I cannot recall if I have alluded to this before, but in a moment of non-sequiter lucidity, an old memory of a school assignment came drifting into my mind whilst I was navigating the joys of rush hour traffic. It was an essay in which I expounded upon my views of "routine" and its effect upon our daily lives. Admittedly, I cannot now remember anything of my conclusions, but I have no doubt that if I were to see it now, it would doubtless appear as another of those throwaway pieces that could only have been conjured to meet the requirements of a school assignment. To my younger self, I hope only that I noted that apart from anything else, it does serve as a rather effective coping mechanism for this absurd experience we know as life.
I have often mentioned the prevalence of the advertising machine that provides our daily dose of new music, and I suppose I could almost say that it has become a routine pastime to be confronted with new singles, artists and whatever else is shunted into our over-crowded inboxes. And yet, despite all of the marketing that has become a reality for the modern musician, I was intrigued by a number of acquaintances expressing the view that there has been a distinct lack of new music this year.
There seems to be a general view at present in which there is a certain sense of loss, a fatigue, and a lack of excitement. "New music" is missing a component, and established artists are producing work that somehow feels a little less vital. Popular culture is a turgid rehash of old ideas, and our principal "star" in Lady Gaga is the poorest copy of Madonna that I have yet had the misfortune to be confronted by. As I consider the matter, there could be any number of factors to explains this as our thirst for new music is ever-expanding, and some could say we have become like children of the 60's, demanding annual releases of ever-growing standards. Combine this to the attention span of the new Millennium, and it is surely fatal. We also have the reality that with the internet, there are now so many artists, and so many fans, that everyone is jostling for attention, all whilst fostering the allusion that the indie kids are somehow immune to marketing strategies, and subtle sociological manipulation. The market is over-saturated, and we, as fans, are still hungry whilst professing an increasing discernment in our tastes.
I think the truth actually lies somewhere in the mythical, and elusive effect that the end of a decade can have upon music scenes. The opening of the new Millennium was the decade of indie, even if we never did seem to get to the bottom of whether or not we wished to dub it the Noughties. It was with some chagrin, and pride, that I was recently at a party, and I managed to sneak on a recent mix-tape which successfully played twice without complaint, and then prompted a discussion on the latest Arcade Fire release. This scenario would be almost unimaginable a few years ago, so it is interesting to see that indie has permeated the popular consciousness to such a degree as to almost be a part of the furniture. But together with this acceptance, there is a certain sense that the tics of indie music have now become the norm. The grandeous arrangements that were fresh with the first Arcade Fire release are now just standard fare, as is the lush reverb drippings of Northwest Pacific indie. The twitchy rhythms of math-rock were so foreign to people cultured in the smooth 4 / 4 timings that there was a sense of adventure, of daring, to the music. Now, unusual timings are often just expected, and in fact, if they are absent, the sound is just dismissed as empty and a tossed off piece.
My greatest fear, however, is that with the passing of the decade, we are following the pattern (albeit as a poor malnourished cousin) that was seen after the 60's. After the great rush of the golden decade, there came the 70's. Technically, in my view, 1970 and 1971 were two of the best years for music that the world has ever seen, but having said this, the decade certainly did drift into an aimless depression, especially as heroes of the 60's disappeared, or accounted for their lack of inspiration by becoming ever-more reliant upon old work. For as much as the Rolling Stones have become a rock institution, it is depressing to think of the commonly held belief that they have not produced anything of cultural importance since the early 70's.
The sad reflection is that the present attitude seems to be that the future of music appears to be believed to lie somewhere in the 80's. Or rather, a cheap depiction of the decade, as artists plunder the old to sate an apparent creative block. Worse, the source of the mania seems to be the result of over-enthusiastic dollops of whipped nostalgia, as musicians sneak "authentic" synths into their albums, manufacture songs of absurd layered complexity, and treat drums within an inch of their heartbeat. Even grunge is being dusted off, with any number of pretenders with cardboard crowns being thrust onto weary ears. Popular music has been flooded with renditions of techno songs that would have been cheesy in the early 90's, and yet the big stars shamelessly copy, and haul in the return. In indie rock, the mindset has changed from early Springsteen to the arena of Born To Run, as do-it-yourself has passed on to studio sheen. This is not a bad thing, necessarily, as rock, by its very nature, is a limiting animal, and one cannot begrudge musicians looking to further their musical output. And it is without doubt an extremely daunting proposition to ask "where next?" of a rock musician, simply by virtue of how limiting the genre can be. To subtly change one's sound without losing the core of what caused the initial success is an well-known pitfall, and one which any musician hoping to carve a career must master.
But with the return of the retro, and especially the 80's, I think my fear is possibly best encapsulated by a recent interview with Morrissey, in which he opines, "But I’m not an anarchist, I’m a very quiet and composed person. But really, isn’t it more to do with the fact that there’s nobody in modern pop music who makes any social statement whatsoever? And there’s a massive dumbing-down in England now, which mimics America in the 1990s, where everything is intellectually reduced. It’s very prevalent in television especially, whereby only very standard views can be expressed, and anybody who has another view is censored.”
It is the dumbing down that really concerns me, as subtle riffs are replaced by braying synths, and artists become so over-treated as to be unrecognisable. Artists now sound like their heroes, and often in an uncomfortable way. There is a sense of elements being welded together merely for the ironic cool- the sniff of the hipsters, who can claim to be fans of things that were never cool. Married to this, as it is with success in anything, there may still remain the sense of loss of the outsider status. Growth and maturity are hard beasts to tame, and I fear that with the passing of the first decade of this new Millennium, we are not about to re-enter the musical Dark Ages, a two decade run that saw the music industry decline to tragic depths during the 70's and 80's.
To quote director Todd Haynes, "It's tough, man," he says. "Digital media and new technologies are moving so fast and there's a giddy commitment to their changes, but it's such a short, narrow vision. It makes me nervous. What's sick is that last year was the highest-grossing year for studios on record, and that's the year they reduced the genres down to adventure films and romantic comedies. Hollywood always underwrote its smaller projects by its more successful ones, but it maintained diversity and choice." In some ways, indie now seems to have joined Hollywood, and perhaps there are some who are not quite sure what to make of that.
I suppose that I may have succumbed to the persona of that constant moper Morrissey, but in a last parting shot, in the previously mentioned interview he said the following: “There’s something about the public always wanting a reformation here and there from such a body and such a band, just because they feel, ‘We're the public and we can demand it.’ And once it happens, nobody’s really interested." In the context I have been discussing, possibly we, as the indie crowd, don't know what we want as we enter an age of what has thus far appeared to only be repackaging.
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