I blame Belle & Sebastian

Just for you, Serge, some babbling I jotted down a couple weeks ago and never finished, or edited. But better than nothing, right?

(Incidentally, most New Yorker content is now available on their website without subscription.)

Sasha Frere-Jones' recent article in the New Yorker about indie rock's lost soul is mostly spot-on, despite the usual music critic pretensions. And he makes some interesting connections (or tries to) between the splintering of pop music and the post-civil rights, p.c.-era "new segregation" or whatever you want to call it. But there is one thing I'd love to chime in on, strictly on the musical side of the discussion. Let me be totally blunt.

I blame Belle & Sebastian.

Sasha puts a lot of blame on Pavement and their early-90s ilk for the cerebral, back-beatless tendencies of present-day "indie" rock, but at least (and never mind here that I was a huge fan) at least they had energy, and yes, emotion. Sure, the lyrics were nonsense, but the tone of voice made clear what it really meant that you were a cigar stand, and I, a blue incandescent guillotine. And as the 90s wore on, at least we had some bands - I'm thinking mostly of the "math-rock" genre now, and specifically the more raw style of Unwound, rather than the too-carefully orchestrated sound of Don Caballero - some bands that despite their inscrutable vocals and downright alienating music, were LOUD for chrissakes. We also had the early Weezer, the early Radiohead, the Foo Fighters, bands that may have had no "soul" in the motown sense but had clearly recognizable emotions in their lyrics and their driving, urgent music. Then I guess two things happened. First (and here's where we blame the Scots, of all people): Belle and Sebastian, at least for me, ushered in the wimpification of indie rock. Where's the fucking distortion pedal!?!? Where's the ENERGY? I guess it probably started long before, with the Smiths or the Cure or whoever, but all of a sudden indie rock was goddamn BORING. Lullabies, for crying out loud!

Sorry, end of rant. (Also, what about punk, Sasha? The Sex Pistols lost their soul long before Pavement ever did.)

In honesty, I guess I sort of stopped paying attention for a few years there, so I might have missed some good indie ROCK (as opposed to INDIE rock - Stella, anyone?). But now that I've started paying attention again, I see the second event, and this gets back (finally) to what Sasha's talking about. When the indie kids wanted to put the soul back in, they couldn't figure it out. Arcade Fire are great, but Sasha's friend hit the nail on the head when (s)he asked, "Do they play every song in this end-of-the-world style?" Akron/Family and the neo-folk stuff are another great example of white hipsters trying to sound soulful, this time by using lots of voices in harmony (and then freaking out for twelve boring minutes). The other manifestation is the Killers/Franz Ferdinand/eighteen million other bands, who just want to make the disco of this decade. (It's straight dance music, right?) The Hold Steady are good, but that's because he actually IS Bruce Springsteen (at least that's my pet conspiracy theory), and the garage rock revival was a fine flash in the pan, but really just a rehash (nothing there the Monks didn't do better 40 - yes, 40 - years ago, and that REALLY includes the White Stripes, sorry). The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are lots of fun. They may have something there, actually. (Is Karen O. a 21st century Janis Joplin? Is that possible without the black music influence?)

The new indie ROCK may have some great songwriters, and some great performers even. But rock and roll had soul. And at least the mid-90s indie rock had something else, even if it was just noisily expressed angst. (Emo was the too-whiny dead end of the angsty branch of indie rock. I suppose you could call Weezer "proto-emo.") The new indie rock needs to find a way to express something that feels real, rather than like calculated emotion or, even worse, just plain calculated.