Indie Trends: Full-Bodied Dilapidation (August 2011)
By Chris Polley
Two months ago I brought forth some thoughts on the more intense yet equally oxymoronic indie music trend “melodic volatility,” something that felt more immediate and easily identifiable than what I propose here for August’s widely respected/hyped releases. While the former describes an impulse by the indie musician to uncover and express extreme feelings of anger and/or frustration, I have seen in new releases by The War on Drugs, Dom, and Male Bonding an innate resignation of pointedness and clarity, but still exuding some deep need to do so in a way that is rich, lush, and bold. For me, the phrase “melodic volatility” conjures up the image of a fancy man in a tuxedo with handlebar mustache and monocle who’s finally lost it (per the Citizen Kane metaphor I employ/force in said write-up), whereas the phrase “full-bodied dilapidation” is more akin to the Gus Van Sant quasi-biopic Last Days, which chronicled a troubled Seattle-based rock star quietly letting go of humanity, but with vibrant and intoxicating cinematography. This is not black-and-white modernism we’re dealing with here; this is multi-hued post-pop.
The War on Drugs “Baby Missiles” Slave Ambient [Secretly Canadian]
First on the docket is Pennsylvanian shoegazey folk band The War on Drugs, whose can-of-worms moniker upon first listen belies their steady and seemingly simplistic contemporary take on Bob Dylan’s signature aesthetic. Dig into their songs, however, listen to them on repeat with attention paid to guitar tone nuances and lyrical complexities, and you’ll find a group that has taken more time building upon the pastoral Americana template than thought at first glance. Their latest album title, Slave Ambient, is just as curious, with its dual reference to terrible oppression and ignorable soundscapes. Like the aforementioned Minnesotan singer-songwriter legend, vocalist Adam Granduciel warbles his way through the bulk of it, suggesting that he’s continuously stumbling through the midst of it all, always a hair’s breadth away from gently collapsing on the dirt beneath him, like an old man decaying along with the world he’s observing through the microphone. Yet what’s going on underneath his voice has enough pull and encapsulation happening to make it seem like Granduciel will be swallowed up at any moment, freeing up space for the hazy guitars to wander in every sonic direction, or for the skittering snare to soak up the reverb and spit it back out with every precise hit.
This isn’t Genre Mashing 101, though, because that would be the exact opposite of the ethic The War on Drugs seem to represent, which is infinitely more natural and…whatever. Like they just picked up their gear, churned out this sound, and it just so happens that they wind up with Springsteen by way of Slowdive. And with every churn comes a little crumble, which they don’t bother to clean up in some kind of urgent attempt to make sure every phrase or riff matters – it just frays and bleeds as if that was merely how it was meant to be. If there’s anything they “make sure of” while they’re composing, recording, or performing for the listener, it’s that they create a complete picture. No second is left sounding empty or sparse because, as they may think, what’s the point of that? Fill it up, let the watercolors blend together through the fate of physics and chemistry, and trust that the way it comes together resembles a work of art. And even when it drags or doesn’t grab you by the throat, it at least calms and assures us that, yes, it’s okay to feel burnt out, as long as you feel it all the way.
Dom “Telephone (Live)” Original appears on Family of Love [Astralwerks]
It’s a different story when you care more about the highs than the textures in your pop antics, though. Luckily, if you’re a hipster, you’re likely to obtain some of those textures through sheer accident, just like The War on Drugs attained a distinct palette through letting the pieces fall into place. The Massachusetts quartet Dom, led by the eponymous singer-songwriter, should for all intents and purposes be a pop-punk band from the late 90s. People have also said this about hipster-cred groups such as Wavves and The Mae Shi, but each of these, Dom included, seem to have the serendipity of producing their records during an era where as long as you turn up the lo-fi and/or vintage synths along with the infectiously nasal melodies and power chords, you’ll end up getting a pass because rhyming “gnarly” with “party” comes across different when you’re not a major label and you’ve got some analog space between your various instruments.
And it may sound like I’m deriding Dom and others for basically disguising themselves amongst the cool kids, but there really is something divergent about each of these artists that makes them legitimately instead of just manipulatively appealing. For Dom, it’s their placement in this dilapidation zeitgeist. It’s not just their production values that make them sound like they’re splitting loosely at the seams; they also have a slackery winsomeness about them that just wouldn’t jive with the likes of, say, the Drive-Thru or Fueled by Ramen rosters. They’re overtly naïve like many of their decade-old predecessors, sure, but in a manner that’s eccentrically world-weary rather than obnoxiously pained. They may have only managed to follow up their 2010 breakthrough EP Sun Bronzed Greek Gods with another short player, even if they were lured by a larger indie label with mainstream distribution, but they’re sure to pack as much into those five short tracks as possible. There’s no filler of heartbroken plaintiveness here. They want the quirk (and even blasts of pure joy) along with their yearning choruses, and they deliver likewise. It’s not deep, perhaps, but at least it effectively matches the textures they happened to fall into just by the era in which they produce popular music for the indie masses.
Male Bonding “Bones” Endless Now [Sub Pop]
Funnily enough, if it weren’t for the slightly more baritone vocals, raucous English band Male Bonding may have easily fallen into this same category of pop-punk-that-could-have-been. The Sub Pop band’s sophomore full-length (also a common thread between this month’s three highlighted releases), Endless Now, may have more direct genre connection to Dom, but their drive seems to be more similar to The War on Drugs, which if you go back, connects to the roots of the punk rock movement, where the musician could care less if they knew how to properly or proficiently play their instrument. What matters more is that what’s coming out is honest, unfiltered, and real. Male Bonding work their distorted guitars and riotous drums at a breakneck pace, but they almost sound like they’re limping as they do it. This, once again, is not a cut against the band’s abilities. They’re not limping because they don’t care; their limbs are jelly because they don’t have the strength to stand up, but somehow manage to make things loud enough for the energy of the sound to keep them erect.
The difference between how Male Bonding treats falling into their natural place and what The War on Drugs do, to contrast, is that their fullness doesn’t stem from a flurry of effects beneath their waving locks and brushy beards. It’s rooted more intrinsically in anxiety – something that’s certainly prevalent in both of the records discussed above, but is so sublimated in their reverb-heavy mixes that it’s clear they’re disconnecting from it as much as possible. For The War on Drugs, they’re lost in the atmosphere – they’re slaves to it, if their album title must be taken to its literal conclusion. And for Dom, it’s the catapult of the pop melody that keeps them jumping off the ground, unable to deal with the neuroses built into their own what-is-this-life-anyway demeanor. Male Bonding, ultimately, don’t have enough time nor tolerance to try to escape what the others are (voluntarily) letting keep them down. For instance, on the lengthy-for-a-punk-track six-minute epic “Bones” begins with a simultaneously off-putting and beautiful harmonizing that sounds like a pop mockery at worst, an apathetic glaze at best, but as it treads head first into letting the walls (read: never ending guitar squalls, buried and discouraged vocals) enclose them, they are hitting the proverbial nail on the head. They are letting their surroundings get the best of them, sure, but not without admitting it and making fun of it in the process. The ultimate punch line is that they don’t go for the sharp sustain fall-out like your average dilapidated pop or punk song. They choose the fade out, implying that there was too much around them to admit defeat in the final moments – better to have the overwhelming disintegrate them than demolish them in a single blow.