Tempo Changers

So where does this 'twang' or 'southern swagger' reside in Indie these days you ask, well it seems almost everywhere.

Ryan Adams, Beck, Wilco and Kings of Leon have all garnered massive success from altering variations of the country-pop-rock formula, which is often condoned by the Brooklyn type Indie snobs, but which often yields the biggest commercial success. Jack White is a huge advocate of the southern folk sound because he respects the purity of it, the blues lyrics, rock rythyms, simple time changes and the walking basslines that, once again make ya move and make ya feel good and enjoy what you are listening to.

My Morning Jacket's Jim James has managed to cover the full spectrum of music it seems (some more succesfully than others I'll add) and he's done it all southern style. But often it is not as obvious to others what that sound is.

Earlier this summer I read a review from Bonnaroo that included a quotation from Yeah Yeah Yeahs Karen O, in which she exclaimed "there are a lot of country acts here." I went to Bonnaroo, and yeah it's southern, but it hadn't hit me until I read that how much of the music I witnessed and currently listen has that country-southern-folk thing going on, music that to the likes of Karen O, probably sounds a little country and mabye a lot redneck.

Some bands of late embrace the sounds, The Avett Brothers and Band of Horses along with Conor Oberst, M. Ward, Ben Kweller, Drive-By Truckers (and variations thereof), almost exploit it, making music that stresses the twangy side and rockabilly. The music sounds amazing to me, but to a passive listener it can be too much.

Like it or not, it's gotten big.

Fleet Foxes, Blitzen Trapper, Elvis Perkins, Bon Iver and Joh Ritter have all recieved huge critical aclaim in the past few years for their 'new approach' to music and have been tagged as bands to watch for the future. It's almost amzing to me to see how succesful Fleet Foxes has become with such a tried and true formula, how many bands do you think are green with envy that they were the Indie darlings of 2008 and all they play is folk music...that stuff has been around for over a 100 years!

I can list endless bands that fall under this scope (Black Keys, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Great Lake Swimmers, Iron and Wine, Old Crow Medicine Show, Yonder Mountain String Band, Vetiver etc.) and I know this piece is running dry so I'll wrap up the preface here and I'll move on to review albums from the bands of 2009 that are best embracing this movement.

So Pick Up the Tempo Just a Little and Drive it on Home

I don’t exactly know how it all came about, but sometime in the past 9 months I fell asleep and music revolved. I’ve been plugging ahead in my own life oblivious to this monumental happening unfolding one crucial element at a time. A few posts back I made a satire of sorts of the current state of Indie music, numbering its essential days until the likely evolution of ‘next’ occurred. Perhaps why I find myself so dumbfounded is two-fold in explanation.

First, this is exactly what I thought was going to happen; I just didn’t really believe that it would.
Second, everything that I love about music is more ‘now’ than ever.

Somewhere between Miley Cyrus, Lil’ Wayne, Rascal Flats, Radiohead, Whitney Houston, Kanye and Animal Collective lies one fundamental truth: music is derived from a multitude of various sources, created for a multitude of various consumers who will listen and interpret in a multitude of various ways all for a singular reason – music makes us feel good and people like to feel good.
I feel best when I am hit by music that is rough around the edges, with soul, grit, inspiration, voice, story, ambition and hint of southern twang…with smidgen of pop sensibility and punk nonchalance. It seems of late that I am not alone.

I’ll start big and work my way down. The most popular band in the world of date is The Bealtes. I’m not talking a ‘best ever in the world ever’ ranking of soci-economic-pop importance, I mean there are more people in 2009 buying Beatles albums than any other band. How fucking crazy is that! Just who do these Brits think they are? Don’t they know that the Black Eyed Peas have an album out right now!?!

Think about this. A band that emerged from England in the late sixties playing teen bob diddies and r and b covers who eight years later called it quits from an utter internal collapse and loss of meaning is the best band in the world 30 years later. For all intensive purposes The Beatles are a boy-band. They made some of the most rudimentary music into anthems and the most complex music seem mundane. So what’s the draw? Why are people still turning it on? Have we not masterfully evolved enough in the last 30 years to find no such use for some acid dropping, girl chasing, Elvis Disciples - Dylan wannabes? No, my friend, we have not.

Why? Because the Beatles are good. Really good. People like feeling good. People LOVE to feel really good.

In an age where auto-tune and Adobe slabs have sucked the virtuosity and life out of most music, fans are headed back to where they once belonged. Folks will never forget how good songs from The Beatles make them feel, just like we’ll never forget the way Michael Jackson makes us want to dance. What people need is a reminder that what was good yesterday is still good today. It’s been coming for years now. Ray Charles and Johnny Cash re-entered the American conscience and people began to look for sounds that were more pure, basic and with heart. In the past year America has been through a lot. Nowadays we just wanted to be reminded of what makes us happy. We don’t always need to be challenged, alienated, assimilated or bored, we just need something that hits us the right way.

To get to my point, music is going back to its roots and so far it sounds great.
More dead on for my readers, Indie hasn’t died, She’s Gone Country.

Think I am ridiculous? Here’s a list of some of the most exciting bands in Indie today: The Avett Brothers, Elvis Perkins, Heartless bastards, Felice Brothers, The Low Anthem, Bon Iver, … What do they all have in common? Admit it, they all sound like they are playing music from the 60’s and 70’s. It’s pop, sure, but more than anything it is southern in spirit and it plays like the folks songs we were raised on.

I don’t think I’m crazy, I just think every aspect of music that was so great in the 60’s and 70’s became so pasche that it was abandoned and when it tried to resurface in the late 90’s it became so commercialized that any music fan with any dignity turned away. Problem is, the essence of this music is undeniable, it’s in our blood and like the Beatles, it makes us feel good.
I told you so!

So, who’s doing it the best these days?

We’ll discuss next week…