Indie Trends: Faux Eclecticism (February 2010)

This is the second installment in Chris Polley’s monthly “Indie Trends” series. The first entry, including an in-depth explanation of the overall premise, can be found here.

Indie Trends: Faux Eclecticism (February 2010)
By Chris Polley

It seems my biggest struggle in identifying the indie music trends from month to month is and will, rather simply, continue to be balancing my love of independently-minded music with my hatred of the term “indie” and the tremendous baggage it carries. While it’s probably easy to hyperbolize with this being only my second entry of this feature, I can’t help but want to blurt out my jaded dissatisfaction for everything the term has come to stand for over the years, and how this past month’s three notable releases under that categorical umbrella epitomize quite possibly the most annoying things about “indie.”

What sucks even more? These three records are all pretty awesome.
But we’ll get to that. Let us first focus on the theme of this month’s indie analysis: faux eclecticism. Right off the bat, you can gather from that snooty French-derived prefix that it’s going to be annoying to talk/write/read about. So I apologize in advance. But it’s a necessary distraction because this kind of indie sin has become particularly flagrant since (oh sweet merciful crap am I really going to mention Vampire Weekend two months in a row? I promise I refrain for March’s entry) the faux surge in popularity of Soweto-tinged white dude pop-rock. Now, it may be unfair for me to boil down and generalize something so can-of-wormsy, but ultimately, I believe what the collective indie unconscious desires is to be seen as diverse.

Do I believe that’s what Vampire Weekend wanted when they decided to use all the best guitar and vocal tricks learned from African pop records (and/or Paul Simon)? No, that just seems too evil. But we’re not talking just about the musicians here. Overall, I believe that because we’re (listeners, critics, concert-goers, etc.) comprised mostly of left-leaning, urban-poor-sympathetic, open-minded individuals, we wish our music tastes aligned with our socio-political beliefs. And because they simply don’t (you can take the 18-year-old out of the suburbs, but you can’t…you get the idea), we often have to reach for absurd connections between our favorite new records we downloaded on our painfully middle class laptops and the ethnic world at large to paint ourselves as “eclectic.”

The most brazen example of this crime in this past month is with a record that is not even indie, but has been embraced by the usual suspects: Soldier of Love, the first release in ten years from 90s R&B/soft rockers Sade. It’s a positively stunning collection of meticulously crafted but effortlessly performed songs that has rightly been heralded throughout both the mainstream and indie music communities. But because it doesn’t fit into either the standard acoustic guitar-driven commercial lite-rock format nor the ADD-fueled Top 40 style, who ended up taking the brunt of the job praising it? That’s right: indie kids and indie adults who wish they were still kids. And yes, this is largely fantastic, because at least someone, much less an ever-burgeoning population of music lovers, can appreciate the beauty of this fine record. On the other hand, it sticks out like a goddamn sore thumb amongst the sea of Sonic Youth and Pavement-inspired records that spill out onto MP3 blogs every day. I don’t even need to explain why other than that I wanted to use the word “soulful” in my description of the album’s emotional heft above, but didn’t feel right doing so because I’ve never correctly used the word “soulful” in a music review in my life. Because I don’t. Listen. To. Soul. Music. And neither do you, so get off your high horse.

And the high-stakes accusations don’t end there, folks. Well, actually, they could if you could look me in the eye and honestly tell me that it’s sheer coincidence that the indie love for the Sade record came just a week or so before all the hoopla surrounding a so-called “music legend” that also happened to experience a high-profile reemergence this month: a very talented artist that none of us heard of before 2010 (but all wish we did because it would make us cooler) by the name of Gil Scott-Heron. His first record in sixteen years, I’m New Here, is a strange but refreshing blend of spoken word, blues, and a whole bunch of other genres I don’t feel comfortable writing about because they’re well beyond my wheelhouse of musical knowledge.

In many ways the indie heralding of this record over the past month, while equally deserving, was even more head-scratching to me at first because Sade makes immediately and oh-so-accessibly gorgeous music, while Scott-Heron very openly makes challenging and subversive music. Then I remembered that with the advent of experimentalism as a defining indie trait (Animal Collective, SunnO))), etc.), pretty much anything goes. Add in an incredibly moving life story plus the fact that it’s released on one of the most successful indie labels of recent years (XL) and you’ve got a recipe for comeback success with a completely different audience: ones, in fact, that most likely were not but a few months ago making fun of things like spoken word and blues because they’re esoteric or antiquated. Little do so many indie music lovers know, though, that being esoteric and antiquated is what indie’s all about: it’s just the packaging, posturing, and marketing that matters. Oh, and whether or not it’s been called Best New Music by that one web site.

Now, with two hugely different records from the rest of the long-term, much -less-recent indie output, you might be wondering how the hell it’s possible to link this kind of drastic differentiation to a third album from the same release month. Well, it’s going to be a stretch, that’s for sure. I hope I made it clear in my first go at this that this monthly diatribe should be less about finding connections and more about looking for them, so here I go.

The way I see it, the third and final release that got a lot press this month was the sparkling pop-rock debut Gorilla Manor by the Californian quartet Local Natives. I mean c’mon, when you hear some of the biggest current names in indie (Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes, and The Dodos were all found in one review alone) being namedropped to describe your record, you know it’s going to either A) make a mark, or B) be dismissed as mimicry. Well, so far anyway, the indie public has gone with option A. And you know what? I agree with them (see a theme here yet?). This album is, while completely unsurprising, way more tightly composed, energetic, and straightforwardly satisfying than any of those artists’ work mentioned above, which is exactly why I have a big problem with two words that keeps coming up in reviews and blog posts to describe the album’s aesthetic: “tropical” and “bi-coastal”.

I mean, are you kidding me, indie music lovers? I get it, you like the album. It’s immaculately produced pop music that reminds you of some of your favorite bands. That can be enough, believe it or not. It doesn’t NEED to be eclectic! Tropical is a term saved for exotic vacations and imaginary islands, not indie rock that features shimmering guitars and three-part harmonies. And bi-coastal? Los Angeles and Brooklyn influences? What? Because it’s both sunny and hipster-friendly? Like the two are mutually exclusive? Okay, enough with the pointed questions. But seriously, I can’t even get into any kind of productive discourse about this record because people are pulling their musical brain muscles in an attempt to reach out and grab onto something about the music they like that also makes them better, more diverse people. It’s like they’re striving for connections that aren’t really there!

Wait a second. [Blushes.]