Indie Trends: Sexy Sadness (March 2011)
By Chris Polley
Lykke Li “I Follow Rivers” Wounded Rhymes [Atlantic]
“I’m your prostitute / gonna get some,” Lykke Li detachedly utters atop a lone floor tom beat during the pre-chorus to one of the tracks on the Swedish chanteuse’s sophomore full-length Wounded Rhymes, an album whose attention in the blogosphere helped kick-start the musically morose month of March. And if you’re familiar enough with indie post-ironic sensibilities you should be able to understand that such a depressing line can also be a source of pitch black humor, and thus the rousing anthemics that follow the line should likely not be just construed as a celebration of the desultory but also warmly sarcastic commentary on the nature of selling one’s body in a metaphorical, possibly even musical sense. After all, Lykke Li is on Atlantic Records now (she was just distributed by EMI for her already-kinda-not-indie debut), so she’s gotta at least poke fun at what she’s done so that she can still obtain indie cred. Nevermind that she’s basically just Adele with less boring melodies; she’s Pitchfork-approved, so her sadness about selling out has to be as real as her willingness to do so in the first place.
The sexiness she exudes while doing so all throughout Wounded Rhymes would almost be overkill if it weren’t for the fact that it’s all so well balanced. From start to finish this is a calculated effort to both seduce and depress, with lead single “I Follow Rivers” exemplifying the pictorially titillating aspects of any average/westernized twenty-something’s wanderlust and the almost cavernous “I Know Places” practically freezing with acoustic singer-songwriter tropes until its final minute-and-a-half when out of nowhere comes a ridiculously lascivious crouching beat and slithering keyboard/guitar duet outro. The eclecticism of this hollowness is part of the allure, like a plain girl without make-up, practically all areas of skin covered by a turtleneck and snowpants, but licking her lips in an attempt to both get that last bit of hot chocolate from around her mouth and also wink-nudge at us from across the ski lodge, driving us crazy like a friggin’ fox. It’s unfair, it’s perfect, and it’s unfairly perfect, but we’re suckers because it’s just slight enough to be both coldly despondent like the winter and wowing enough in its meticulous aesthetics to enrapture us for upwards of forty-five minutes.
The Weeknd “Wicked Games” House of Balloons [Self-Released]
And because all good indie boys are comfortable with their sexuality, I have to take this new paragraph opportunity to transition into saying that dudes can be sexy too. Take Abel Tesfaye, aka The Weeknd (note the spelling, as Google will attempt to defy you), for instance, who’s trying the new minimal R&B trend on for size. This kind of solace-induced electro-pop, in the vein of more popular acts such as James Blake and How to Dress Well, is about to become 2011’s version of chillwave, but until it does, it’s going to go down smooth as pudding, just like chillwave did until it inevitably outstayed its welcome. In a way, it seems like this notion of singing out one’s demons while also zooming in the camera on pulsing curves originated with the resurgence of admiration for early 90s soft-rock stars such as Sade and 10CC, something that hardly anyone saw coming and that those who have been the retro-fad’s greatest proponents just finally started admitting to liking the undeniably cheesy sound because everyone else started to finally give in and tell the truth. It’s a part of the cycle of popular music, but it’s also the way we deal with grief and loneliness – in waves.
House of Balloons¸ The Weeknd’s debut long-player, enacts a full-blown embrace of this cycle in spades, and arguably less innovatively than Blake’s twisted incarnation and more traditionally than HTDW’s acoustic lo-fi take on the sound, yet at the same time it’s also richer than both of those artists’ output combined. This doesn’t necessarily imply “better”, but it certainly makes for a more engaging and, how shall I put it, stimulating headphone session. Sure, Tesfaye’s lilting falsetto is about as weakly fragile as they come, but he’s so dedicated to the ebb and flow of restrained beat-setting and cathartic mewing that there’s never a dry spot to be heard throughout all ten jams. And jams are exactly what they are. It gets funky at times without ever becoming comic and it gets soft as a whisper without ever almost stalling like Li so teasingly does on her latest. It’s more sex than sadness, though whenever a new chorus comes along, everything that preceded becomes obfuscated by the power of the emotion in his voice. It knows how to drip, but we almost always remember the days when it pours more, and The Weeknd does both expertly.
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart “Belong” Belong [Slumberland]
Where our indie trend of the month becomes most problematic is with the first band possibly in indie history to be favorably compared to Smashing Pumpkins, a historically unsexy (but oh so sad!) band. Well, I think the answer ultimately comes down to the voice. Go on – take a trip back with me to your youth with your discs and liner notes of Siamese Dream, Adore, and Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness sprawled out on your twin bed in your parents’ house. Imagine you’re pressing play on that sweet three-disc changer you just got for your birthday from Grams and Gramps. Okay, so I know I’m only getting farther and farther away from sexy, but bear with me. Now imagine you somehow got a defunct version of each of these without Billy Corgan’s vocal track tacked on. It’s just D’Arcy’s mellow but driving bass lines, James Iha’s orgiastic guitar buzz and dreamy above-the-twelfth-fret plunkings, and Jimmy Chamberlain’s assured yet skittery percussion. That’s right – no whining. Just heavenly alt-rock orchestration and layering. This is precisely what the latest from New York’s The Pains of Being Pure at Heart sounds like, except with a soothing voice or three on top of all of it to boot.
Is it sexy in the sense that it resembles either an attractive and emotionally raw woman? No. Is it sexy in the sense that it inspires bi-curious wiggling on a dark and near-empty dance floor, unforgivingly indulging in the act of being utterly alone? Not exactly. But there’s a certain arousing allure in combining nostalgia of youthful mind-bending discoveries (I can let my feelings out through music? Whaaaa?) with a purely aesthetically pleasing combination of conventions that, and I’m trying to put this as delicately as possible, gives me wonderful butterflies in the area below my belly. I can’t understand it, really, and obviously I cannot explain it, but this may be the most sincerely sexy of the three. Yes it’s all major keys and chipper snare and atmosphere but that’s what The Cure was and they may have well patented the idea of blending the sexy with the sad. It’s this gut feeling of lusty desire and intense sorrow, but it’s not romanticizing the past or even illusory interpretations of the mournful. It’s finding fun when everyone else (often including yourself) tells you there is none.