The City Veins

I want to follow-up on Aaron’s post from the other day because it’s a topic I feel pretty strongly about.

Let me start by saying that I do enjoy a lot of indie music, and I’ve been listening to a lot more of it since being with this band because it tends to be what Charles and Aaron like. There’s some of it that’s spectacular and definitely worthy of the praise it receives. Death Cab, Sufjan, St. Vincent, Ted Leo and TV on the Radio come to mind. These are artists doing truly cool, unique things.

However, a great deal of indie music is total crap. To be fair, every genre (if indie can even be called that) is filled with great bands and not so great bands.  But what astounds me about indie music is the self-important hype machine that surrounds some bands that are either pretty average at best or just awful and/or boring at worst. Like any subculture, it falls prey to a lot of group-think, where people think something is good because someone else decided it was good and they all agreed. Which is kind of ironic, since it’s this kind of mentality in mainstream music that indie music people often portray themselves to be above.

That being said, my single biggest problem with indie music is it needs to grow some balls, especially the drummers.  Eminem once sang “they forgot about Dre.”  Well, indie “rock” often forgets about “rock”.  The orchestral thing is cool, the twee thing is fun sometimes, and all the electronic stuff can be neat.  But so few of these bands rock, and by rock I mean play with any sort of presence/passion/intensity/power (in other words, balls).  When did rocking out become such a bad thing?  I’m an unabashed lover of Pearl Jam, Tool, Led Zeppelin, System of a Down, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Rage, etc.  These are some bands that have done some things with music that are both musically intelligent and really fun.  And in each case they played with balls, especially the drummers.  Why can’t the indie scene, whose purveyors pride themselves on their open minds, accept some more of these elements?

As for drummers, there are a handful of great indie drummers, but by far not enough.  Most just try to blend into the background.  To be fair, you don’t need to overpower a song.  But there’s a middle ground to be found that most of these guys just aren’t reaching. I don’t even think they’re trying to half the time.  Note to indie “rock” drummers: rock ‘n’ roll was built on balls and it’s time to bring them back.

Anyway, for the sake of brevity I’m going to end it here because I could go on about this for days.  But I will say this: one of the things I love about our band is the freedom each one of us gives the other to operate.  I love having the freedom to experiment, something I don’t think many indie drummers get or try to take advantage of.  I also love what Aaron and Charles come up with when they’re experimenting.  Bands are too often exercises in control; but when you get a bunch of people together that allow each other that freedom, there’s such great vibes that come out of that and it gives something special to the music.

At this point recording, and the new EP, completely dominates my thoughts. For example, The Cure’s “Pictures of You” just came on my iPod, and the only thing that I could think of was, “this song is really, really long.” I then started trying to determine what I could cut to get the song down to a manageable 5 minutes. I think the 2 minute intro could probably go.

Photo by Flickr user g & m.

Now that Spencer has referred to me openly as “snarky”, I’ve decided to embrace that role.  If possible, you will be getting even more snark out of me for the next few months–or until the band falls apart–whichever comes first.  Hence the title of this post. 

On sunday morning Spencer and I were traveling to Rockville to meet up with Charles to start recording our new EP (yes, you know–we’ve mentioned it before).  We were listening to Pearl Jam “Vs”, which Spencer claims is his “pump-up” music.  He listens to “Vs” before any manly activity, and drumming for 8 hours is certainly a manly activity.  Anyway, we were discussing the merits of contemporary Indie Rock against the Grunge Era that we grew up with.  I have mixed feelings about the music I grew up listening to because I am aware that I understand more now about music than I did at the time.  I wonder if my love for those bands is dependent mostly on nostalgia or if there really is a difference between Pearl Jam and, let’s say Fall Out Boy, beyond convention and style.  I’m sure that some people will cringe at the thought that the two are equitable–but take heart, I don’t really think it.  It’s just that I consider whether are not some bands I loved when I was young are as valuable as I once thought.  I really like modern Indie  Music.  I think the music scene now is more diverse and rich than it has been in a while.  Not necessarily any one band, but the scene as a whole.  So it makes me question music of the past that is not as diverse, not as interesting, but operated on the pure emotion of the time—on a super-hormonal and angsty teenager.  I just don’t know.    

So Spencer and I are driving along, and he’s talking about how much he loves grunge.  I made some statement about how song-writing right now was better than song-writing then–more complicated, use of many different tones and musical formats within the same song, and many different and solid vocalists.  The strength and power in vocal tone is not there the way it was in the ’60’s, or at least it’s not in style,  but outside of that vocalists are diverse and solid. 

Then Spencer said,”yeah, but there aren’t very many indie bands with great drummers”.  And he’s right.  Now, many of you (if there are many of you) will be able to cite a great Indie drummer.  But I pose this challenge:  Get on MOKTB right now and listen to the first 10 songs up on the site.  Count the number of times they hit the cymbals.  It will be less than 50 for the whole set.  That’s not to say that these drummers are bad because they don’t hit the cymbals.  Actually, it seems to me that many Indie drummers are writing very melodic and catchy drum beats these days (No Cars Go–Arcade Fire comes to mind).  However, indie-drumming seems to be running almost entirely on accepted convention at this point.  The style of one drummer is indistinguishable from that of any other.  It is distinctly Indie.  The National–the professed love of all indie bloggers in the last year–rarely hit cymbals.  Their drummer could be exchanged for any other, primarily because his style is exactly the same as every other indie drummer out there.

Now DC is traditionally outside of this discussion.  Drummers from this area are typically bad-ass, but that is passed down from the punk scene, not the indie scene.  (Note:  Listen to Georgie James.  Their drumming is more diverse than the typical indie band–wonder why?).  Actually, DC appears not have fallen into the indie trend, or at least not as intensely. 

So, this conversation made me think that this could be our “thing”.  Honestly, the only thing I’ve ever wanted out of music was to be in a band that was able to carve its own niche within the musical landscape; to play music that we liked and have it be perfectly unique (or mostly unique).  So we could be the band that revolves around the drums more than other bands do.  We can sound unique simply by having a good and creative drummer that is willing to try a number of different styles.  And the new EP appears to be heading that way.  Some of the songs are very drum-heavy, and we intend to keep them that way.  We’ll see how it turns out in the end.

Robbers on High Street at the Rock and Roll Hotel. Mr. Leafblower was kind enough to ask us to open for them. It should be a lot of fun, and you can even pre-order tickets, which I think is a first for us.

In other exciting news, the EP is slowly coming together. We have one song where Spencer’s drumming on the verse is so nuts/good that I don’t even want to add guitar to that section of the song. As I told Aaron last night, “it is a jam.”

Photo by Flickr user MJLphoto.com.

I am going to take a break from recording posts to remind you all that we have a concert this Saturday, March 15th at the Velvet Lounge. (Look at that fancy new website) We will be playing with 23 Rainy Days, Stalking Horses, and The Surge. I don’t have a link to The Surge, so I will link to this NY Times article instead, because Spencer Ackerman is half of The Surge. Also, I know everyone mentioned in that article, and it is weird to read about your friends in the NY Times.