Pop Music at the End of the 00s

The latter half of this decade seemed full of pop promise. From the monster JT/Timbaland collaboration FutureSex to Polow da Don's club-rap/R&B/synth-pop production hybrids to Madonna and Janet's reintroduction of top 40 house (not to mention Kanye's dot-connecting Graduation), pop music's future looked secure. Sure, 15 American Idol contestants were there to smother every positive trend with warmed-over easy listening, but the positives kept coming.

Every example in that list? 2007 or older.

The closest we've got to a pop savior in 2009 is the same we had in 2003, and even if Britney has proven as reliable musically as she is troubled personally, we haven't seen any significant imitation in American pop. The startling fusion of styles on Blackout and Circus provides a perfect blueprint for pop in the 21^st century – it'd be nice to hear someone paying attention. M.I.A. had a surprise hit with the terrific "Paper Planes," but Kala hasn't gone gold in the U.S. Given M.I.A.'s usual aversion to direct pop moments (and deliberate censor-baiting even on "Paper Planes"), it's hard to imagine a follow-up hit. Kanye followed Graduation with the alienating detour of 808s and Heartbreak, connected to contemporary pop only by inexplicable and egregious Auto-Tune use.

So, yeah, we're at the rhetorical question point. Why do I give a shit? Why should you? No doubt you're familiar with the arguments that pop music is breaking down and apart, and the "good riddance" take on the same. Niche-based cultural consumption combined with the democratizing force of social media and the instant availability of (almost) everything ever recorded means we don't have to give a shit about some dominant pop narrative. Supposedly.

Here's the deal, starry-eyed optimists. The top still matters…and most of our country still hears what everyone else hears and only what everyone else hears. If the argument I outlined above is "decentralized and democratized culture plus accessibility means we all win," the emerging counter-argument is "everything popular gets more popular, and that's scary." The debate has as much to do with the internet and culture in general as it has to do with pop music, I know. Getting to that.

All the way back in 2004, Kelly Clarkson put out Breakaway, a pretty impressive but totally unambitious record. In 2009, Jordin Sparks has released Battlefield. If you've heard the first single and title track, you know it's fucking massive. Not "Since U Been Gone" massive, but as big as anything since. The buried lede: the rest of Battlefield is pretty impressive too. The bonus is that Sparks and her collaborators aren't content to go straight down-the-middle – or more appropriately, they realize there isn't a neat, conventional middle to be found. The arrangements aren't nearly as bold/dangerous as Britney's latest, and the songs aren't as good as Clarkson's, but for a recent American Idol alum – hell, for an American pop artist in this godforsaken landscape – Battlefield is very solid stuff. The album is shot through with slightly edgy beat- and synth-programming, coupled with some nice vocal processing that shows Sparks isn't afraid to subordinate her voice to the songs (like Britney of late, and unlike far too many of our nominally digital-era pop vocalists). When the producers back off, Sparks still sells vocal showcases like closers "Faith" and "The Cure." Additional bonus points for superb guitar session work throughout.

Ok, but if I miss great, ambitious pop, why am I talking about this Jordin Sparks record? The sad truth is that, in 2009, "Battlefield" is a noteworthy song and the album is a noteworthy one too. I'd rather be talking about the next "Billie Jean" or "Hey Jude" or "Lucky Star" or "What You Know," but it's getting rough out there. Decry the musical relativism all you want – I say we need to fight for the records that stand out even a little, now more than ever. We need to argue with coworkers and little brothers/sisters and strangers in clubs (especially fucking DJs). Pop music is still the high ground of musical culture, however low the brow, and if you'll forgive the militant quality of the metaphor, if we care about the music, we should care about control of that high ground. If we all crawl into our tiny market-share caves – Animal Collective here, T-Pain there, Coldplay by the Borders display case – we're renouncing the unifying idea of pop music entirely, which is that we're capable of shared language…even if it's sung or played rather than spoken. Allowing mutually reinforcing biases to fester sounds awful to a musical omnivore like me. Instead, let's embrace the differences and negotiate them.*

*Note: the “you can do it, girl!" undertones throughout Battlefield might have crept in a bit here. The shorter and more restrained version: take the current state of pop as an opportunity to participate in the conversation rather than an excuse to ignore it. Withdrawing from that conversation has consequences.**

**I realize that not everyone cares about pop music. If you do and don't feel satisfied, all I'm suggesting is that you find a way to communicate that. And stop finding your fix (exclusively) with indie pop, please. I can promise you that jj n° 2 is not, in fact, comparable to or better than every mainstream pop record from 2009, however weak the year's been. The tastemakers might be desperate enough to canonize every third group from Jacksonville or Sweden, but you don't have to be dumb enough to follow along. You certainly don't need to pretend that a basement cover of a mediocre Lil Wayne single is a revelation. There's a place for this kind of all-devouring no-boundaries amateur pop, but does it have to be every place? There's my start, now let's continue the argument.

Animal Collective's MPP: Praising with Faint Criticism

I feel a bit lonely. Which is convenient, of course. By and large I can't stand the people who DISlike Merriweather Post Pavilion...or their reasons. The most (only?) intelligent take I've seen is Chris Ott's, but I'm still miles away from him on this record.

But I also don't like Merriweather. Why? I've spent well over a month now trying to figure that out, time I could have spent on music I actually give a shit about.

Ok, so why spend that time? Easier question to answer. First, because Merriweather Post Pavilion is an Important Record. Being an Important Record isn't a knock on the record, or on the band, for that matter. Animal Collective (as even Ott would admit unless I'm way off) didn't confer that status themselves, they just made a record. We The Internet Commentariat and Serious Music Listeners made that decision and bestowed that status upon them, rightly or wrongly. I generally try to keep up with Important Records, because -all appearances aside- I'm not really much of a contrarian, and I like all kinds of popular and/or well-regarded records (certainly not always the same thing). Many of my favorite records are or have been Important Records. Not only do I not immediately disregard well-received albums, I usually go out of my way to listen to them.

So when the praise came rolling in, I felt both obligated AND interested in investigating. I've never cared for Animal Collective, but friends who felt the same way were into this release (my second major motivation). Steely-eyed critics -and favorites of mine- were enthusiastic (number three). Hell, I wanted something new to listen to in early 2009.

I got the record. I listened. I kept listening. A few listens in, I didn't get it. I don't always have a sense of my ultimate take on an album through one listen, but by two or three, I usually know whether it falls into the like, dislike, or ignore categories. Sorting out love from like takes a much longer time, but it's very very rare for an album to pull a 180. Back in my days of writing reviews for (ultralow circulation) print, I felt an obligation to listen at least four or five times to any record I was reviewing. Now an album that doesn't grab me in a couple of listens tends to get lost in the 200gb maze of my iTunes. I (and you) could say a lot about that admission right there, but let's leave it at this: I've given Merriweather much more of a chance than I give most records.

On to the disliking and why:

Maybe I don't get this album. That's the way I phrased it above, and I'm sure that's how some people would put it. Leaving aside most of the tricky questions that phrasing and the idea behind it raise, there may well be some musical configuration at work here that I can't grasp. I have a hard time accepting that there's genius that eludes me on Merriweather, but there may be subtleties I'm somehow missing. Maybe there's an error in my pathway configuration that prevents me from appreciating what so many others do. I really fucking doubt it.

More likely (and more intelligibly), I or you or we could say that it's "not my thing." That's a common explanation in this kind of case. I don't buy this explanation either. Part of my skepticism re: both explanations comes from my fondness for Person Pitch, most recent solo album by, yes, Animal Collective member Panda Bear.

Are Person Pitch and Merriweather Post Pavilion the same album? Absolutely not, and therein lies MY explanation. Or at least part of it. The songwriting of Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) is closely related on his most recent solo and Animal Collective records, but the arrangements are radically different. The aesthetic of Merriweather is much more cluttered, driven by melodic instruments used frequently as noisemaking devices. The tempos are accelerated. Jarring effects are applied with little apparent consideration for their contribution to the whole, and the contrast does not appear to be particularly illuminating. The fast off-tempo phaser in "Bluing" might be the most egregious example. Person Pitch, on the other hand, was characterized by restraint, by (apparently) careful consideration of every element in the largely-sample driven arrangements. Do I have a problem with busy, complicated arrangements? Absolutely not. But I do think that some songs are better suited to that style than others, and the songs on Merriweather are drowning in poor choices.

In other words, I consider Merriweather a failure of execution (arrangements) rather than concept (songwriting) - although I should also say that I think the songwriting here falls a bit short. It is "my thing," and I think I have some reasonable (if vague) idea of what the artists are attempting. I don't have any grandiose conspiracy theory about artist-press collaboration to sell us a bad product. I don't think critics saw dollar signs when they heard Merriweather. I just don't buy that the artists have succeeded.

Pitchforking/Return Of Black Kids

Bashing Pitchfork on the internets for sport is...well, hardly unusual. Talk of indie-newcomers Black Kids...not exactly new either. So, the Pitchfork review of the new Black Kids full-length. I'm late to the party, I know. For those even later, a visual recap (via The Lipster). Basically, after an insane period of hype post-self-released-EP and pre-LP that prompted a number of us to get a little testy, Pitchfork has separated the e-chaff from the wheat a bit harshly - and very belatedly. As I've said from the outset, I started this blog in part as a reaction to this very "hype-then-trash" trend, so it'll come as no surprise that I have a few thoughts on the matter.

I'm not sure it really matters how good/bad/mediocre the Black Kids record is. I thought the much-loved EP was awful; the production was bad, the performances were worse. In both senses, the LP's an improvement. The songwriting remains remarkably unremarkable, and for those of us old enough to remember the last few Cure revivals (Hot Hot Heat anyone?), this bag of tricks has aged poorly. I'll grant the band and the starry-eyed hype fiends this, though: I've heard worse, and plenty of other acts with studio merits are this bad live.

I'm also old enough to remember the early/comparatively lawless days of Pitchfork 1.0 and 1.1, when Jason Josephes, Brent DiCrescenzo, and the mighty Ryan Schreiber used to fire off goofy, opinionated, and occasionally brilliant missives off into the void. But at this point, Pitchfork's come down too often on the side of "responsible journalism" (from DiCrescenzo's Beastie Boys review fiasco to the Nick Sylvester canning) to be engaging in this garbage. Maybe more importantly, the site's tacit acknowledgment of their starring role in this tragedy - the "Sorry:-/" bit - should have been accompanied with something a bit more explicit. Something more along the lines of: "Sorry, we're playing into this incredibly problematic and irresponsible cycle for the sake of our bottom line and/or continued relevance." With the early-mid decade high water mark past or passing thanks at least in part to a talent drain as severe as SNL's (DiCrescenzo, Sylvester, Breihan, Dahlen, and Harvell all mostly or entirely gone), Pitchfork seems to have settled for an out-blog-the-blogs approach. Taking a hardline stance on semi-controversies with your best writers I can accept grudgingly...as long as you don't turn around and do this.

Whatever the reasoning is to keep hyping obviously raw and marginally talented bands, readers are owed an explanation for the decision to shit on a band that was Best New Music less than a year ago. That explanation could be that the record sucks, that explanation could be that the hype outpaced the results, whatever. Ann Powers has an interesting take on the motivation (including the continued relevance bit), but regardless of the true cause for the about-face, Pitchfork has an obligation to make some kind of excuse for themselves.

Current Head P4ker Scott Plagenhoef is making the rounds defending the review on technical grounds (see the scottpl comment on this Idolator piece), and I'm inclined to take him at his word on the 0.0/3.3 rating switch. I'd still love to see an actual explanation of the review itself - feel free, Scott. After all, that's the real issue.

Hating Carter III: Fuck Ya Favorite Critic

It took a while for me to warm up to Lil' Wayne. Those of us born after 1980 but before 1990 knew him as the tiny hypeman for any number of Cash Money classics before the new generation (and late-to-the-party rock critics) knew him as the "greatest rapper alive." Long before the post-Carter II and pre-Carter III mixtape onslaught, it was seeing the "Fireman" music video that sold me on Wayne. The video, like the song itself, is brilliant and incredibly self-aware, guaranteed to hit cinema and lit types in erogenous zones. Tha Carter II as a whole is a hell of an album - the rapper finally coming into his own lyrically, still hungry, with mostly killer production to back him up.

Unfortunately, Wayne's career starts with his later mixtapes in the minds of most. We all know the rest: anticipation/hype build to crazy levels for the followup to an album no one really remembers. The mixtape paradigm dominates 99% of the reviews for the album when it finally comes out. The album is compared exclusively to the mixtapes that preceded it...the artist's decision to release the thing as an album instead of a mixtape clearly has no bearing. Of course, it still ends up being anointed a modern classic.

Tinymixtapes' Ajitpaul Mangat, in one of the few genuinely critical pieces on the album, hits hard on the 'classic' front, correctly identifying first single "Lollipop" as "a sugary artifact of its times." "Lollipop" is notable for its dissimilarity to "Fireman," its Carter II predecessor - "Lollipop" tries real hard to fit in with current pop trends. It's not awful, it's just unspectacular. Fine, say Carter III defenders - "Lollipop" is an aberration. That's where I disagree. With Carter II, even the big single was, all things considered, pretty stunning. The new album is a collection of half-baked experiments, cheap ploys to the current pop market, and the occasional solid track.

Some of the obvious candidates leap to the album's defense in a Blender-led roundtable (recommended reading if you want to follow the rest of this in full).

Nick Sylvester is quick to defend Tha Carter III as brilliantly anti-album and non-"Event" - in other words, perfect in these Troubled Times for the music industry. The crux of the argument is that Wayne is both hyperworthy of detailed formal analysis and great as background music - Sylvester makes the ambient-period Eno comparison explicit, in fact. The real genius of the album, as Sylvester would have it, lies in its combination of New York lyric-privileging with the South's emphasis on sound...plus its true status as another mixtape rather than an album. Sensing a bit of contradiction there? You're not the only one.

The more standard take (represented here by the Blender crowd, including Robert Christgau): "What’s great about him is that he’s out of control. He overproduces, runs on at the mouth, can’t stop himself." Here's the thing - I'm not sure when "inconsistency" and "greatness" became synonymous. Maybe it's just my rockist (read: reactionary) mindset at work again, but I think a great album needs more than a few good-maybe-great tracks. If the hit/miss ratio Carter III is getting away with is acceptable, we need to do some retroactive re-grading of a lot of the prog critics hated back in the day. Christgau calls excess Wayne's "gift," and Blender senior editor Jonah Weiner wishes the album was more like one of his mixtapes - you know, with a "bit more excess."

Yeah, if only he'd get his Andrew Lloyd Webber on a little more often..."Phone Home" and "Dr. Carter" are classic examples of concept overwhelming execution. End of story. They just don't work. Lyrically uninteresting, horrible production, not at all "pleasant" in the sense Sylvester argues. "Mrs. Officer," "Tie My Hands" - boring. Sure, they all have the occasional blog-friendly one-liner, but do they have any other evidence of the talent we all recognize in this guy by now? What exactly is anyone liking about this record?

Clearly I'm not accepting either of the positive positions. Incoherent-in-its-coherence or coherent-in-its-incoherence, shouldn't there be some fucking signs? It's possible that I've just missed the memo on the revised criteria for music criticism. Let me know so I can start that new blog - you know, the one where I post nonsequitors hourly, widely interpreted by the masses as stunningly articulate praise of the new Lil' Wayne album. Called Geese Erection, of course.

In Defense Of Abstraction/More On Criticism

That new Foals record has drawn some of the strangest reviews I've seen recently - and we all know I overdose on music criticism. One reviewer calls Antidotes an "intensely claustrophobic experience" after going into a bizarre complaint about the absence of the "liberating spirit of great jazz" on the album. The Pitchfork review might take the cake, though. Written by up-with-pop fanatic Tom Ewing (he calls his column Poptimist - seriously), the review accuses the band of "aggressive abstraction." Now, I've ridiculed rockist backlash against everything from Britney's latest to pop-rap artists like Fabolous, and I buy the standard line about the problematic aspects of 'authenticity.' It's widely acknowledged in critical circles that the rockist perspective on music only works up to a certain point. Have we gone so far in the other direction, though, that we're willing to reject anything without (Ewing's fundamental problem with Foals) "discernible emotional content"?

More fundamentally, though, I think Ewing gets it wrong when he lumps Foals in with Bloc Party, Maximo Park, and the like. I'm not even sure I agree that Foals don't have some discernible emotional content, it's just more sophisticated than "I Predict a Riot." As far as being part of the so-called post-punk revival, well, that aggressive abstraction and rejection of simple emotional content hews a lot closer to the originals than most of Foals' peers. The Futureheads got better on their last record because they did more of that, not less. Bloc Party and Maximo Park are pop bands, pure and simple. That's where the comparison falls short of the mark - they dress pop songs up in the trappings of post-punk, whereas Foals actually recall bands like Wire for reasons other than superficial aesthetic similarities.

There's a genuine ideological kinship there, and it's why, as Ewing puts it about Foals, "good hooks [get] lost in a murky coagulate." Post-Pink Flag, poppy Wire hooks grew fewer and farther between - if 154 has any good hooks, they're certainly buried deep in the sonic mud. More broadly, if punk set out to destroy rock, post-punk set out to transcend it - to destroy the humanity in music. Part of that exercise was stripping the obvious, standard emotions of pop from music, rejecting conventional/pleasing musical ideas, and even assaulting language itself. Ultimately misguided or impossible, maybe, but some brilliant music came out of it - even if some just turned out to be unusually compelling pop.

Presumably the response is: 'right, but it's been done to death now.' I'm not convinced that the project of the post-punk formalists/modernists doesn't still have some relevance/appeal/necessity. I listen to plenty of overtly pop-oriented music, and especially in the case of the Madonna/Timbaland/Britney/JT end, it's hard to argue that newness isn't important to both the artists and the public. At the same time, I take artists/bands as varied as Belong, the Black Angels, and Foals as evidence that the rockist end of the spectrum still has contributions to make. The new Black Angels record is filled with droning desert blues, pushed out beyond the realm of recognizable human experience. I imagine Tom Ewing also would have difficulty pinpointing the emotional content of songs like "Mission District" or "18 Years" - the latter deliberately out of phase musically and experientially. Belong, as Simon Reynolds tells it, think of their latest - nominally a covers EP, but don't let that fool you into thinking it isn't an incredibly creative, imaginative work - as "'an apparition from the past...somehow distorted and not correct.'" Taking another's work and transforming it into ghostly transmissions submerged in sheets of guitar - the effect is a dehumanizing one, and maybe more specifically a disembodying one. That's certainly in the spirit of post-punk, although far from its superficial aesthetic.

Let me just add that I don't think Foals are a great band, but they're deserving of a listen, and they have something interesting to communicate - "claustrophobia" and "abstraction" are still unusual enough in music to be worthwhile. Too often music criticism in this age lacks measured responses to records - too quick to hate or love. Much of that stems from a failure to contextualize, I think. Granted, it's sometimes difficult to provide context for acts, and tracing lines of influence and evolution is risky for critics, since it raises the possibility of being more objectively wrong. At the same time, it becomes harder to think that Times New Viking and Be Your Own Pet are saving punk music with some additional information. The fact that Harvell goes on at length about those two bands (of all the bands to pick) is particularly tragic, since he wrote a thoughtful piece about the hype phenomenon, taking the Black Kids as a case study. Be Your Own Pet are at least competent, not that competency is any requirement for making great music - the most salient fact is that all three bands produce utterly unspectacular, uninteresting material. If I'd never heard punk before, I might be blown away...but I have, and so has Harvell (I hope).

Too often critics and serious bloggers overcompensate for their training and intellect, and underestimate the rest of us, expecting the listening public to just want "fun" music - along with the need to scream about THE BEST NEW BAND EVER that sounds like 90% of other indie hype bands. Granted, there's a substantial demographic out there just looking for something to dance to, or sing along to, but good criticism should tell people what to listen for, not just what to listen to. Sure, Foals share plenty in common with the shallower post-punk revivalists, but rather than playing the "sounds like Bloc Party!" game, listen for the influence of the intervening 30 years of experimental guitar music (particularly post-rock in the tones and playing style). Then throw on the new Rick Ross or Cut Copy or M83 - equally worthy artists, and more listenable, since you'll probably need a break. I did.

Lenny Williams/Mike Huckabee/"Q"

Sorry for the months-long break...I'll be updating more frequently in '08 (or so I've promised myself). I'll finally have the definitive '07 best-of ready within the next week or two. In the meantime, a thought that ties together some '07 material.

The James Murphy Fabriclive entry, Scarface's excellent MADE album, and Twista's "Overnight Celebrity" (ok, that one's from years back) all have one thing in common: they feature the superb solo work of Lenny Williams. Kanye and Nottz cut up Lenny's "Cause I Love You" - Kanye with the trademark chipmunk effect for "Overnight Celebrity," Nottz letting it breathe more on Scarface's "Girl You Know." Murphy goes with a significant edit of "You Got Me Running." Both tracks can be found on Spark of Love, a '78 release which, contrary to misinformed 'net info, isn't really a compilation. It collects a couple older singles, but it was mostly new material at the time of its release. Anyway, point being: Spark of Love is 150% worth your time.

Lots of noise on the net about Republican presidential aspirant Mike Huckabee and what he says about the interplay between pop culture and politics at the moment. Over at Popmatters, Aaron McKain gives the subject an interesting treatment (don't let the superficial premise throw you off). My long-running nemesis RIUSAB provides a (surprise) much less insightful analysis. I think buried within both, though, are the threads of reason for hope. Huckabee's cultural choices, as well as some of his political positions, are potential signs that cross-communication is possible, even between sociocultural conservatives and big city heathen college students. For all the talk about partisanship, I think the prospect of culture war is/was far scarier - the kind of development that really would lead to a two-America society.

Even if playing bass and embracing Chuck Norris are sort of superficial, obvious moves, they indicate a willingness and desire to branch out. Huckabee might make use of subliminal signifiers to reassure his base (the infamous cross), but he's clearly trying to send signs to demographics that traditionally would be anything but sympathetic to a creationist Baptist minister. Sure, playing to the center is politics as usual...except maybe for the evangelical community over the last few decades. I'm certainly not suggesting that he deserves your vote just for trying. That said, there are some largely ignored signs for hope here - supposedly "secular" and/or "liberal" American pop culture might once again be forming the basis for a common cultural language. Either that, or pop culture continues its soulless all-devouring march...we report, you decide.

In other "while I was out" news, the excellent Beat Electric has a track you need to check: "Q" - "The Voice of 'Q.'" With Disco Not Disco about to break, it's all the more important to watch out for the formation of a non-canon canon that excludes a lot of great leftfield stuff. Get on this one.

Blog Hype Revisited/Some Current Recs

This mysterious (and idiotic) RIUSAB entity keeps taking shots in my direction - I've certainly had enough of dealing with that. In the midst of another inane, ridiculous entry, the author(s) does(do) reference a recent Jess Harvell piece in Idolator about current blog darlings Black Kids. The Harvell piece is a welcome one, taking on the destructive blog hype phenomenon I've already addressed (in brief form) here. Most of Harvell's points are perceptive and generally worth responding to, which I'll try to get to shortly (as in tomorrow, probably). I'm also planning to get a few words in about the new Britney album - yes, there is one, yes, it's coming out tomorrow.


On a lighter note (or maybe heavier), a few recommendations for your listening pleasure:


Marlena Shaw's "California Soul" from her album Spice of Life (via the excellent OhWord).

John Phillips' "April Anne" from his self-titled album.

The recently re-released Seefeel album, Quique.