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Heads Up

I know that I'm risking turning this space into a music blog, but:

• If you're into music, I highly recommend that you check out the Salon.com daily download. The page is edited by Thomas Bartlett, and he usually features songs that are either very good, or, at the least, very interesting. I've found songs from Bloc Party, Annie, New Pornographers, Sleater-Kinney, Wilco, Belle & Sebastian, Aimee Mann, and others on the site. Bartlett lives in New York, so he does feature a lot of the up-and-coming NYC/Brooklyn acts, such as The Hold Steady, Animal Collective, etc. I especially recommend this song by a band called The Cloud Room. Strangely enough, one of the guys in The Cloud Room dates the literary agent who read my novel last year. Anyhoo, the selection is usually very good, and if it isn't very good it's at least interesting. Also, the song is always in MP3 format, so you never have to worry about compatibility issues.
  
• I'm going to see a really hot new band called Clap Your Hands Say Yeah tonight at the Knitting Factory. Here's head Pitchforker Ryan Schreiber on their first single, "In This Home on Ice": "Jangly, processed guitar, shimmering cymbals, and vocalist Alec Ounsworth's chorused vocals meet somewhere between a much poppier pre-Loveless My Bloody Valentine and the conventional indie songcraft of the Arcade Fire. So basically we're trying not to piss ourselves." Right on, Ryan.
  

It's My Party

Yes, I was that guy. I was the guy who happened to be reading Pitchfork when the news broke that Bloc Party, the latest darlings of the hype-oriented UK music press, would be playing two shows at Webster Hall in June. I was also the guy who, confident that the show would sell out immediately and that there would subsequently be a huge demand for tickets, bought a few more tickets than he needed. I won't speak specifically about what I did with those tickets, but let's just say that the week I received the tickets in the mail, I made exactly zero stops at the ATM. Can you really blame me? After spending four years as an English major at Vassar and another year roaming the bowels of the NYC publishing industry, scalping indie rock tickets is the one entrepreneurial skill I have left.

It's sort of strange to show up at a concert venue, as I did on Tuesday night, knowing that the band you're about to see is the absolute hottest act on the planet. You start to think about all of your expectations, and you begin to wonder whether or not the band you're about to see -- or any band, for that matter -- could ever live up to them. You worry that the show might even soil your view of the band's best album or song. Then you say to yourself, "Dude, it's just a fucking rock show. Get a hold of yourself."

Regardless, I've never seen an indie crowd packed in so tightly before. It was somewhere between 95 and 150 degrees inside Webster Hall that night; the sides of my jeans began to feel damp because I kept wiping the sweat from my brow onto them. Bloc Party came on around 10:30, opening with the winding, anthemic "Like Eating Glass." A few songs later came "Banquet," which would've been my choice for Song of the Year (narrowly edging "Heartbeat," by Annie) had it not been released on an EP back in 2003 or 2004.

It was around this point that I began to evaluate the show. Bloc Party sounded very, very good, though not great, and played with a pretty infectious energy. Also, it became clear to me and my buddy Mike that drummer Matt Tong is a borderline virtuoso. It's not a stretch to say that there would be no Bloc Party without Matt Tong, who is probably the best drummer to hit rock in years. If there were some big intergalatic drumming showdown on Mars and I could only send one person to compete against eight-armed percussionists from the far reaches of the universe, I'd send Matt Tong. And I'd come home with the trophy.

Still, I couldn't help but wonder, "Why aren't people getting down like they do at a Franz show?" Now, there was a goodly amount of pronounced head-nodding and toe-tapping, but still, this is fucking Bloc Party we're talking about. I even think that vocalist/guitarist Kele Okereke picked up on this a little bit, going so far as to exhort the crowd to start dancing. There was a little more head-nodding and toe-tapping, and a few people made half-hearted attempts at pogoing, but still, no widespread ass-shaking. Why?

I came to the conclusion that as good and fun as Bloc Party is live, they'll never elicit the same reaction as fellow UK-rockers Franz Ferdinand. "Bloc Party is like the Blur to Franz Ferdinand's Oasis," I told Mike after the show. "Blur had more complex musical arrangements and pretty thoughtful lyrics, but people liked Oasis more because they were easier to sing along to." Now, I really do believe the Bloc Party's songs feature a higher level of songwriting and instrumenation than Franz's -- BP's songs are always twisting and turning, stopping and starting, while Franz's ("Take Me Out" aside) are fairly straightforward dancerock -- but it's no coincidence that by this time last year Franz had crossed over into the mainstream, while Bloc Party still remains an indie band. Bloc Party's songs demand more of your attention; just when you think it's time to break it down, the song will stop on a dime and head in another direction. The end result is always skillful and satisfying, but you're left with the musical equivalent of blue balls. Don't get me wrong -- if Bloc Party releases another 7-10 albums like their incredible debut record, they could become one of the greatest bands of ALL time, but if they choose not to drop the artiness that makes them such a great, unique band, Kele Okereke is going to have to keep imploring the crowd to get busy on the dancefloor. Man, fuck a Faustian bargain.

The Case Against Coldplay

In anticipation (dread?) of the upcoming release of Coldplay's third LP, X&Y, The NYT published a fairly thorough article summarizing the reasons why some feel that Coldplay is "the most insufferable band of the decade." In particular, the writer, Jon Pareles, cites the band's penchant for relentless self-pity as the foremost ingredient in its soufflet of suckitude. However, it's not really the songs he has a problem with -- it's the lyrics. To wit:

"The band proffers melodies as imposing as Romanesque architecture, solid and symmetrical. Their arrangements ascend and surge, measuring out the song's yearning and tension, cresting and easing back and then moving toward a chiming resolution. Coldplay is meticulously unified, and its songs have been rigorously cleared of anything that distracts from the musical drama.

"Unfortunately, all that sonic splendor orchestrates Mr. Martin's voice and lyrics."

From there, Pareles takes a few shots at the fact that Chris Martin sings almost exclusively in falsetto, and that his lyrics don't reach beyond simple, universal statements and romantic aphorisms -- and Pareles, let's be honest, is correct on both counts. It's a little bit of a stretch, but not too much of one, to say that the target audience for every Coldplay song is the sensitive, affected teenager who just can't seem to find his place in the world, nor anyone to share it with. I think it's unfair to begrudge Coldplay for this, however, considering just how many bands -- great bands, even -- have built careers on doing the same.

My take on this general situation has been to remind people that they're listening to music, not an album of poetry with musical accompaniment. I tend not to pay too much attention to lyrics; only if a particular phrase or rhyme enhances the rhythm or melody will I start to concentrate on the words coming out of the vocalist's mouth. Pareles, I think, might agree with me, but he would probably argue that Coldplay's vocals/lyrics are so cringe-worthy that they significantly detract from the listener's ability to appreciate the band's musical acumen. Unfortunately, this is where the argument ends, because, like with most other musical debates, it eventually comes to a question of taste.

At this point, I should say that I am a Coldplay fan. Sort of. I've purchased their first two albums, and I enjoy them quite a bit -- and I'm certainly not about to let a rock critic spoil them for me. However, as I've listened to a leak of X&Y, I've felt myself tiring of their act. It has even more moping than their last record, and it frustrates me that even though they've flushed out their sound as much as they possibly can, they still have no real edge to speak of. And edge, my friends, is what separates the adult-contempo perfectionism of X&Y from the true greatness of an album like, say, The Bends. Coldplay does what they do as well as it can be done, but here's to hoping that they use millions of dollars that X&Y will surely earn them to buy themselves a pair. Their songwriting is just too damned good for them not to.

Literary Geography

I've decided that I'm going to try to do a better job of updating the blog on a regular basis, posting some smaller things in between the longer meditations. Consider this to be my first effort to achieve that goal:

One of the more enjoyable things about living in New York City is that, wherever you are, you can probably think of a movie, book, or television show that took place there. Christ, you can't go two feet without coming across something mentioned in Seinfeld. A few months ago, my roommate and I were stuck inside as a result of one of this past winter's larger snowstorms, watching a random Whoopi Goldberg movie from the 1980s. "Hey, check it out," he said. "That's the church on the other side of our block." Sure enough, on the screen I could recognize the spires that I see from my window almost every day.

This morning's Times Book Review section featured an interactive Literary Map of Manhattan, which I find to be very, very cool, though you might have to register to view it. You can click just about anywhere on the map of Manhattan and it will show you the literary "event" that took place there, and supplies the novel's corresponding passage. All the greats are there: Salinger, Kerouac, Fitzgerald, etc., but I can't help but think there are hundreds (if not thousands) of pertinent entries that they've failed to catalog. Oh well, I guess they couldn't include everything.

I get a huge kick out of discovering the nexus between fiction and geography. Case in point: after reading The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (mentioned in yesterday's post) when I lived at home a few summers ago, I spent an entire week visiting all of the places glamorized in the book. I was absolutely floored when I discovered that The Lost Neighborhood sits only a few hundred yards from where I went to high school. I finally met Michael Chabon in February, and it turned out to be quite the scene. Well, for me, at least. More on that in about a month or so, after I reread Mysteries.

Coming soon: On the NBA Playoffs; Aaron Karo Is a Douchebag.

Inevitable Overwrought Journal Entry

On last Wednesday, June 1st, I celebrated the one year anniversary of my arrival in New York City. Over the course of my 365 days in the Big Apple, I’ve found a job, moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan, and spent more money than in all of my previous years combined. There are things I now have less of (time, space), and things I now have more of (debt, concert wristbands.) I no longer hang out at the Gowanus Yacht Club and Rosemary’s Greenpoint Tavern; instead, I’ve opted to down pints and shoot the shit at the much-closer-to-home Rudy’s, 7B, and Jimmy’s. Even though I consider the past year to be a definite success, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering about how happy I really am living in New York City, and have often considered leaving for more livable environs once my lease expires. I won’t list all of my problems with this city because they’re pretty self-evident, but I will say that I deliberated the situation so exhaustively that at one point a few of my friends refused to discuss it with me any further. Eventually, I decided that I would stay in the city for at least another year. Of course, very soon after this – and on the exact day marking the passing of my first year in NYC, no less – I was offered a chance to return to Pittsburgh, my hometown, with a well-paying job that came bundled with a company car, laptop, and other ancillary perks. Worse yet, I had only twenty-four hours to decide whether or not I wanted to pursue the position. I was fucked.

* * *

A recent issue of Time Out New York, a weekly mag that serves as a guide to NYC entertainment and plays a major role in determining the city’s zeitgeist, contained a grid that compared a group of men referred to as “The Literary Jonathans:” writers Jonathan Ames, Jonathan Franzen, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Jonathan Lethem. The grid contained several categories, the last of which was, “Known For.” This seemed to be the place for the editors at Time Out to take a jab at each of the uniformly-named scribes; under Franzen’s name, they printed something about his blow-up with Oprah Winfrey, Safran Foer was noted for his precious precociousness, and, to be honest, I forget what they said about Jonathan Ames. Under the name of Jonathan Lethem, however, it read only, “his writing.”

Lethem has written a few books, including Motherless Brooklyn, The Disappointment Artist, and most notably The Fortress of Solitude, a big, fat novel about a white kid growing up in Boerum Hill, a small Brooklyn neighborhood, in the 1970s. I’d seen the book prominently displayed in bookstores whenever I’d wander into one back when I was unemployed. I couldn’t buy it because I was living off of my savings at the time and there wasn’t much room in my budget for books, especially when I was already engrossed in a way-too-long memoir written by a South Bronx detective who’d been educated at Harvard. But spotting the book became such a habit for me that whenever I walked into a bookstore and didn’t see it, I’d scour the store’s shelves until I found it. Whenever I’m in a bookstore, I have a strange tendency to seek out books I’ve already read. I eventually move on to the tables displaying the newer titles, but I always find myself coming back to those tiny paperbound landmarks.

I did, finally, pick up a copy of The Fortress of Solitude about a month ago, and finished it on the very day I was offered the position in Pittsburgh. You can read a review of it here or here. As far as criticism goes, I’ll say only that The Fortress of Solitude is an amazing book, though not a great one, if that makes any sense. It is an intense, long, and ragged affair that demands a lot of your patience and imagination. It is incredibly uneven, but I guess you don’t read a book like The Fortress of Solitude hoping for seamless entertainment. You read it in the hope that, at some point or another, you come across a phrase, character description, or digression that’s so beautiful and pointed and funny that you don’t even know what to do with yourself.

I kept staring at the book, kept fingering the jagged grain of the edge of its pages, as I tried to come to a decision about New York. I even read the quotes on the back, a practice I normally avoid. One of the blurbs was written by Michael Chabon, my favorite writer and author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, my favorite book. It reads: “[Lethem] has…re-created a world, a moment in history that I would have thought lost and irrecoverable. He has created, in young Dylan, a genuine literary hero. He has reinvented and reinvigorated the myths of the superhero, of black-white relations, of New York City itself. But most of all, from my point of view, he captures precisely – as only a great novelist can – how it feels to love the world that is, on a daily basis, kicking your ass.”

And that’s it. There it is. New York City: the beat-down that you can never get enough of. Every time I send off the rent check for my shoebox apartment, pay $7 for a Coors Light, go six weeks without seeing a blade of grass, or lug groceries from ten blocks away, it’s just another yoking, another shove to the pavement. But, in a strange way, it’s impossible not to be thrilled by it, even when the people you laugh and commiserate with – the ones who really know what it’s like – start to disappear one by one.

As tough as it was, I turned down the chance to return to Pittsburgh. The time just isn’t right for that yet; there’s more to prove and more to learn. I’m still addicted to all of its possibilities that this city holds, still obsessed with the idea that I might see or do something so great that I won’t even know what to do with myself. Except, perhaps, work up the courage to leave.

Could Britpop Return?

On Tuesday of this past week, I found myself at Bowery Ballroom, a small concert venue on New York City’s Lower East Side, bobbing my head along to the druggy synths and fist-in-the-air bass lines of Kasabian, a band from Leicester, England. I’ve attended, on average, about three concerts a month since I moved to New York in June of ’04, and I’ve noticed that crowd demeanor can most often be described as aloof, indifferent, or, at best, cautiously enthusiastic. It’s possible that I’m just seeing the wrong bands, but I’d bet you a shiny quarter that it has more to do with the mindset of the New York City concertgoer. So, imagine my surprise when I took my eyes off of the stage and noticed that the reaction being garnered by Kasabian was akin to something you’d find at a Franz Ferdinand show. I enjoyed nearly every minute of the hour-and-a-half set: the fuzzed-out guitar riffs, the aforementioned bass/synth combo, and the rave-tastic lyrical exhortations of songs like “L.S.F.” Vocalist Tom Meighan took the stage five minutes after the rest of the band, and as I watched him lope around the stage like he owned the place, I turned to my buddy Mike and said simply, “Dude’s the next Ian Brown.” I was referencing the lead singer of The Stone Roses, the band whose debut album was the origin of Britpop, a musical era that lasted from 1988 to 1997. I stood there, the only sedentary being in a sea of po-going 24 hour party people, and wondered, “Could it all be happening again?”

Britpop is actually a pretty complicated thing; more of a cultural phenomenon than a musical movement, it could serve as the topic of a book or a documentary, as some have already discovered. What follows is a not-so-brief history of Britpop that looks at the circumstances that lead to its birth and death, coupled with an admittedly cavalier analysis of the current state of British music that attempts to answer the question posed above.

Britpop started in Manchester in the late 1980s as a drugged-out addendum to an era of British music dominated by The Smiths, a band that built a career on the idea that melancholy and the desire to dance weren’t two mutually exclusive concepts. The Happy Mondays were at the center of the early Britpop, but were soon eclipsed by The Stone Roses, who took Britpop in a sunnier direction that depended more on melody than rhythm. NME, the British music tabloid that, in conjunction with Melody Maker, played as integral a role in the Britpop phenomenon as any one band, recently named The Stone Roses’ 1989 self-titled debut album to be the greatest of all time. It’s this kind of hyperbole that became the stock in trade of NME and made Britpop so funny and enjoyable.

Musically, Britpop transformed from ‘80s house rock into a reaction to the rising popularity of the early nineties American music scene that was dominated by grunge rock. Bands like Oasis, Blur, and Pulp wore their accents like a badge of honor, worshipped popular British bands of the past, and rejected all things American. The Britpop sound was defined its towering riffs and sing-along choruses, and the accompanying lyrics – exemplified most notably in the songs “Common People” by Pulp and “Live Forever” by Oasis – reveled in the anomie and economic dissatisfaction of the young working class while boldly proclaiming that something better was on the horizon. Britpop even extended to fashion – the style of dress adopted by the members of Oasis became predominant among young males throughout most of the decade.

After The Stone Roses essentially disappeared in the early 1990s, and the Big Three bands of the movement became Oasis, Blur, and Pulp. The secondary bands included the Manic Street Preachers, Primal Scream, The Charlatans, Elastica, Stereophonics, Kula Shaker, Radiohead (yes, at one time, Radiohead was in fact a smaller band), Supergrass, Sleeper, Hurricane #1, later Ride, and Embrace. Britpop dominated the charts, swept awards ceremonies, and saturated the tabloids. The fairly ridiculous feud between Oasis and Blur received daily media attention, and basically determined “which side you were on.” Were you a middle-class student who lived in London? Or did you grow up in Burnage, father on the dole, with nothing to dream of aside from high-tailing it out of Manchester by way of your distortion pedal? The smash success of “Wonderwall” and “Don’t Look Back in Anger” effectively ended the debate, and for better or for worse (most likely the latter), the Gallagher brothers became the collective voice of their generation. With great humility, Noel Gallagher accepted this position by saying of Blur frontman Damon Albarn, “I hope he gets AIDS and dies.”

Britpop reached its apogee in 1996 with Oasis’s landmark gigs at Knebworth, which attracted a quarter of a million drunken lads over two nights. The heights were dizzying, and the fall was inevitable. Tony Blair, in his bid to become Prime Minister of England in 1997, shrewdly aligned himself with the bands of Britpop and developed a seemingly close relationship with Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher. At the 1996 Brit Awards, which according to The Independent were “little more than a coronation for Oasis,” Gallagher actually went so far as to say, “There are seven people in this room who are giving a little bit of hope to young people in this country. That is [sic] me, our kid, Bonehead, Guigs, Alan White, Alan McGee and Tony Blair. And if you've all got anything about you, you'll go up there and you'll shake Tony Blair's hand, man. He's the man! Power to the people!” With that, Blair had found his sounding board.

Britpop, though it had a social and economic consciousness, was never political, but it didn’t matter. Blair successfully convinced the electorate that the Labour Party was nothing less than a political extension of the bands making the records they bought. Blair won the election and held a reception at 10 Downing Street, at which Gallagher famously made an appearance. After ignoring Noel for much of the evening, Blair finally approached the guitarist, who told him, “We stayed up till seven o'clock in the morning to watch you arrive at the [Labour Party] headquarters. How did you stay up all night?” Gallagher didn’t talk about Blair’s answer until years later, when he revealed the following: “And [Blair] leaned over and said, ‘Probably not by the same means as you did.’ And at that point I knew he was a geezer.” In other words, he’d been had.

Less than a month later, Oasis released their third album, Be Here Now – purported by the Gallaghers and the press to be the biggest, greatest rock album ever – which turned out to be nothing more than eighty minutes of coked-out guitar histrionics set over top of lyrics seemingly cribbed from a high school yearbook. In 1997, Blur released a self-titled album that espoused American indie rock. Pulp’s 1998 release of This Is Hardcore served only as a reminder of what once was. Britpop was over and the fervor quickly dissipated.

In 1997, a lot of people became very excited over a record called OK Computer. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Radiohead’s atmospheric approach to techno-phobic themes resonated with critics, who embraced them for becoming everything that Britpop had never been – subtle, nuanced, and restrained. Radiohead quickly replaced Oasis as the most influential band in Britain, a post that it held until it became an esoteric self-parody more interested in being Radiohead than writing tunes. Their output dwindled, and they were eventually supplanted by bands like Coldplay, Travis, and Keane; bands so edgeless that they’re often difficult to dislike. The Libertines appeared in 2002 with their street urchin take on garage rock, providing a gleam of hope that the British rock scene hadn’t disappeared forever. In 2004 they released their self-titled follow-up, a record so bad that upon hearing it, my buddy Mike threw it out of his window. Luckily, by then, a Scottish band called Franz Ferdinand had already arrived on the scene, and we all know how that turned out.

A few months ago, a band from Leeds known as the Kaiser Chiefs began playing shows around New York City. I saw them in a crowded basement room inside the Tribeca Grand Hotel and was fairly impressed with their energy and bluster. Their debut album Employment was released to middling stateside reviews, but received a much warmer welcome across the Atlantic. The strong Cockney accent of vocalist Ricky Wilson has caused many to bill the Kaiser Chiefs as the next Blur, which might be a bit of a stretch, but they’re definitely a band to watch. One track from Employment, “Modern Way,” is a Britpop-by-numbers classic. There’s also the shit-hot Bloc Party to consider, and though they too sing with the strong accents characteristic of Britpop, their musical stylings are more akin to The Police than, say, The Charlatans. Finally, we have Hope of the States, a band with two Britpop anthems – “Enemies/Friends” and “66 Sleepers to Summer” – already in the bag, but they lose points for their obsession with America.

So where is all of this going? Are these bands part of a New Britpop? The answer, of course, is unclear. While it’s unlikely that enough time has passed since the death of Britpop 1 for anything but a pale imitation to occur, the stars seem to be taking the same pattern they formed in the early 1990s. American bands such as The Strokes, Interpol, and The White Stripes dominate British charts and airwaves, and an increased American political influence has many feeling frustrated. Might the stage be set for another “Live Forever?” The answer seems to be more Maybe than Definitely, but in true Britpop fashion, one can hope.