... Interpol-- hey the first record was great, the second good, there's no reason not to be stoked for the new record, except of course if you believe there's a strict rule that says indie rock bands have five year shelflives. -- Me 5/23/07
... five year shelflives or three records or a major label deal.
The Politics of Indie Rock
Here and, well, here you go.
It's politics, baby, pure and simple. Arguments can be made on both sides, and usually the smart ones take a little from both camps and fall into wise moderation. Usually, I try to be one of the smart ones. But sometimes one side runs amuck, and the other side must stand tall and check the fuck out of it. Case in point, the Republican party right now. For a while, I agreed so much with one Republican ideal (the dissemination of government power to state and local levels) that I actually voted for George W. in the 2000 elections. Now though, all I say about Republicans is "Fuck those assholes." They've run amuck. The Indie Rock Establishment, Pitchfork, and to a lesser degree Stylus, have turned into Republicans.
It's a lot to put on a review of one band, one record, but I think it's all too tragically what has happened. When I read reviews that focus on album art and live Fort Lauderdale (???!!!) shows from two years ago as much as the record's content I get very upset. Too many reviews are spending too much time contextualizing a band's most recent release. Just once I'd like to read something different, a record review of a band such as Interpol with no context whatsoever, one that deals with that release alone. A great chunk of the marks, 6.0, D, I think comes from relating the new record to Turn On The Bright Lights. Proving that the record sucks in and of itself leaves no room for debate.
But I don't want to drift from the politics idea. An indie rock god turns its back on all things indie; signs a major deal; starts playing shows at venues like The Borgata; starts "embarrassingly" writing lyrics advocating threesomes. It's so fucking indie rock to think that people should feel embarrassed for wanting to have threesomes. Ha, just so you know where I stand, I want to have threesomes all the time, regardless the make up of the lineup, one girl though, no homo. I haven't had a threesome yet (I have to reread that The Game chapter about the massage) but it has to be hilarious. Watching, hearing other people in real life doing it, having them watch and hear you do it, the facial expressions, the moans-- you'd have to be in stitches the entire time. Banks knows that indie rockers are going to cringe at "Threesome's" lyrics. But it seems to me he's testing indie rock's devotion to his band, brilliantly knowing the stubborn adherency of indie rock to its tenets (the immorality of the threesome) and also brilliantly knowing that he doesn't need Pitchfork's or Stylus' audiences' support anymore. "Rest My Chemistry" is an even better example. Paul Banks doesn't "not-fuck" the just slightly cute-nerdy glasses wearing girl from the coffee shop, he "not-fucks" superhot model/groupie types who probably, more like definitely as I've come to find out how much all chicks really love to do blow, which is to say hilariously and all too ironically, just wanted to fuck him for his cocaine. It turns into one big gag, and I love gags. I thought indie rock did too. Guess that's only when it can be in on the jokes, not the butt of them.
Politically speaking, Pitchfork and Stylus should have taken the indie community's backlash on the chin for a band who made a record (Turn On The Bright Lights) that probably helped make the websites what they now are, and dished out high marks for the new record, regardless of what they acutally thought about the record, just so that they could say to people like me "this isn't about politics." Objectively speaking, they should have tried to change as Interpol has: less serious, less morally pure of heart. No, fuck you, indie rocker who is reading this, you do think things like "I am so morally great. My love is such a pure love." I know, I used to be really into that shit too. But as I've aged, I've found out that mindset isn't really mine, it's that of the establishment's, one that wants to control you, oh yeah, and one that never gets you laid, snatches your youth and vitality from you, speeds up the aging process, leaves you weak and incapable of rebelling. I'm not saying you might not be one of the lucky ones to have stumbled across true love in your twenties or even earlier, but chances are you're not, because news flash, chances are you'll never find true love, just an approximation of it. You can also find that when you're 30-35. Historically, what has been the easiest way to control the masses? Bullshit morality, see Catholicism and the Republican party. Now see Indie Rock. See our youth getting fucked or rather not getting fucked by being told not to enjoy a harmless, catchy, big, orchestrated, "for the kids", rock record.
14 comments:
Then again, there's lots of us who hated Interpol in 2002 and didn't give a damn who knew it.
This is so amusingly wrong-headed. Soto is the least indie man in the world.
hey guys,
first, appreciate the comments. dialogues are what it's all about, no?
i'm not going to say that you can't have your illogical beefs, al, lord knows i have many myself. i actually applaud you for it. it's human. but, you, a known interpol hater, should not have been selected to write this review. why do you think you were chosen? all i hear about are the negative reviews that the record is getting. i don't like it when no one plays the maverick. i think this record is an interpol record plain and simple. not nearly as great as "bright lights" but maybe better than "antics" which i think was pretty good, but way overrated. i would have liked to have read a review on your site or pitchfork, sites that i held in the utmost esteem for a long time, that i still really, really deep down believe in, that fervently supported the record. i am sure that there has to be someone on your staff that likes the record as much as you hate it. what i am saying in my post is that it was all too predictable what review the powers that be at your site were going to run. interpol have been on the scene for a long time, have turned their backs on the word and spirit of "indie", have written some risque in terms "indie" lyrics. your audience doesn't hold the reigns, you do. if you praised it, they were either going to enjoy in my opinion a wonderfully immature rock record, like a lot of great rock records, or dissed the review somewhat, but it would have given you some huge crit cred.
if you, al, had written the "bright lights" and "antics" reviews, i wouldn't have had a problem. but there is a huge burden of proof on your site to show that interpol has somehow gone from brilliant "bright lights" to absolute asshole "our love." and when the proof given includes album art and live performance critiques, and green-eyed (sic, no?) rants about mustached lovers, i have to conclude that stylus' position is more political than objective.
also, nick, to dismiss the idea of politics in indie rock as "wrong-headed" does nobody a favor. see all the A+ reviews of the next liars record.
I haven't really heard the Interpol record yet. I just wanted to say that I am giving the new Liars an A+.
No "burden of proof" required, js. It's very simple: no magazine is an autocracy. My editor asks, "Hey, we got the Interpol album. Wanna review it?" I say, "Sure." That's that. No critic is expected to bear in mind how his predecessors reviewed a band's other work. Not only isn't the original writer around anymore, but it's quite possible that the editors and staff didn't share his opinion either. If you think magazines exercise veto power over critics or treat them as apparatchiks, you are quite mistaken.
Besides, why on earth should you assign the record to a fan? We're professionals and we have jobs to do. Do you get to pick your boss? Moreover, a skeptic will often produce a more interesting review. There are plenty of Interpol fans on site, but, according to my editor, someone with my sensibilities would make something interesting.
As for myself, any casual glance at my work in Stylus, Village Voice, and other publications will show that I'm as repulsed by indie bands as I am disappointed at the fans who listen to them.
I'm not going to discuss what I included in my review again. it's there for all to see, including several remarks about the quality of the music. All writing is political, no critical writing is "objective." Nor would you want it to be.
That last Liars album sucked.
the one thing that i want to admit to you, both alfred and whoever else reads this, is that my liking of this new interpol record is very much political. for this i am sorry. but i still also do think that some of the song structures, and lyrics, and especially some of the guitar riffs are very tastefully done.
alfred,
that being said, there's simply no way that we are going to come together on this one. moreover, i am sincerely shocked by your position on criticism. if you think that objectivity should not pervade all criticism, you need to stop being a "critic" right now. Throughout time, the critic has been the one position in society that can logically and therefore objectively back up his/her aesthetic judgments. if everyone was left to run around and say "well, i like this and i don't like that. i can't say why though. but that doesn't matter, i know what i like", then no one would recognize true, objective beauty when they encountered it. there would just be a miasma of moods. Consequently, as beauty would no longer be recognized, it would eventually cease to exist. there'd be no beauty or intelligence, and the earth would become a void of stupidity and darkness. and who's to say that we're not drawing dangerously close to that point right now, when a critic, a sacred role in our society, thinks there is no objectivity in art. if there is no objectivity, eventually, alfred, there will be no art, and i hope that you do not want that.
Great art is very, very much apolitical. That is the reason why in most cases it is not accepted into the canon immediately. It breaks from the norm, or defies the conventions, shocks the system. but it is a necessary shock and the critics are the ones with the power to amend the canon, and force, yes force (and please for one second do not think that this is the crucial part of your job) the masses, though they may wholly, subjectively disagree with you, to have to confront and live with true art and beauty. Perhaps, still, the majority of people view jackson pollock's work as that of a child, but the critic knows better, knows that there is a precision and method behind his work nonpareil, knows that there is a harmony, on the surface abstract, but deep down very concrete, in the splashes, that they were thrown certain ways, because pollock understood harmony and beauty and that they could not be thrown any other way. eventually, all of society will be educated enough, will be non-materialistic enough to catch up to polluck's beauty. how tragic this would have been if the protectorate of wise critics had been political about his art, had not defended the objectivity of his beauty, objectivity in general. Do you think there is no Platonic form of the truth, dude?
alfred, the reason why writing can be called "critical" is that it deals objectively with the facts of the matter. the opinions and subjective influences are suppressed, not coldly, but necessarily, so that beauty can be realized by those who have the ability to do so when they encounter it, as a sacred sort of preservation so that they under-educated will have accepted norms that they can work to understand the beauty of, and then eventually be trained sufficiently to realize beauty when they come across it on their own. this is how we get to utopia, alfred. we don't allow MIMS to be the future of music. we want someone who shows devotion to craft, attention to detail, to yield something tastefully clever, that can be logically discerned as such, and that has a harmony at work that can be understood by the listener, and enjoyed, and rehabilitative for that listener's psyche. we permit the genius of lil' wayne.
but this harmony is at root non-materialistic, which means it is very apolitical. for me, dude, politics is a necessity, insofar as we are made up of both mind and body and we need politics and order and etc. But when it transgresses its bounds and enters art's arena, you are trifling and underestimating art and the ability of the mind to objectively deal with it. in other words you're eradicating what in my opinion is the beautiful part of our existence. if we exclusively had to operate in the realm of the political, at the whims of the moods of idiots, especially as things currently stand, all rational people would fucking off themselves.
No, A+.
Well said, JS.
Al's appalling approach to music journalism deserves all the flack it got and continues to get. That Al seems to think the criticism his "review" has thus far generated - a sizable majority, negative - is at all about the hurt feelings of Interpol fans is so...so...how do you say? So amusingly wrong-headed.
Simply put, Al broke the first rule of journalism: Al made Al the story.
I don't write journalism: I write reviews. My credo is Oscar Wilde's "The Critic as Artist."
As for "objectivity," I'll cop to it, if you like: had Interpol recorded a superb album, I'd have given them the credit, as I've done in the past. But they didn't, so nuts to them. Had they recorded a superb album in spite of Carlos D's mustache, I'd still have mentioned the mustache; it's relevant. You guys still don't understand -- when a band values style as much if not more than its recorded output, HOW they style themselves is up for grabs. Hence, the Duran comparisons. Before anyone gets excited again, you will note that the comparison made between the two bands in my review is -- ahem -- a musical one.
Okay, I just listened to the record.
Alfred, I don't blame you for being proud of your grandiloquent aggression. That's my favorite way to write, too. You might be better off channeling that urge into intentional satire.
I left on my comment's cutting room floor that I didn't want Al to get "further ahead of himself by thinking that his approach is somehow Pollockian..." Why? Because, well, I didn't think he'd go there. Oh, the bittersweet irony.
EDIT: I must give credit where credit's due.
That it was, in Al's opinion, his avant garde approach to music crticism that led to my, and others', misunderstanding (i.e., downfall)?
Hands-down, funniest thing I've read all month.
man are you not reading tom tomorrow, jeez
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