From the Shelf: Pile / The Band in Heaven
By: Christian Hagen
With the explosions of nostalgia and ennui regarding rock and roll overtaking our site of late, it’s sometimes hard to remember why we put so much stake into indie rock in the first place. Clearly, AudioSuede, and much of the music reviewing community, has experienced an expansion of tastes over recent years, and all for the best; rock has grown stale, at least in most of its recent incarnations. It’s beginning to look more and more that there isn’t any one type of music sitting atop the hill anymore, supposedly representing a generation of youths, and if there is, it certainly isn’t rock.
Rock isn’t necessarily “dead,” though the designation of living or dead in this case seems very arbitrary. Perhaps instead of focusing on whether rock and roll is dead or alive, we should consider whether it is of use. Rock and roll is like a room you live in, but when you’re not in it, to borrow from Joss Whedon, does the room, the thing, have purpose? Rock and roll may exist in abundance, but if we’re not listening to it, if it’s not accomplishing anything, what does it matter?
I mean, there are certainly plenty of rock bands around these days. Take a couple young upstarts whose releases made their way into my inbox recently, Pile and The Band in Heaven. One is a heavier dark rock act, not nearly in the realms of metal or hardcore or even straight grunge, a sort of hard punk bar band with a strong leaning towards melody, whenever the singer isn’t screaming. The other is a two-piece shoegaze act whose various recordings, even their most downbeat, are surprisingly mesmerizing.
These two bands don’t really have a great deal in common musically; at times, it’s questionable whether they would belong lumped into the admittedly broad category of “indie rock.” And truthfully, each group maintains the same sort of easy throwback vibe that has conquered many ears this year, making music that reminds a listener of better bands from not that long ago. There’s something to be said for the belief that rock and roll is not so much spinning its wheels as moving backwards, hoping that cruising in a casual neutral back to the 90s will make people forget that there is real progress being made in spheres of experience certain (predominately white) musicians just can’t capture.
But in these bands’ various recordings, there is some worthwhile material for those who might still want to be caught in the illusion that rock is still viable. In particular, “Uncle Jill” and “Number One Hit Single” from Pile’s most recent album, Magic Isn’t Real, successfully navigate the old question of heavy-versus-pretty. The former juxtaposes simple vocal harmonics with a cymbal-and-guitar-focused grunge-fest over which singer Rick Maguire strains his throat to sound visceral. The latter does the same, though in a reverse order, and with a much more satisfying guitar riff about a minute in which brings the whole production into focus. It’s nice to hear a hard rock band that remembers what it means to sound good instead of trying to sound tough (or whatever the hell it is Foo Fighters are trying to do on their newest album).
The Band in Heaven, “Suicide Pact”
All in all, Pile is a band hard rock nostalgists should keep an eye out for. The Band in Heaven, meanwhile, have a little bit of a scattershot discography, with a lengthy collection of demos, many of which are extremely lo-fi and relatively sparse, though oddly captivating on initial listens, and a couple terrific EPs, most notably a split with Weird Wives. The two Band In Heaven tracks which make up this split are exhilarating, not really keeping with the spirit of shoegaze and noise that makes up their demos, but significantly more driving and coherent. “Suicide Pact,” especially, is sinister fun, brooding and swelling even as its lyrical conceit (“We’re just friends/Till we’re dead”) echoes repetitively between the singers like a mantra or an incantation. This sort of swirling punk wave has been done before, but it’s still somewhat pleasant to know it’s still alive.
And that, ultimately, is why rock and roll still exists. Though it’s worse for wear, though it may not carry the power and base that it once did, though its best iterations now consist mostly of variations on what’s come decades before, rock and roll is a part of the culture of music and its fans. There will always be more of it, and there may even always be good examples of it trickling out, though at this point it’s mostly academic, a genre trying to make self-awareness into a selling point like jazz, folk, and blues before it. For now, it’s just nice to know it’s still around.