difficult to maintain.
Blame it on the ADD-inducing effects of a culture overexcited by high-speed technologies, or the need to produce something extremely unique, but one thing is for certain – no one had trouble digging into the Lupe Fiasco’s rhythms and beats.
This article appears in January 18 • 2008.
