Song, by Toad

Fuck me, I’m glad that’s over with. Did you find that as dull as I did? Four consecutive posts about major bands on major labels that you could all just as easily have read about in Q Magazine. I even liked the Elbow and REM albums, but I still felt slightly dirty writing about them, although I don’t know why.

This blog is supposed to be a record of my thoughts on music, and I was genuinely interested to hear the new Supergrass and REM, and really excited to hear The Raconteurs and Elbow so why do I feel so flat after writing about them? Why has it suddenly become so unsatisfying to write about bands of that stature?

I don’t think the answer lies in snobbery, per se. I have no shame in enjoying the really big and famous bands that I like, nor do I think anyone else should apologise for liking famous music – or fluffy, superficial pop for that matter. Music is there to be enjoyed, and really doesn’t need to be dissected much more than that*.

Maybe it’s the club-ism; the exclusivity. We share something that They don’t have their hands on yet so it feels more special, like a secret or something. There’s also the issue of making a contribution, I suppose. Me bigging up the new REM album is utterly irrelevant to the band whereas when I write about really small groups I might just double their sales if a few of you go and buy something. And they are much more delighted to see a positive review of their music of course, and that always makes this a more satisfying thing to do.

Ultimately, I think it’s about ownership, really. Pop culture is not something most of us get to participate in in any meaningful way whatsoever, so by writing about smaller bands it almost forces REM and Supergrass to become Pop Culture, whereas the little unsigned acts become Our Pop Culture – more personal, more involved and, crucially I think, a smaller community to be a part of. One which may be global in reach but is not global in numbers. It’s a more comprehensible size, something you can actually feel a part of, something you feel you can come to terms with and something which gives a little back when you go and say Hi at the end of a gig. The global audience for REM is just too big for that. The global audience for Bambi Get Over It is not.

So I guess it’s no real surprise that it just feels so much better to have a tiny unsigned band to write about, or to get some friends in and post their live performances on YouTube. They are people we know, people we can be a bit more emotionally invested in, people whose fans could conceivably all get together for a big piss up in the same place. I think a lot of what is perceived as indie snobbery is not quite as much to do with snobbery and perhaps more to do with feeling part of a community whose edges are still close enough to touch, and where you actually feel like an important member rather than a single album sale amongst millions.

So I’m not going to stop writing about big famous bands, because I am genuinely interested in them, but I am finding myself more and more drawn to the grassroots of the music world – small projects where people are having a go and I feel like I really can help bring their work to a wider audience. It just feels nicer.

Bambi Get Over It – That Girl
Darla Farmer – History
Hotpipes – Born in a Bomb
It’s a Buffalo – Outlines

* I could pretty much delete this whole blog on the basis of that one comment alone!

Well, it really is mainstream indie rock week so far on Song, by Toad isn’t it? The Raconteurs, Supergrass, Elbow… crikey anyone would think I’d lost what little edge I ever had.

Well one of the reasons for this is because after last year’s debacle for major releases, some of the mainstream stuff this year has been really pretty good. And REM, amazingly, are in fact one of the best of the lot. After the mediocre Reveal and the utterly lifeless garbage that was Around the Sun I had pretty much given up on ever hearing anything great from REM ever again. Almost all bands eventually slip into a comfortable semi-retirement, accompanied by the creative equivalent a nice cuppa and much on some Rich Tea biscuits, and I reckoned that point had arrived in about 1999 for the lads from Georgia.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, because this really is an excellent record. Stipe has apparently called it their best ever, although I can’t find the quote anywhere, and although I would certainly stop some way short of that, it is indubitably their best album for years, and a superb achievement for a band who seemed to have slipped into a musical coma.

I remember writing a review of the last Stones album A Bigger Band in which I described what critics were bafflingly calling that ubiquitous Blistering Return to Form thus:

I’m tempted to say that this will appeal to older Stones fans who want to enjoy the old Stones one last time before they vanish, and this seems to almost be what they themselves are thinking.

That record sounded almost like The Stones covering The Stones, and it could perhaps be argued that this REM album has a touch of that – a band trying to sound how they used to sound in order to recapture what made them great.  It wouldn’t be a stretch to say it, but I think it would be harsh.  Feted past or otherwise, most of these songs stand up forcefully on their own, and it would be an injustice to condescend to them in that way.

I am not saying that this album is flawless.  It sags a little in the middle, but just as you think that songs like Hollow Man and Accelerate are part of a downward slide into middle-aged stodge, salvation arrives in the form of Until the Day is Done and the splendid Mr. Richards.  Again, these songs are peaks in a record that is a little uneven, but by and large I think this is fantastic, and I am bloody delighted because I thought they were finished.

REM – Living Well is the Best Revenge
REM – Until the Day is Done

They’re not having this one either, apparently.  It’s so sad.  You watch these people, presumably all grown adults who know better, thrashing about pathetically in a job that basically tries to deny the onset of the 21st Century and it eventually just becomes pitiful.  I knew this was a risk when posting about famous bands but I am genuinely saddened at this sort of childlike, blinkered attitude to the real world.  It is the equivalent of the church trying to deny the King James Bible at the advent of the printing press, when suddenly the Word of God, of which they had hitherto been the sole guardians, became available to the general public.  They are just clownish buffoons who will be utterly obsolete within a couple of years, but Christ they’re a nuisance at the moment.

website | hype | amazon

After all the hoo-ha surrounding the helter-skelter release of this album and the refusal to allow reviewers to have advance copies and all of that gubbins has died down, I think we can now safely address the question of whether or not it is actually any good without tripping over wordy Music 2.0 chatter at every turn.

I’ve already been accused of anti-mainstream snobbery once today, so I am a little hesitant to say this, but I actually do not think this album is especially good. Jack White’s dirty blues are still in evidence, as are some of the more eccentric digressions that decorated the last White Stripes album. And once again Brendan Benson brings just enough pop sensibility to the record to take it a clear step away from other White enterprises.

The thing is that somehow they seem to have landed in the sort of Rawk territory that lacks something of the bite of Broken Boy Soldiers. Many Shades of Black, for example, may be an excellent song but it has more than a whiff of Queen about it, particularly in the chorus. It’s weird.

You know what I think may have happened? I think some of the pace has gone out of their music. Broken Boy Soldiers seemed to distill the excitement of a new project into music that drove forwards excitedly onto the next riff, or the next song, or whatever else they came up with next. This seems to lack a little of that bubbling energy and consequently the album comes across as more than a little bit sluggish.

Am I being an anti-mainstream snob again? I don’t know, possibly, but I am just not very excited by listening to this record.

The Raconteurs – The Switch & the Spur
The Raconteurs – Carolina Drama

The Fun Police have made an appearance and music has consequently returned to the 19th Century, where it will presumably remain until someone rolls a much-needed hand grenade into Web Sherriff Towers.

website | hype | amazon