Some refractions from Arcade Fire's Reflektor

Released with an appropriate amount of fanfare, including a 30 minute special directed by Roman Coppola, Reflektor has been garnering a mixture of apathetic shrugs from the indie kids and hyperbolic acclaim from the many folks (myself included) who still want BIG albums that tackle BIG themes. This is an album for those of us who still care about capital-A albums, but it's also more than that: it's an album that repeatedly calls into question its own legitimacy.

I celebrated Tuesday's release by reading an album review from Rolling Stone for the first time in what's probably been about ten years. It was weirdly satisfying to see David Fricke make overt comparisons to all the baby-boomer greats (U2, The Rolling Stones, Talking Heads, Bruce Springsteen, The Cure, Neil Young, the Velvet Underground, Brian Eno, and so on). The write-up ends by placing Reflektor in the same league as game changing records by Radiohead (Kid A), the Rolling Stones (Exile on Main Street), and U2 (Achtung Baby). Along with Pitchfork, The Quietus made similar comparisons. Perhaps it was in the band's press release. Most of this critical pandering is useless and boring, but it's also somewhat accurate, as it has been for their previous albums. Of course Arcade Fire aren't likely to let go of the Talking Heads, whose influence is obvious on songs like the jittering "Normal People" and the meditative "Afterlife." The U2 comparison isn't that far-off either. On a mid-tempo track like "Porno" Butler's sultry croon is pure Bono, and when you've got lyrics like "there's so little that we know" or "it's the only world we know" shouted into what sounds like empty space, U2's early 90s wanderings certainly come to mind.

Despite its 80 minute running time, Reflektor feels exceptionally well-crafted and well-paced: as it presses on, Arcade Fire manage to earn your trust, despite juggling a variety of things that don't at first glance fit together. You've got the influence of Haitian culture driving the rhythm and the lyrical content of a good portion of the album, a lot of meandering lyrics about the afterlife, the usual adolescent discomfort, a lot of self-referential "reflections" on the nature of art, and some pretentious Greek mythology thrown in just for kicks. And all this comes with several finishing touches from former LCD Soundsystem dude James Murphy, who, by the sounds of it, didn't actually do that much for the songs, but adds even more cultural capital to the whole endeavour.

The themes are BIG but remain rooted in vague specifics. In an interview with Maclean's, Win Butler explains how much of them came from a recent trip to Haiti:

There’s a crazy energy in Port-au-Prince when the sun goes down, because there is no electricity in a lot of the city. A lot of parts of the city are pretty dangerous, and people are rushing around trying to get home. There’s also this nightlife thing that happens, and it’s a combination of really dangerous and fun. Whenever you go to Haiti there are all these packs of missionaries wearing the same T-shirts that say “Jesus loves Haiti” or whatever. You ask them, “What are you guys doing?” And they say, “Oh, we’re going to paint houses.” Well, why don’t you just pay Haitians to paint the houses? I’m sure they’d love to do that. There’s a strange idea of going there to teach people about Jesus, while I’m sure Haitians know more about Jesus than these people do; they’re the most religious people. After the earthquake, people were singing songs of praise in the street. It’s a strange idea that we can teach these people something. The music in Haiti is all tied up in voodoo and African rhythm and so there’s this funny thing: go to a voodoo ceremony and then go to a Catholic church and tell me which music you liked better, to which one the music is more integral.

I want to think that this has everything to do with why the motif of reflection came to dominate the conceptual structure of the album. Removed from this context, the theme of reflection can be easily glossed over as a way of celebrating art as such. In Lindsay Zoladz's Pitchfork review, for example, Arcade Fire's reflexivity is more or less equivalent to musicians (and critics) giving themselves a pat on the back:

With its clipped snippets of airwave chatter (the BBC's Jonathan Ross makes a cameo), warped VHS hum, and retro-luminosity that nods to a time when synthesizers connoted un-jaded wonder and revelation, Reflektor is designed to be an homage to the many ways music is transmitted, discovered, and incorporated into people's lives.

Ian Cohen tweaks the sentiment a little bit in his earlier review of the band's first single, suggesting that the album's big theme is "the possibility that art isn't a shared, living experience but rather a mirror for our own projections and preconceptions." Well, no shit. I like to think that Arcade Fire have a more nuanced understanding of the work they're producing. Most post-colonial theory begins with the assumption that the Occident has constructed other cultures in way that suits its own purposes (be they economic, symbolic, or political). In Haiti's history, we see reflections of our own violent history, but we also see more. Arcade Fire aren't so naive that they haven't considered the implications of what it means to appropriate other cultural forms, especially when the culture in question bares obvious traces of Western European imperialism of the worst kind. Butler is no post-colonial studies expert, but by drawing out certain elements from his experience in Haiti (most strikingly on "Here Comes the Night Time" ) while employing a self-conscious conceit like the mirror, Butler's lyrics suggest something that usually gets left out of the discussion when privileged white folks use things from other cultures: the appropriated image of another culture isn't simply problematic because of its content but because of its very form. Or, to put it in Arcade Fire's terms, it's not simply the reflection that's at issue but the reflector. In other words, it's important to be conscious not just of what's being represented but how representation itself is a form of cultural production that has a history.  The danger in this kind of thinking is that it can put all the artistic agency in colonial hands, and that's obviously not what's going on here. While this insight isn't made explicit on Reflektor, it's there in the background, and along with it is an assortment of other loose threads that don't necessarily reveal their origin, Occidental or otherwise. Heaven or "Afterlife" is another recurring topic that seems to fit well with a critical view of representation and its use as an colonial weapon for maintaining oppressive power structures.

As has no doubt been said ad nauseum, with Reflektor, Arcade Fire have devised their own hall of mirrors, but what makes this album truly worthwhile is that they've also given us some of the hints we need in order to find a hammer.

rant of the day: indie music

Is it fair to say that, in this age of internet domination, viral marketing, and commercial apathy, the term/category/genre/qualifier known as "indie" has entirely lost its cache?

Perhaps this is because the "independent" tag no longer defines the sounds of new hipsterdom; or, perhaps the problem is that the "indie" lable has become synonomous with hipster culture. Perhaps the term is vacuous because most independent artists appear to have little or no problem hawking a song to whatever company is savvy enough to tap into counter-culture, not that I'm accusing them of selling out. I think we're well beyond that. Beginning in the late 70s and 80s as a boldly noncommercial take on popular music, often released on small DIY labels, "indie" has come to represent a variety of things; but more often than not, it refers to guitar/synth pop by image-conscious scenesters.

The ever-insightful British pop historian Simon Reynolds offers some background:

Originally we talked of 'independent' music, meaning music on independent labels, and at that time there was still a shared (if loose) framework of ideology and sonics that traced back to punk . . . . It was an oppositional term: independent music opposed itself to the mainstream rock and pop released on major labels. The idea was that on independent labels you would find more experimental or adventurous music, people exploring esoteric and non-commercial directions, making sounds too abrasive or weird to be on daytime radio. The lyrical content would be radical or challenging, either exploring the dark side of human condition, or being political in various ways, or just very sophisticated, ironic, and so on.

By about 1984/1985, though, 'indie' meant a style of song-oriented, guitar-based music whose opposition to the mainstream took the form of no longer being contemporary – spurning synthesisers and drum machines and sequencers, avoiding the R&B and dance music influences that dominated the pop charts, and instead looking back to rock's archives, principally the 1960s. 'Indie' meant jangly guitar groups. By 1986 'indie' pretty much equated with a refusal of the pop present. Because it now meant a style of music, not a means of production and distribution, it could be uncoupled from the independent label system, and that is what gradually happened. (The Independent, 20 July 2008)

The trend from an ethos to a style seems familiar, though the role and evolution of popular media cannot be underestimated; the rise of indie music in the 00s is not unlike the mainstream co-optation of "alternative" music from the late 80s through the early 90s, but now more than ever it's become apparent that cultural markers like musical taste and critical status depend upon new technology and social networking. In fact, rarely can you get one without the other.

When was the last time you read a review that made a point of a band's "indie" status? Was it right next to a feature on the Black Eyed Peas? Did you find it in Spin or Rolling Stone? (Does anyone read paper magazines anymore, let alone look to these grizzly monoliths for new bands?) Does the ever-growing Pitchfork camp even bother calling something "indie"? Speaking of the Peas, in a recent interview with the Associated Press Fergie explained that her group's new album would take inspiration from various genres and styles, such as "indie." If this isn't proof that the indie ethos is dead, I don't know what is. And what, you ask, was I doing reading an interview with the Black Eyed Peas? I guess I was bored with the rest of the newspaper.

"Indie music" used to suggest a simple dichotomy between fringe recording/production and mainstream polish, the unheard and the oversaturated. As most bands know there is no pure space independent music, nor is there any sense, for critics, in holding the music of one side over and against the other. To name a recent example, the new Gorillaz record deserves just as much (if not more) attention as the new Broken Social Scene record. And it just so happens that Gorillaz's label, Virgin, has handled distribution for some of the "Broken Social Scene presents . . ." albums, so Art & Crafts, like a lot of other big independent labels, have more or less closed the gap on the majors. "Indie music" has become the laziest of catch-all descriptors; it's become redundant, and it's time we moved on.

There will always be lesser-known, more/less innovative artists producing great music that doesn't get heard. For the average middle-class musician it's now easier than ever to offer one's music to the public. Sifting through all the inevitable trash is the job of the record label. Clearly, the process isn't this simple and most of labels haven't been doing a great job. But the job isn't theirs alone.

The decade lists keep rolling out. Pitchfork was ahead of the game, posting theirs earlier this fall. Now Rolling Stone has unveiled its own authoritative list, complete with a snazzy cover design (in fact, this is probably the best Rolling Stone cover of the past 10 years). The magazine has gone through some fairly major changes over the decade to cut costs. They've cut back Rolling Stone's size, format, etc., while websites like Pitchfork have expanded in every way. Now we've got old print giant on the one hand (trying desperately to keep up with the culture it once spoke for) and the new cutting edge P4k website on the other (which is where the growing majority discover new music; if consensus can exist anymore, P4k has the sway to shape it). Rolling Stone has little influence among anyone under 30; it really belongs to the boomers...especially because hardly any young people actually buy magazines!

Simon Reynolds has hatched a theory about popular music tastes that he's developed by scanning the "best of the decade" lists from places like Rolling Stone and Pitchfork. The lists predominantly feature albums from the first half of the decade. You're likely to see albums like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Kid A, Stankonia, Is This It, Funeral, etc. dominating the list, while obviously great albums from the last couple years won't even break the top twenty. What's behind this trend? Well, Reynolds argues, it has nothing to do with the quality of music (in fact, each year brings new albums that are just as good, if not better, than the year before); it has little to do with having some distance from the album; it isn't even because lists are essentially vehicles for personal nostalgia (which I think to be the case). No, it's because we as listeners of popular music are less able to reach consensus on definitive albums (You can read his full article/theory here). Instead, because of a variety of factors, the pop music canon has become increasingly fragmented over time because there is exponentially more music being made today than yesterday; musicians now, more than ever, can pick from a growing range of genres and experiment. Add to that the decline physical media (cds, tapes, etc.), which has definitely had an effect on consumer habits and buying patterns.

This makes sense, especially when you consider how music is currently being produced and consumed, not to mention this decade's blatant shift from physical (both in print culture and music) to digital media. Reynolds also stresses that music responds to social need/convention. In other words, consensuss builds when we need it to. To use Reynolds' point against him, if you look at the beginning of the decade, there was a strong feeling of urgency about the music being made (a lot of fear, resentment, and so on). The future looked bleak and we needed albums to rally around. Looking back, it's hard to ignore the fact that 00, 01, and 02 are the most favoured years. And I don't think it's ludicrous to connect that with the 9/11 watershed (though I shudder at the thought). Like all historical measurements, commemorative lists are bound by the projections of their makers. That event was symbolic on a number of levels and we're bound to interpret the music from those years in light of what took place. Could something like this happen again in popular culture? The once powerful tastemakers like Rolling Stone and Spin aren't going to convince all of us that x or y have captured our cultural zeitgeist, but I think a lot of us will still be looking for someone to do so when catastrophe hits.

Hey, it's the world's favourite band (first and third world, and everybody in between)! They have such wide appeal that Bono and the Edge don't know what to do with themselves. Over at cokemachineglow, they ran an article about a father and son who embark on the "greatest concert spectacle ever." U2! People are finally starting to pay attention. They just made it on the cover of Rolling Stone. They're gonna be famous!

It's an awesome cover too, because it looks like they used a macbook to superimpose these guys onto a stock background so they're in space! I think I see Saturn floating above the Edge's beanie. And Bono so obviously wants to rock, with his fist in the air like that. He's all "yaaa!" and the Edge is serious, because he's a real musician. I saw him in a movie with Jack White and Jimmy Page where they talk about themselves and how they play with their massive libidos...oops, I mean, guitars.