Canadian Indie-Rock not “African-American” Enough?
[Currently listening to: Arcade Fire's "Neon Bible"]
A New Yorker article, “A Paler Shade of White, How indie rock lost its soul,” was inspired by an Arcade Fire concert earlier this year. The writer, Sasha Frere-Jones, noted in the concert what she believed to be a wider phenomenon: a racial re-sorting of “rock and roll” music.
Sasha appears to enjoy and respect the genre, so I’m somewhat confused as to her lamenting it not being something else. Within, the article does explain in some sense her complaints: a near exclusive sense of ennui and despair, dark tones, inaccessible and obtuse lyrics, plodding rhythm. It can be marked, she suggests, with the changes to the make-up of Pavement in the mid-90s. A time stamp, perhaps, that reveals as much about the mood of society as of its artists.
It is difficult to place racial ownership over certain musical choices patterns. It has, unquestionably been done, and perhaps rightfully so — though a great deal of borrowing and reworking was happening across a porous racial-musical divide.
White artists today lack the collective-historical experience of slavery and disenfranchisement, and we are, of course, separated from that generation inspired by rising, empowered community and the successes of a growing rights movement. Arguably, and in contrast, we live in times of rising atomization and new forms of economic and political disenfranchisement — moreover, marked by the trumpeting of so-called “hyperindividualism” and a collective sense of “promises broken” by the generations past.
Whether you agree with the argument or not, there is a certain joyousness and energy that is lacking from culture today, and not just music. Still, while the 21st century might need more Grand Funk Railroad and Ottis Redding, there are lessons to be drawn from our love-affair with frustrated, sullen, “end-of-the-world”-style rumblings.
Flagship indie bands—the Fiery Furnaces, the Decemberists, the Shins—occasionally produce memorable hooks and moments of inspired juxtaposition. (The Fiery Furnaces have a constantly mutating lineup of instruments, which makes the band sound, at its best, like a jukebox on the fritz.) Grizzly Bear, the indie band that excites me most right now, is making songs with no apparent links to black American music—or any readily identifiable genre. (The band’s sound suggests a group of eunuchs singing next to a music box on a sunken galleon.) But, in the past few years, I’ve spent too many evenings at indie concerts waiting in vain for vigor, for rhythm, for a musical effect that could justify all the preciousness.
How did rhythm come to be discounted in an art form that was born as a celebration of rhythm’s possibilities? Where is the impulse to reach out to an audience—to entertain? I can imagine James Brown writing dull material. I can even imagine the Meters wearing out their fans by playing a little too long. But I can’t imagine any of these musicians retreating inward and settling for the lassitude and monotony that so many indie acts seem to confuse with authenticity and significance.
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