Lately I have been reading a lot of articles on rock music that sound the same. Monotone rock critics are lighting candles and chanting mournful hymns while they self-righteously declare that rock is dead.
This is a cop-out. It’s the least original thing to say. We heard it when Buddy Holly died and when disco infiltrated the mainstream. People hung their heads and lifted their lighters when Kurt Cobain blew out the back of his head and when Radiohead released Kid A. And it was declared every other day in between. It is said out of naiveté or more often out of foolish conceitedness. Just like Chuck Palahniuk said, “Every generation wants to be the last.”
And what rock critic wouldn’t want to be the first one to find out? To be the one huddled next to Rock ‘n’ Roll’s corpse, the bloated stench of alcohol and groupie froth choking your nose, your fingers the first to tell you what you’d known was coming all along.
“There’s no pulse, we’ve lost it,” you could say with a half-hidden smile.
But this isn’t going to happen. It’s a misguided false hope to believe that your words could single-handedly kill what neither religion nor legislation could ever control. A music critic’s job is to spread the word. If there is a true love of music in you, you will not long for its demise simply to prove a point or because you miss the days when rock was pure. Somebody else was spouting about rock being dead then, too.
Sure, Sonic Youth aren’t making albums like Bad Moon Rising anymore. That’s fine and natural. People actually do grow and change as time passes. I’m not going to condemn Thurston Moore for not making new albums that sound just like his old ones. That would be dumb.
And to site all new music as revival seems strangely uninformed. When I think of revival, I see half-naked hairy people singing Jim Croce songs in the forest. I envision some guy with a ZZ Top beard playing the lick from “Johnny B. Goode” on a fold-out stage on the Fourth of July. The Rapture, Kings of Leon, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, the White Stripes–all these groups build off their influences but that is the nature of all art. Rock is especially derivative. It’s hardly difficult to trace a lineage from Nirvana to Robert Johnson. Even Outkast, the group that most unanimously bounced to the top of every “Top Ten” list and into the heart of every music fan with Speakerboxx/The Love Below has clearly discernable links to Parliament Funkadelic, Prince, Chaka Khan and Miles Davis (among many others). And more people should be listening to music from the past anyway. Everyone would be better off if the next generation of rockers weaned themselves on Big Star, Jimmy Cliff, Slint, Spacemen 3, Richard Hell and T. Rex. So to condemn an artist for wearing his influences proudly would be comparable to criticizing Sofia Coppola for adhering to the classical continuity system.
In fact, Coppola’s latest offering, “Lost in Translation,” is proof that rock isn’t restricted to the compact disc. The film, whose original score was written and performed by My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Sheilds, gives life to characters, places, atmospheres and attitudes through the strong use of both diegetic (part of the story world) and nondiegetic musical elements. Bill Murray singing Elvis Costello has as much relevance as the Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Honey,” on which the movie concludes. This is a testament, if not to the specific artists, then to an attitude and mental plane where rock music is a constant and unavoidable cornerstone of other expression.
But there is also important new music being made. To dismiss the Darkness and Fannypack as throwback kitsch is to miss their points entirely. Junior Senior skip across genres without losing a beat to goofiness (something even the Beatles failed at with the White Album). And incredible songwriting muscle went on display this past year as Ben Folds, Adam Green, the Weakerthans, Hamell On Trial and Damien Rice all released unique and self-stylized albums. John Vanderslice’s Cellar Door blew into a new level of narrative, and labels like Tigerbeat6 and Vice are leaving new tastes in the collective conscious of inquiring listeners.
Thrice, Brand New and Coheed and Cambria all dropped their best albums yet, and groups like the Caesars, the Ponys, Erase Errata, Ex-models, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Le Tigre, Wolf Eyes, the Faint, Modest Mouse, the Pernice Brothers and the Shins are all rocking out in their own individual fresh style. Telefon Tel Aviv, LCD Soundsystem, Psycho Radio, !!!, dj/rupture, Four Tet, Prefuse 73, Ghost Cauldren, the Blood Brothers, Mylo, Her Space Holiday and countless others are progressing rock music in new and interesting directions, inside and outside of genre conventions. If Dave Grohl’s Probot side-project gets kids to check out a Motorhead album, he’s doing his job well.
To say that rock is dead means one of two things. You’re either stuck in your room, cut off from the world around you, waiting for the Pixies to release another Surfer Rosa, or you have no idea what you’re talking about.
