“The truly great songs are about our romantic feelings. And this is not because songwriters have anything to add to the subject; it’s just that romance, with its dips and turns and glooms and highs, its swoops and swoons and blues, is a natural metaphor for music itself.”
- Nick Hornby
Unfortunately, pop music isn’t yet.
Lately, I’ve been listening to Lana Del Rey’s “Off to the Races” a lot not because it’s necessarily a “good” song in the strictest sense; but because it’s so fucking ridiculous that it’s almost astounding. First of all, it’s hip-hop spiked with Nancy Sinatra-ish camp – the result is awkward to the point of hilarity but it’s also somehow addictively catchy (I’ve never actually tried hard drugs, but I imagine “Off to the Races” sounds like what heroin must feel like). Second of all, it’s kinda like the song version of the movie “Leaving Las Vegas”, only you have cocaine instead of alcohol, Courtney Love instead of Elisabeth Shue, Charlie Sheen instead of Nicolas Cage, and strip-club music instead of jazz. “God, I’m so crazy, baby,” she sings (well, not if you have to actually say it), “I’m sorry that I’m misbehaving, I’m your little harlot, starlet, Queen of Coney Island, raising hell all over town.” Oooooo…
This is obviously an extreme case but the whole pop music landscape is so cynical now that Lana Del Rey had to be manufactured by record executives who think that the logical next step is a hipster-wet-dream version of Rihanna. Look at Katy Perry: as good a song as “Teenage Dream” is, it’s still basically Bruce Springsteen’s “Born To Run” photoshopped by a teenaged girl who’s seen “My Super Sweet Sixteen” too many times. Then we have Taylor Swift who can’t stop herself from writing Loser Revenge Songs all the time and Rihanna who keeps telling us that she “found love in a hopeless place.” And of course…Coldplay. Holy Mother of God. If romance was a cake, then Coldplay is like the pastry chef who decided to use synthetic sugar instead of the real thing then baked one gigantic chocolate cake with 2 kilos worth of icing, topped with some cream cheese that Gwyneth Paltrow found in Zurich while she was studying Swiss cuisine for her next cookbook, then when he finally shoves the whole damn thing to your face you realize that, after all the bullshit that went with it, it still just tastes like styrofoam, which makes you so mad that you want to stab him with your fork.
And…scene.
It’s easy enough to ignore mainstream pop, since I’ve been doing that for the last two-thirds of my life anyway. And when I really want to go back to romanticism, all I have to do is listen to the most innocent kind of music that exists: indie pop. I don’t mean “indie”, by the way, or “indie rock”. I’m not referring to bands like Of Montreal or The Decemberists or Toro Y Moi, bands that have that detached, semi-ironic cool; you know, “hipster shit”.
I’m talking about The Field Mice, Blueboy, Bobby Wratten, Laura Watling, Louis Philippe, Sarah Records, Shelflife Records, El Records – music for people who love knitted sweaters, librarian skirts, jangly guitars, black-and-white movies from the 50s, and kittens. I’m talking about hardcore twee: songs about schoolyard crushes, summer flings, making out in front of a campfire, cute yearbook photos – things that existed before we found out that life actually sucks. I love indie pop because it’s music in a time capsule: it’s forever the 60s and we’re forever in our teens and sadness is still beautiful and precious.
But here’s the thing: in the last few years, even indie pop has grown stale. The most consistent band of the genre today is The Acid House Kings – and even they have been sounding uninspired lately. The Great Bobby Wratten (of indie pop legends The Field Mice), on the other hand, sounds so profoundly bored in the last three Trembling Blue Stars albums. Even Radio Dept. – not exactly the most exciting bunch on the planet – confessed in their Manila presscon last year that they think bands under Labrador Records (the leading indie pop label in Sweden) are boring.
What’s happening to Indie Pop is basically the same thing that happened to 80s hardcore punk (the very genre that they consciously rebelled against): everything was reduced to formula until the music became a parody of itself (for a definitive history of Indie Pop, read this excellent Pitchfork article).It was getting to a point where everything literally sounded like: jangly guitars + girly vocals + simple minor chords + nursery rhyme melodies + pa-pa-ra-pa-pa = this is sooooo indie!
So what do you do when even the least cynical musical genre becomes cynical? You try to distract yourself with all the Lana Del Reys that the world has to offer.
And then you discover a little band called Allo Darlin’ and the universe suddenly feels right for the first time in ages.
Allo Darlin’ is a U.K.-based band with an Aussie singer and songwriter named Elizabeth Morris who sounds like a cross between Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura and a 15-year-old Ben Lee. I’ve already fallen in love with her after listening to their debut album (which is still on heavy rotation in my car stereo, in my room, in my PC, in my head) that has single-handedly revitalized indie pop by making it fun and sincere and unpretentious again. Then I read her March 24, 2011 blog entry on their website and now I think I want to marry her.
It was so engrossing and enviable reading all about their experience touring Europe in a van that kept breaking down, driving in the rain with defective wipers, crying in her sunglasses because they were going to be late for a gig, selling out shows in places she had no idea they were known, dancing on the sidewalk every time their van got fixed, loving the European countryside, and finding inspiration through a Henry Rollins spoken word album. It was so pure and honest and refreshing. She writes:
“I think the story also shows a little bit that indie pop isn't about what kind of music you make, or how jangly your guitar is, or what you say your influences are. It's about your attitude. We lost all our money on tour, but we had an amazing time and got to play our music to loads of people. We count ourselves among the lucky ones because we have done something so many bands can only dream about. And the people we have to thank the most for this are you the ones who came, because you are giving us the chance to do what we've all dreamed of doing since we were kids. So thanks to you, and we hope it won't be the last time we see you on the Continent. Now we're off to record our new album, and it's going to be called Europe.”
Reading about her experiences makes this video so much more impressive. The song sounds so pure and sweet, like all indie pop songs. But it also has a ton of that one essential thing that has been absent from the genre for so long: an exhilarating lust for life. And you can see that almost spilling out of Elizabeth’s body as she sways to the tender rhythms and sings:
“I’ve never felt so poor and I don’t know what I am looking for but it feels like we’ve made it and before this memory’s faded, we will ask again if this is really happening. And I just wanna be close to you and there’s nothing left for me to prove. You said: ‘this is life, this is living…This is life! This is living’”
I just discovered this video a week ago and I have been watching it 2-3 times a day since. It’s basically an amateur video; the high angle suggests that they’re playing in a very cramped space. The lighting is poor. The audio is barely passable. But it’s also at least 10 times more moving than any over-produced Katy Perry or Lady Gaga performance. This is what music should sound and look and feel like. I know I’m now more used to the high-production jadedness of pop culture today and have embraced it as a mere fact of life like getting old and compromise. But I can’t also deny that a joy this pure exists – I saw a glimmer of it as a teenage music fan and, as much as I would like to dismiss it as naivete, I also need to acknowledge that just because I’m no longer exposed to something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or that it never existed at all.
Allo Darlin’ is reminding me of so many things – that music could be this good, that music could matter this much, that I used to not care about money, that I never wanted a day job, that all I ever wanted was to devote my entire life to my craft and get lost in all its joys and frustrations. You tend to forget those things when you become a taxpaying grown-up getting by in these highly cynical and post-modern times. You convince yourself that romanticism isn’t real just so you could save yourself the trouble of being disappointed over and over again.
But whenever I hear Elizabeth sing…
"It’s freezing out here on the pavement
But here in your arms…
…it’s heaven."
…I believe her. Because she sounds so honest, it must be true.
It has to be.
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Sarah Records wall from galazie365.blogspot.com
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