Oh, you got there first? No one cares.
Day 5,237 of trying to find anything appealing on Bandcamp that isn't a reissue or one of the ten modern bands I listen to.
I'm operating in good faith, I swear. I'll log in, pick a page (like "punk" or "power pop" or "lansing," if I want something local) and start to dive. Anything that looks cool, I'll try. I listen to whole songs, and usually multiple songs from a given release in case I'm missing something. Admittedly, the torrent of milquetoast genre-purists and copycats does wear me down, and after an hour or two I want to give up. But there must be something here! Maybe the next thing I click on...
And on it goes. Why is this? Why can't I find something that seems as worthwhile to me as putting on the Jerry Jeff Walker LP I've listened to 100 times? Wish I knew.
Bandcamp did succeed in informing me power pop is hitting the big (small) time again, courtesy of The Lemon Twigs and all the young pups they inspired. One of the bigger names, Mod Lang, is from Detroit! How exciting, a renaissance of one of my favorite genres spearheaded by other young folks. Surely these bands will appeal to my geriatric sensibilities and answer my "authenticity" pleas. I tried 'em: Mod Lang, Sharp Pins, etc, all left me cold.
Don't get me wrong: The music is pleasant to listen to, well-played, well-sung, tuneful... but wallpaper-y. These bands don't seem to have much in the way of hooks. Things seem to be building up and then just stop and return to the verse. I feel like I'm wandering the halls of the Winchester Mystery House! Choruses sound like pre-choruses, and all the songs are, natch, too long.
I like the Lemon Twigs, but their brand of retro-songwriting is rather (lyrically) impersonal (and has grown more impersonal lately—they haven't had a song like "New to Me" in a bit), and they aren't great with imagery. They can get away with this because they write real catchy tunes. Unfortunately, this impersonal/bland lyric style has been taken on by many of these retro-y modern power pop bands.
Which would be fine if they wrote melodies.
Any of these songs could have been written by anyone. That's not good. Show yourselves! I like to feel I understand something more acutely after listening to a song: The kind of person a songwriter is, what they're interested in, etc. etc. etc.
Once again, it seems we have a subgenre based on "vibes" and aesthetics and little else. Where, oh where, is the MUSIC?
I don't understand what folks are getting out of this. Maybe just the excitement of seeing people play guitars, but these bands (r/b)arely rock, and the songs are limp.
Evidenced by the preponderance of Tame Impala fans (I've been subjected to a lot of that lately, riding around in my sister's car), it seems to me that many of my peers want music they can sink into and mellow out on: ambient-ish, inoffensive, wallpaper. Vocals are buried, melodies pushed to the back, rhythm and dumb studio effects prioritized. Turn on, tune in, etc. These bands aren't usually guilty of producing overblown recordings, but they seem to have taken songwriting notes from modern popular music.
Why write a song? So your band has something to play? So you can express whatever fucked-up-ness you have going on inside? To impress a girl? Or because you love writing songs? I'm not sure how these people view songcraft. Maybe they're inspired by things I think suck.
Eh, turns out not! Here's an interview with the Sharp Pins guys. They like British Invasion stuff, The Beach Boys, '70s punk, GBV (DUH!), stuff I cotton to... but that's it. It scares me that I haven't heard a surprising inspiration in any of the interviews I read w/ these guys. Maybe it has something to do with the online echo chambers and people refusing to go outside of their musical comfort zones? I'm no anthropologist. It certainly does explain a lot about the songwriting, tho I wish they'd rip off some of their favorite band's melodies, not just their outfits.
Songwriting is mentioned once here, in passing; Both the interviewer and the band are far more focused on visual aesthetics, the "brand," we cynics call it, which is clearly very important to them. The group gives a lot of lip-service to punk rock, but as an aesthetic. They aren't taking anything (read: brevity or speed) from the music. In a separate interview with the frontman, Slater cops to the lyrics being an afterthought:
"At the core of my songwriting, I usually start with [a] vocal melody because it feels like [a] window to my soul. I get a lot of ideas just from random phrases or ideas of words, or something someone says that’s funny and that turns into a song."
So John Prine he ain't. But we knew that already. He comes up with serviceable melodies sometimes, sure, but they're usually trapped in one-minute songs stretched to three. You gotta wish they'd rip off GBV in THAT way, too!
Talking with the living end of all that's hip, Rolling Stone, Slater defends his songwriting laziness:
“Really, all the songs you hear on this record are my initial thoughts,” he says. “That was how I pictured them in my head. The first idea is the best idea. First take is the best take.”
Okay, Neil. It doesn't need to be pulling teeth, but maybe think about what you're writing before recording it.
That points to a bigger problem with modern production, which is the ease of access to recording equipment. Equity, getting rid of gatekeepers, blah, blah, blah, great. But this access means people can shit out half-baked ideas as "finished songs" instead of sitting on compositions and improving them: as they're workshopped at band practice, played at home or in front of crowds, thought about while you commute or work your shitty office job.
Songwriting, and I mean songwriting as craft, is work, not an exercise in aesthetics. Anyone who thinks they have great songs flowing out of them 24/7 is delusional. You will write mostly shit, you'll throw it out, you'll Frankenstein the pieces into something better, if you get lucky you'll write a good song. Or you can just "first idea, best idea," your way to major indies, apparently. Everybody else likes it, fuck do I know?
I'm not jealous. Not even a little.